Page 46 of Work with Me

Silently, I pumped the soap. That was what she thought of me? After we’d worked together for a month, after I’d told her only three days ago how amazing she was? I scrubbed my hands under the water. “I don’t think you know me as well as you think you do.”

She pumped the soap, and when I moved to dry my hands on the blue towel, she washed her hands. “Maybe not. I’ve just had a lot of experience with guys like you.”

“Guys like me.”

“Hot-shot tech guys. Always the smartest guy in the room, thinking everyone’s had the same opportunities as you, same priorities, and it’s a weakness in someone else if they haven’t made it as far.”

“Wow.” I handed her the towel, trying to keep my voice light despite the knot in my stomach. “You don’t think much of me, do you?”

“I’m protecting myself and my family.” Her smile was bitter. “I’ve been fooled a couple times. Never again.”

I thought about leaving. About walking straight back down the hallway and out the front door. If she really thought I was like all those other assholes who’d passed her over, I should’ve. But the gleam in her blue eyes, the way her mouth turned up at the corner, hinted that she hoped I wasn’t. And that was enough to keep me there, in thatFinding Nemobathroom, in the house she shared with her two moms and a nephew I hadn’t known existed, determined to crack the code on Alicia Diane Weber.

She opened the door, and we returned to the kitchen, where her family sat around the round table at the edge of the kitchen.

“Thought you’d gotten lost,” Diane said. She put one of the chicken legs on Noah’s plate.

“My hands were extra dirty from all that code at work,” I said. “All clean now.” I held them up, palms out, for inspection.

Noah snort-laughed.

Alicia sat in the empty chair next to Noah, and I sat between her and Esmy. The table was sized for four, and it was a tight squeeze. My left knee rested against Alicia’s right. Esmy passed me a bowl of mashed potatoes that smelled like garlicky heaven. I scooped out a moderate-sized amount and passed the bowl to Alicia.

“Tell us about yourself, Jackson,” Esmy said.

“My friends call me Jay.” I gave her my most winning smile.

Diane said, “Alicia calls you Jackson.”

“That’s right. Though I’m working on it.” My smile faltered when Diane shot me with a Cooper-level withering look.

Esmy jumped in again. “Alicia tells us you founded the company she’s working for now.”

“My best friend, Cooper, and I started it when we were still in college. I was into cars, and I wanted to use computers to figure out how to make them go faster.”

“Like our Honda?” Noah asked.

“Well, sure. Some of the major automotive manufacturers are our customers. We started out with Cooper’s dad’s old beater of a car, a 1995 deep jewel green metallic Ford Escort. We used her for a project in my mechanical engineering class. She was rusted-out and burning oil, but we turned her into a powerful, efficient, intelligently adaptive machine. Nothing we could do about the rust, though.” I sat back in my chair, remembering the way Cooper and I had bonded over the project. “But what I was most interested in was race cars. You know Formula One?”

“Duh, yeah,” Noah said.

Esmy asked, “Is that like NASCAR?”

Noah rolled his eyes. “No, Grandma Esmy. It’s totally different.” With very little help from me, he explained the differences to his grandmother, who at least pretended to be interested.

I was starting to like the kid. “Have you ever been to the race here in Austin?”

“Nah.” He looked down at his plate. “I’ve watched it online, though.”

“It’s coming up next month. I have tickets, and I could—”

Alicia’s knee collided with my thigh under the table. “Ah!” I rubbed my leg. Those knees of hers were sharp.

“Noah’s too busy with school and soccer to spend all weekend at a racetrack,” she said.

“Soccer! You play?”

“Yeah, we have games every Tuesday and Thursday.”

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