Page 47 of Debugging Love

I take a deep breath and straighten my spine.Don’t be negative. Good thoughts. You’re his project manager. You have to get along.

I hustle my negative thoughts into a corner, including the one hating on Chance’s feet, and head in his direction, zeroing in on the back of his head, specifically the loose curls that he often combs with his fingers while tilting his head back, turning his Adam’s apple into a mountain begging to be climbed and conquered.

No. Not that.

“Meeting time,” I say to Chance’s curls as he runs a hand through them. Of course. It’s like he read my mind.

The thought of Chance poking around in my brain turns my face into a fireball. Luckily, he’s still homed in on that five-hundred-dollar monitor, his pupils nowhere near my flaming cheeks.

I look away and remind myself how annoying he is. Messy, inconsiderate, gum-chewing Chance. What a disaster.Be professional, Danni.

“Meeting time,” I say again, because Chance didn’t budge the first time.

He doesn’t budge the second time either. I kick the bottom of his chair. He lifts a hand and offers me the back of it. “Be there in a minute.”

What has him so distracted that he can’t even flip his palm around to wave at me properly?

I peer at Drew’s monitor, and my name jumps out at me. It’s in the comments section of a block of code that I spent two days coding and debugging. The flame returns to my cheeks. They’re in my code! What are they doing in my code?!

Heng approaches, both hands wrapped around a notebook, looking uncertain. “Are we meeting here?”

I look at him sideways, offering only one cheek to protect him from the intensity of the two-alarm fire on my face.

Maybe Drew is just stepping Chance through my code as a training exercise. Because they wouldn’t dare touch my code. Not when it’s already in test.

I paste on a professional smile. “We’re meeting in CR3. Heng and I were just headed that way.”

I will Chance to stand and follow me. He does not. That leaves me and Heng alone in the conference room, staring at each other from opposite sides of the table.

The walls of the small conference room close in like a trash compactor as Heng and I breathe self-consciously into the space between us. I’m in charge. I should diffuse the awkwardness. “All right, then. Ready, Freddie?”

“Oh. I’m Heng,” he says with a slight accent. Heng keeps to himself. This is the first time I’ve heard him speak.

“I meant, are you ready to get started?”

“Oh, yes. Very.”

I fidget with my laptop, and then glance over my shoulder. Still no sign of Chance. “Are you from Southeast Asia?” I ask, and then second guess myself. Chance pops into my head calling mea racist xenophobe, except he never said xenophobe. Morgan did that. “I had a friend from Laos,” I explain.

“My parents are from Cambodia. You’re very perceptive.”

Or stupid. One of the two. I’m going with stupid. Where’s Chance?

I lean over and prop my forehead against my palm. “Sorry. I’m flustered. I just saw my name on Drew’s monitor, and–”

“What’s up?” Chance announces boisterously.

“Your time,” Heng says.

Chance pulls out a chair and spins it around before straddling it. He rests his forearms on the back, leaning toward us. “My time’s up?” Heng looks pleased that Chance got his joke. Chance looks at me and arches an eyebrow. “Am I off the team?”

“Not yet,” I say.

I push myself to standing and cross to the whiteboard while Heng utters a quiet, “Burn.”

“I’ll make this quick,” I say. “I’m not into meetings. Most of them would only take five minutes if people stayed on task.” I grab a whiteboard marker while Chance rubs his palms together.

“That’s my kind of Scrum master,” he says.

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