Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
GAGE
Knox pulled off the busy street onto a tiny circular drive in front of a gleaming high-rise with the Rubicon logo etched into the glass front doors. We’d left Knox’s apartment just down the river almost forty minutes ago, but we’d only just managed to fight our way through traffic.
“They’re gonna love you, Gage,” Knox assured me as he put the car in park.
“But what if no one plays with me or shares their treats at snack time?” I asked solemnly. Hearing my first name on his lips was still new enough to give me a little thrill.
Knox slapped my arm lightly. “Shush.” But then he added, “I’m just a call away if you need a ride at any point. Remember?”
I forced myself not to laugh. He was so damn cute sometimes, and ten times more nervous for me than I was nervous for myself. I was almost waiting for him to offer to come inside and hold my hand or to take me back to his incredibly expensive but weirdly sterile black-and-white condo.
If you’d told me a couple of weeks back that Knox Sunday could be this damn adorable, I’d have said you were a liar, but the man’s capacity for adorableness grew exponentially with every day we spent together.
“I’ll remember,” I promised.
“Seriously. I don’t know who else is going to be in that interview, but you’re gonna kill it.”
I leaned over the console and gave him a peck on the lips. “I know I will. Breathe, Knox. I’m chill, I promise.”
“Erection check?”
I laughed out loud. “Okay, I’m nowhere near calm enough to get a spontaneous erection.” But when Knox glanced appreciatively down at my charcoal-gray suit pants and licked his lips, my dick gave a half-hearted throb that said maybe I was underestimating myself.
“Yeah, you’re good,” Knox growled. “Go on, then.”
I leaned over and kissed him again, just because I could, and then I walked into the building as confidently as I could, practically walking on air.
The bored lobby receptionist took one look at me and said, “Interviewing?”
I frowned but nodded. “How’d you know?”
She rolled her eyes, handed me a visitor’s badge, and pointed at the elevators. “Seventh floor. Human Resources. Follow the signs.”
As I stood in the elevator, I tried not to fidget. I’d styled my hair more carefully than usual so it flopped nicely, but that meant my reflection in the chrome elevator door was so startling, I had to fight the urge to run my hand through it and mess myself back up.
I’d somehow thought that tech jobs were more laid-back, but when I’d mentioned that at the store the day before, Knox had laughed. “Not all of them. And definitely not for the interview.”
When I got upstairs and the elevator opened into a lobby that looked like the waiting area at the DMV—if all DMV patrons wore fancy suits and smelled like performance anxiety—I was glad I’d listened to Knox and gotten dressed up.
Holy shit. No wonder the lady downstairs hadn’t been surprised. The whole world was interviewing. We couldn’t possibly all be going after the same position, could we?
There was a reception desk up here, too, but it was unoccupied, so I headed for one of the empty chairs set against the window and asked the guy in the next chair, “Is this seat free?”
The guy shrugged, barely making eye contact.
I didn’t sit down right away, though, because there was a million-dollar view outside the window of bright orange and red trees waving against a blue sky and the Charles River rushing by—the kind of view I’d only ever seen in pictures, growing up in Florida—though none of the other people in the room seemed to notice it.
“Nice view, eh?” I said because chatter was my default setting when I wasn’t comfortable. “At least they gave us a decent place to wait. I bet they’re hoping we’ll all get seduced by the view, and then accept the job without thinking twice.”
The man did look up at me then. “I went to Harvard. The view of a dirty river and a bunch of Massholes driving smart cars doesn’t entertain me. The idea that you think everyone in this room will be offered a job, on the other hand, is hilarious.”
Ooookay, then.
Across the room, a girl who’d been tapping her foot like a tiny woodpecker against the marble floor stopped moving for a long moment… then clapped a hand over her mouth and darted down the hall.
“Puker,” my neighbor scoffed disgustedly. “Honestly, if you can’t handle the interview, why would you think you could handle working here?”
“Well, interviewing is different,” I said, hoping I didn’t sound like I was speaking from personal experience. “I wasn’t expecting so many people, myself. Are you applying for the New York job also?”
“New York?” He snorted. “No. New York is where the R&D guys are. You don’t get hired into a position like that unless you’re a fucking genius.”
His look suggested I was deluding myself if I thought I fit that category.
