Page 34 of Work with Me

“Well, yeah, and, um…everything. Cooper.”

No one on the team could’ve missed how I’d stayed behind in the conference room like a misbehaving sixth grader. Alicia had probably told them the meeting hadn’t gone so well. My stomach twisted up, and not from bad sushi this time. From remembering what Cooper had almost told Alicia about me and the intern. Fuck, what would she think of me if she knew?

I wished I could take it all back. The extra shots of tequila that’d seemed like a good idea after my dressing-down by Weston, the CEO, over my behavior outside the office. Sure, I’d missed a day after the Grand Prix, and there may have been a tabloid photo or two of me, shirtless, with a pretty woman—or four. I’d gotten caught in a spray of champagne. Okay, it’d been my bottle of champagne.

After Weston had torn me a new one, I’d found the closest bar to the office and tried to take the edge off with tequila. All it’d done was blur my vision so I didn’t see—or care—that the redhead winking at me from across the bar was ten years younger than me. A sense of recklessness had overpowered me when she’d caught me outside the men’s room and whispered all those flattering things in my ear and palmed the front of my jeans. I figured I might as well act like the fuckup Weston thought I was. If I had to do the time, why not do the crime? He thought those pictures of innocent celebration were bad? Maybe some pap would catch me fucking this all-too-willing woman against the back wall of the bar. Try to cover up that one, Weston.

If only I could stand next to three-months-ago Jackson, take away that last shot of tequila, make him chug a glass of water instead, and tell him to walk out the door and go home. If I’d gone home, I could’ve laughed when I’d dragged my hungover ass into a meeting the next morning and found her, the redhead, taking notes on a tablet. I could’ve congratulated myself on my escape while we joked about hangovers.

But there’d been no escape for me. My skin had felt like it was covered in bees when I sprinted into Cooper’s office and confessed about my back-alley hook-up with Callie. Although I’d never noticed her in the office before and had no idea she was our intern, I still should’ve avoided her. I’d deserved the reaming-out he’d given me.

Like always, Cooper cleaned up my mess. Exiled me to Austin. Let Callie finish out her summer internship at Synergy and sent her off with a nice bonus and recommendation letter.

But he wouldn’t do it again. His threat about Delhi had been empty. This was my last chance. I knew it. Cooper knew it. That asshole Weston knew it. If I fucked up here, I’d be asked to take a leave of absence. Possibly a permanent one. Cooper wouldn’t be able to protect me.

I focused my attention back on Tyler. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” I’d keep my head down and work my ass off. Nothing would distract me. If it wasn’t one of Cooper’s three commandments—producing good code on time, earning the respect of the team, or working together—I wasn’t doing it. No way I could get in trouble if I followed the path Cooper had set.

“And you and Alicia? You’ll be fine, too?”

“Me and Alicia?” Maybe that’s where theworking togetherpart came in. We’d sit there at that desk, staring straight ahead at our screens, the bitter citrus of her tea tickling up into my nose. Keeping up the front of pair programming so guys like Tyler wouldn’t feel bad about needing help with their code.

But we absolutely would not cross any lines like Cooper somehow thought we had. I’d put a strip of masking tape—or a string of razor wire—down the middle of the desk if I had to.

“Alicia and I are fine. Separately, we are fine. As you can see, I’m fine here, and she’s fine…somewhere else.” At home? I’d never thought about Alicia’s home before. Maybe she slept in a crypt like a vampire.

“Ohh-kay.” He winked. I hadn’t yet cracked the code of the Texas wink. At first, I’d thought it was flirtatious, but then the white-haired woman who scanned my can of deodorant in the checkout line at the CVS winked at me when she said, “Y’all have a nice day.” And the bald, sweaty guy who manned the tamale cart always winked and said, “Buen provecho,” when he handed me the bag. So I said nothing in response to Tyler’s wink. Maybe it was like punctuation.

He hitched up his bag. “Don’t stay too late. It’ll still be here tomorrow.”

I flashed him a tight smile. “Thanks. See you.”

How many more tomorrows did we have if we didn’t finish this project on time? Cooper had said not many. He’d said Weston was making noise again about trimming unnecessary staff to make the company leaner, nimbler. I’d thought we were pretty fucking nimble already, but Cooper and Weston were the numbers guys.

Would Tyler be one of those unnecessary staff on the list to be trimmed? He’d land on his feet, sure. But what about Alicia? Without Cooper’s good word, she wouldn’t get too many more high-profile gigs like this one. And I couldn’t stand being the reason her business faltered.

I put my headphones back on and stared at my screen. I’d finish it for her. And for Tyler. And for Cooper. I wouldn’t let them down.

14

ALICIA

The scratchof Noah’s pencil against his paper made my eye twitch.

Jackson had his clacking keyboard and his leaky headphones. Tyler and the other programmers also coded to music. I, on the other hand, required silence. Especially when I was debugging.

But Noah was dutifully scratching out a book report for language arts across the kitchen table from me, and I wasn’t about to tell him to switch out for a quieter pencil. Mom and Esmy had gone to bed, and we were united in working late.

When I’d tried to compile and run my code, it’d thrown up a runtime error. I’d reviewed my code but hadn’t found anything. Then I’d checked the other modules one by one. And whose code was screwing with mine? Jackson’s. I’d had to leave early for soccer, but I’d vowed to find and fix the bug before we returned to work the next day. If I was lucky, he’d never know, and we could keep working as a “pair” with the luxury of not speaking to each other. Exactly like he wanted.

Noah’s head swayed, and he blinked his eyes hard. His pencil had zigged across the page, and he scrubbed the errant mark with his eraser.

“Hey, buddy, I think it’s time for bed.”

“But I’m not finished.”

“You can work on it again tomorrow. I’ll write you a note. You can show your teacher that you started it.”

He grimaced and looked back down at the paper.

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