Page 42 of Debugging Love

Christopher takes a drink from his tumbler and then shoves it over to me. “Do you need this?”

“For my tears?”

“Yes.”

“No, I need to not sit by Chance.” In my frustration, my volume rises. Too loud. Chance might hear me. I clear my throat and slouch.

Christopher drags his folded arms off his desk and tucks them underneath his bulging pectorals while leaning back to regard me with a humored smile. “Problems with the new hire?”

“Yes,” I hiss.

“What’s going on?” He’s still whispering, being the thoughtful, conscientious manager that he is. His predecessor barked out every sentence, including private conversations with his soon-to-be ex-wife that were embarrassingly sensitive.

Christopher’s life is comparatively calm and boring. As far as I know, he lives alone, isn’t dating anyone, wants to move up in the company, pumps a lot of iron at the gym. Hence why I noticed his pecs. I wasn’t ogling. You can’t not notice them.

“He’s worse than Drew.”

Christopher’s eyes bulge until he realizes he’s supposed to be impartial. He resets his expression and says, “I don’t know how to respond to that.”

“Okay, maybe not as bad as Drew, but he doesn’t listen, he refuses to use BrainyJ, and he thinks we should have more forks in our repository.”

“To eat with?”

“To reflect his many layered, multi-dimensional intellect.”

“Did he say that?”

I look at Christopher dully.

“He said that,” Christopher confirms. He presses his palms together and sucks in a deep breath like he’s preparing to say something profound. Instead, he scoots forward and rounds his chest over his desk, still whispering, “You know I can’t do that. There are no empty cubes left. You sit in the overflow quad for a reason.”

“Me and Drew could swap. Chance likes Drew. They talk about weird stuff during lunch.”

“Drew will never agree to that. He likes to spread out.”

“I could move to the focus room. We could say the overhead lights are making me dizzy and I need to work in the dark.”

“We need the focus rooms for the upcoming branch manager meeting.”

“And I need to be able to focus without feeling like I am enabling his chewing gum habit.”

Christopher looks up thoughtfully and rubs his chin. “He does chew a lot of gum.” His eyes linger on the ceiling.

I glance up to see what I’m missing. Just a light and some ductwork.

“So...” Christopher’s eyes reconnect with mine. He reaches out and presses his palms against the desktop, broadening his stance. I don’t like his expression. It’s hesitant, apologetic. “I was actually going to pull you into my office for a different reason.”

I scoot back in my chair, sensing I’m going to need more support for this.

“I’m taking you off the R&D project and moving you to a new one,” he says in normal volume.

I have a bad habit of infusing my heart and soul into my projects. When they’re finished, they bear a piece of me, like children going into the world. Hence my shocked, disappointed, and emphatic, “What!?”

“Yeah. It’s exciting really. I came from HR, right? So, I have connections there, and I’m determined to keep you all gainfully employed, therefore I’m always looking for new work, and they need a team to build an enterprise-wide benefits portal, so I said...”

This doesn’t sound bad. Why is Christopher drawing invisible circles on his desktop and speaking in a run-on sentence like he’s afraid to reach the end?

“And?” I prod, trying to get him to the point.

---