Page 51 of Work with Me

Grinning, he plugged in the keyboard, and I rolled my chair closer to him. He opened up the program, and we started to work. He still managed to click the less-than-whisper-quiet keys, but it didn’t pound into my brain the way it had that first day. Or maybe it was his leather-and-piney-woods smell that enveloped me and made me forget everything that used to irritate me.

“Alicia?”

“Hmm?” I yanked my attention to Jackson’s face, turned toward me over his shoulder.

“I asked if you were okay with what I did there. It’s a little unusual, but I think it’ll get us the results we need more efficiently.”

“Oh, ah”—I scanned the code and saw the part he’d asked about—“it looks good to me. Maybe add a comment in case someone questions it later.”

He turned back toward the screen, and I inched my chair away. Friends. That was all either of us could commit to. My traitorous lady bits needed to get on board with that.

A few hours later, Jackson’s stomach growled.

I checked the clock on the wall. It was almost one. “Why don’t you take a lunch break? I’ll keep working.” I’d brought my lunch from home, knowing I couldn’t waste a minute today.

“No lunch.” He flexed his fingers over the keyboard. “Your rule.” His stomach gurgled again.

“Fine. Want half my sandwich?” I pulled the insulated bag out of the drawer. “It’s Esmy’s homemade pimento cheese.”

“Pimento cheese?”

“If I tell you what’s in it, you’ll think it’s disgusting. But it’s spicy and delicious. Want to try?” I set half the sandwich on a napkin and handed the rest to him, still encased in plastic wrap.

“Okay.”

When he took the sandwich from me, it was just low blood sugar that made my skin tingle. I bit into my sandwich, and he did the same. We’d both feel better in a minute.

He swallowed. “That’s really good. Sure you won’t tell me what’s in it?”

“Not a chance. Hey, watch that extra white space.”

At four o’clock, music started downstairs. One Friday a month, Synergy had its own happy hour for employees with beer, snacks, and music. As our team wrapped up their coding and got the green light from the automated testing system, they meandered down, leaving only Jackson and me finishing up our code. After another half hour of work, he tapped the button to send the code to the testing process.

Jackson leaned back in his chair and rubbed his shoulder where it met his neck. He glanced at the board and the dwindling backlog of work. “Another two sprints after this. I think we might even have time for some refactoring.”

I chuckled. “Let’s not get crazy. Four weeks isn’t a lot of time. Anything could happen.”

“Come on. You know you want to make this code sing.”

I rolled my wrists. “Okay, yes, I do. I want it to run so fast it makes Cooper’s head spin.”

“If we finish up the new features in the next sprint, we can spend the last one supercharging it.”

What would it be like to impress Cooper Fallon, tech superstar, with our demo? Pretty damned good. “Okay. If we finish all the features early, we’ll do it.”

He grinned at the progress bar on the screen.

The testing routine finished with a clear report. Jackson checked the code into the repository, and I used my own computer to check that everyone else’s code was where it belonged.

He stood. “Come on.”

“What?” But I stood, too, stretching out my back.

“We need to move.” He walked along the open hallway and turned left toward the sliding glass door that led out to Synergy’s small second-story deck that overlooked the river. With everyone else at the happy hour downstairs, the deck was empty, as were the desks inside that faced it. He strode to the railing and leaned his elbows against it, staring out at the trees and the sparkling water beyond.

I took off my jacket, laid it over the railing, and mirrored his stance.

“So what are you doing after?”

---