Page 32 of Work with Me

“This is the second code review. How do you have nothing to show? Again?” Cooper leaned his elbows on the dark wood desk in his office at headquarters. Behind him were shelves of books, interspersed with large conch shells and a few glass awards. It was much more opulent than the office he’d reamed me out in last time he was here. He rubbed his temples.

Tyler made a desperate sound, grabbed the wastebasket, and ran out, leaving Jackson and me alone in the conference room.

“Unfortunately—” I began.

Jackson interrupted me. “It was my fault. I was trying to do what you told me—”

“And what was that, exactly? Because I sure as hell didn’t tell you to fuck up again. I’m pretty sure I’d remember that.”

I winced, and so did Jackson. But he said, “You told me to earn the respect of the team. So I thought I’d do something nice for them. We were working late, and I brought in dinner.”

“I saidearntheir respect, notbuyit. But how did dinner result in utter failure?”

“I ordered sushi. We have a vegetarian in the group, but he eats fish.”

“Sushi? In Austin, Texas?” Cooper’s eyebrows lifted toward his hairline. “Alicia, how many miles from the ocean is Austin?”

“A little over two hundred miles from the Gulf. It’s just over three hours, driving, to Galveston.” We’d taken Noah to the beach this summer and had eaten our weight in shrimp. “We can usually get decent fish—”

“Three hours from the nearest body of water. Does ordering sushi in such a place seem like a smart idea?”

That hardly seemed like a respectful way to speak to a colleague, much less his business partner and friend. I stared hard into the camera beside the video screen. “Just a—”

“It’s okay, Alicia.” Jackson set a hand on mine, where I’d curled it over the chair arm. Warm and steady, his touch calmed me like a weighted blanket. Had I been about to stand up and get in Cooper’s virtual face? No. At least I hoped not.

“Let’s take it down a notch, Coop.” Jackson’s voice took on a low rumble that soothed my nerves.

“Take it down?” Cooper’s voice rose. “I don’t need to take it down. You need to take it up. Stop fucking around there in Austin and build fucking code. Have you forgotten the vital importance of this project, Jackson? Because I sure as hell haven’t.”

I gripped the arm of the chair. How could Jackson take this kind of abuse so calmly?

Jackson pressed my hand briefly and then lifted it when he shrugged. “Look, I didn’t think about it, okay? I did what I would’ve done at home. I didn’t know the sushi was going to make everyone sick.”

He’d done it last Thursday, after I’d gone for the day. Everyone who’d eaten the sushi, including Jackson, had spent Friday and the weekend puking. After I’d read Jackson’s pathetic text, I’d finished our module, but even though I’d put in hours on Saturday and Sunday, I hadn’t been able to finish everyone’s work. At least this time I’d emailed Cooper and told him not to come out to Austin. Half the team were still out today.

“Four weeks of our schedule have passed. We have only six weeks left. How are you going to finish on time if you keep falling behind?”

Jackson and I spoke at the same time. I said, “We’ll take a look at the features, see what we can remove, and work hard to deliver the minimum viable product on time.” Which was the correct response. The one Cooper wanted to hear. Jackson, on the other hand, said, “Software’s an art. You can’t put a schedule on it. It’ll be done when it’s done.”

We looked at each other in shock. How the heck were we going to work together when we had diametrically opposing philosophies on software project management?

Cooper must have had the same thought. “How have you two not even talked about this? What the hell have you been doing all this time?”

Besides carefully avoiding coding with Jackson, mentoring Tyler, and managing the rest of the team? Worrying about Noah, obsessively checking his backpack every night, and keeping up a daily correspondence with his language arts teacher. But I wasn’t about to say that. Cooper wanted to think of me as an automaton who shut down at the end of the workday, ready to power back up at eight a.m. the next day.

Cooper’s eyes flared. “Jackson, you wouldn’t. Not after what happened in May.”

Wouldn’t what? I looked between Jackson’s pale face next to me and Cooper’s red face on the video screen.

“Now just a minute, Cooper.”

Finally, he was going to stand up for himself.

Color crept up Jackson’s cheeks, and his eyes flashed. “You’re out of line. What happened in May isn’t relevant to our consultant.”

He’d madeconsultantsound like a dirty word. Where the hell was all this coming from? Why was I suddenly the target of both men’s derision?

“I can’t believe you’d seduce our consultant. Fuck, now I have to find somewhere else to send you.” He rubbed his temple. “Our office in Delhi, maybe.”

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