hadn’t thought he was involved at all. But now I did. He added, “Good luck with that.” He put his earbuds back in and then went back to ignoring me. Ignoring seemed better than strangling each other. The current state of disregarding each other was as harmonious as we could get.
A couple of hours later Damon appeared with a Mac. I raised my eyebrow when he handed it to me.
“Um, one of the designers got fired this morning and I wiped his hard drive. This computer is better than that new one you’d be issued. You should take it.”
A MacBook! “Oh, wow, so this one isn’t missing any critical keys?” I flipped it open and all the keys were accounted for. Yay! One hundred percent of keys!
He took the loaner from me and clutched it against his chest. “Same login and password on this computer. It has more RAM and more memory, too, and I can get you an external hard drive if you need it.”
I swayed in my chair with excitement. “Okay! Hey, thanks, Damon!”
He left briskly and no longer blocked my view of Asher’s stupid head. Damon had temporarily eclipsed Asher from my view. It had only been a short-term reprieve, unfortunately.
Asher eyed my laptop like a dieter observing boxes of Girl Scout cookies for sale: with deep desire and hatred. He gritted his teeth and side-eyed me, and I totally knew what he was thinking: Melody got another “free pass” at this company by getting a coveted MacBook. But you know what was unfair? Being on a tight deadline and having a shitty computer that died. And then getting issued a loaner computer with a missing space bar. Writing-sentences-with-no-fucking-spaces-for-a-few-hours. That’s pretty unfair if you ask me. And it was an older, used Mac, not a new one. Asher could go eff off.
He stood up, slammed his laptop shut, and stormed out of our room. Good riddance.
I logged in to the network and downloaded my email and calendar. Dozens of overdue and upcoming meeting notifications took over my screen. I’d missed a Gartner game industry Outlook presentation an hour ago. Not a big deal. But I was also ten minutes late to a mandatory sexual harassment training in the Orson Scott Card large conference room.
Crap.
I slammed my laptop cover and dashed to the meeting. All eyes fell on me when I opened the door, looking disheveled and panting like I’d just had steamy, mind-blowing sex.
“Sorry,” I mumbled and scurried to the closest open seat at the large conference table. While the instructor handed out sheets of paper, I surveyed the room, counting twelve dudes, all but one of them white. Nolan was there, donning his signature J.Crew Outlet look, wearing a hunter-green plaid fitted shirt nearly identical in style and fit to the one he wore when we worked together. I looked away before he made eye contact.
Asher was there, too. He could have told me about this mandatory meeting, but he had been too busy purposefully ignoring me. I would have done the same thing.
“Excuse me, are you Melody?” The grandfatherly instructor, with a faint British accent, asked.
“Um. Yes?”
“Brilliant! We have perfect attendance!” He took a black Sharpie and drew a horizontal line on his pad of paper, presumably crossing off the final name of his participant list. “You just missed our group introductions. I am Charles Sword, your moderator for today’s professional training. I was just thanking Nolan here for bringing me in for this session.” Nolan ran his fingers through his hair and offered the instructor a sheepish grin. He glanced at me and gave me a tiny wave. Unable to resist, I offered him a lopsided smile. I had to give him some credit, at least he was doing his job.
Charles focused all his attention on me. “I’m thrilled you’ve arrived. Would you mind reading the lines of the female character in the script in front of you? You came just in time for the role-playing exercise.”
Oh, lucky me.
He peered down at his list of participants again. “And . . . Asher? Can you play the male character?”
Lucky me again.
Charles said, “I’ll be the narrator because I certainly have the voice for it.” The instructor chuckled. “Well, what a serious bunch we have here. All right then, I’ll begin.” He cleared his throat, not out of necessity, but instead for dramatic effect.
“Jack and Jill work in a relaxed office environment. Jill is typing a memo when Jack enters the room. Go ahead, Asher.”