“Be honest. In your spare time, you write inspirational quotes, don’t you?” I wagged a finger at him.
“What?”
“No, no, don’t be modest. Beneath that impressively believable douchewad facade beats the heart of an eternal optimist. You’re the guy who came up with all those damn ‘Live, Laugh, Love’ signs in everyone’s kitchen, aren’t you?
You’re the reason my stepmother has ‘Too Blessed to Be Stressed’ sweatshirts in every color of the rainbow.
But don’t worry. You’re secret’s safe with me. ” I traced an X over my heart.
The guy looked like he couldn’t decide whether he was more confused or angry.
See that, Knox? I’m getting along just fine with the other toddlers.
I tried to ignore his attitude, but when he got called away for his own interview a minute later, his words were still echoing in my head, and I found it hard to sit still.
Finally, a woman with a pixie cut and a genuine smile came to collect me. “I’m Hannah,” she said. “Jason’s assistant. Sorry we’re running a little late this morning. The division head is coming to town tomorrow, and everyone’s scrambling.”
She led me past the elevator to a different hallway, where the marble floor became carpet and the sleek formality became a little less constrained.
She knocked on a door, and when a voice yelled, “Yeah!” she winked and pushed it open to reveal a large office with a desk and a seating area by the window.
“Gage! Good to see you again, man.” Jason came out from behind his desk to shake my hand, grinning hugely.
His blond hair was just as ruthlessly styled as it had been the first time I’d met him, and his suit probably cost more than my first car, but with his jacket off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, he was the most casually dressed person I’d seen that day. “How’s it going?”
“Good! I can’t believe how busy it is out there.” I hooked a thumb down the hall toward the waiting area.
“God, I know.” He rolled his eyes and gestured me to one side of the lime green sofa.
“I should have mentioned when we spoke that our interview weeks are a bit of a circus. You’d think it would be easier to space the new hires out, but apparently the powers that be have decided this is what’s best.” He shrugged and sat in one of the leather chairs facing me.
“One interviewing frenzy in the spring and another in the fall, but at least that means I only have to wear my fancy suit to the office a couple weeks a year. The company’s growing exponentially, which is always a good thing.
” His smile turned crafty. “That’s why we’d love to get you on board now, so you can be part of that growth. ”
I returned his smile, but I couldn’t help wondering, “Is it a good thing, though? Isn’t it possible to be too big or diversified?”
He shrugged easily and stretched out his legs.
“I can’t lie, long-term corporate strategy is not my wheelhouse, Gage.
I trust much smarter folks than me to make those decisions.
But I will tell you that the strength of the company relies on our ability to innovate new products all the time, which is why they need people like you and me. Professional visionaries.”
I imagined telling Knox to refer to me as Gage Goodman, Professional Visionary and had to fight an inappropriate giggle before I mentally slapped myself.
What the hell was I doing? This was my dream job.
I sobered quickly. “I’m really excited to hear about this position. From everything Knox said, it sounds right up my alley. I’m eager to take a project from concept to finished product, you know? I wanna learn a little of everything. And working at Rubicon would be a dream.”
Jason nodded. “We’re a cutting-edge company.
Right at this minute, we have a team working on an app that connects to a registry for medical implants and durable medical goods so that consumers will know when there are recalls or when multiple people have reported an adverse reaction.
In the future, we’re hoping to have a way to monitor implants and other devices electronically to find out why and how they fail. ”
A little thrill shot up my spine, making me straighten in my chair. “That’s incredible.”
“It really is.” He beamed. “I remember the woman who came up with the idea, too—we started at Rubicon around the same time—and I like to think she’d be proud of what we’ve done with it.”
“Oh, my God.” I blinked. “Did she… did she die?” I whispered.
“What? No.” Jason hesitated. “At least I don’t think? I haven’t talked to her in a couple years, but last I heard, she’d moved to Montana and writes thrillers.”
“Oh.” I thought this through. “So, wait, when did she come up with the idea?”
“Oh, I wanna say six or seven years back, maybe? Took nearly a year to get the project through the selection process the first time, but she was tenacious. Then we went through a couple rounds of restructuring, and it had to be approved again. We assembled doctors to do test groups to check the functionality. We refined it. Then more focus groups. You know the drill.”
I didn’t, though. It made sense that doing things on a larger scale took longer, but… years? That was a little sobering.