Chapter 2
Chapter Two
SIGNE
God bless the bookish community.
A week or so passed, and I was doing a decent job of staying active on my social media account like Michelle advised, but I still hadn’t posted a selfie or anything. I did, on occasion, get inspired to write a spinoff sequel, of characters that were introduced in my first book, but wasn’t sure who would get their own story next? I would sometimes get an insatiable urge to pull out a notebook and write an idea down. Or pull my laptop open and type out a scene that just wouldn’t get out of my head. Perhaps feeling mildly successful after meeting with Michelle gave me more confidence to keep going.
This came to me more often now that I had supposedly gotten the bookish community’s blessing to write a formal manuscript instead of posting chapters of my story online. People have been following me while begging me to post the next chapter. A few days ago I bit the bullet and posted about how I wouldn’t be sharing new chapters because I was officially signed with an agent and was pursuing traditional publishing. I woke up the following few mornings with new notifications, comments, and tags all congratulating me on signing with an agent and wishing me luck on my adventure. They were all willing to wait for the revised and fresh aspects of Zayne and Sydney’s love story. Most knew that traditionally publishing a book would take time and weren’t bitter about it at all.
Keeping my handle something silly like @ReadHeadedWriter helped me feel hidden from the bookish community, even though my real name and picture were on my profile for those who cared because I officially decided that I wasn’t willing to confuse myself with a pen name. I figured that if I was going to write something people loved, I wanted to claim those words proudly.
But mostly anxiously, because I still didn’t want certain people finding out about this aspect of my life. Having people tag my account and seeing @ReadHeadedWriter instead of, hypothetically, @AuthorSigneLange also helped me feel like I was protecting myself from future humiliation.
Or future reprimand from Jacqueline, who would probably add a whole section to the Sun Steer Code of Conduct explaining how unethical it was to write smutty fanfic about members of upper management. I vaguely remembered Jacqueline mentioning something in my onboarding process about how Sun Steer had a right to look through any public social media accounts that I had, but I didn’t have any active social media accounts at the time, so I didn’t think much of it.
Now I did, but I assumed that Jacqueline wasn’t about to follow up with me to see if I was randomly active on social media again or not. She had no reason to do that.
Plus, Zaid’s inspiration for the love interest or not, my account had nothing to do with my day job. It was completely separate, if things worked out how I hoped. There was no need to disclose my new author account to Jacqueline for any reason. Especially if I was going to quit if a publisher offered me enough money to do so.
And that’s how I started wondering if showing my face to readers really was that risky at all. There were less than five women in the office, who hadn’t disclosed their love for reading to me at all—and not to be totally sexist—but I really doubted any of the tech bros here read romance novels.
The only social media they were active on was probably Reddit or Discord.
Their feeds were probably just a bunch of posts about their noisy-as-hell mechanical keyboards.
“Heads up!” Mary called, making my gaze lift from my phone just in time to see a Rubix cube, that she had just tossed, flying toward my head. I yelped and dropped my phone in my lap to prevent my face from being impaled by the sharp edges of the children’s toy.
“Nice catch,” Mary smirked as she sauntered over to my desk and leaned her elbows over the edge.
“Amazing what the body can do when immediately threatened,” I smiled at her as I gave the cube back to her.
“What are ya looking at?” Mary asked, leaning over more to look at my phone resting in my lap. I glanced down and saw the screen was black, so I just smiled and set it next to my keyboard.
“Just texting.” I sighed, resting my elbows on the desk, and setting my chin on my fists. I ended up blocking Mary and Jamie from my new account as soon as I made it, as a precaution. The platform had just asked me if I wished to sync my contacts with my friends list, to which I aggressively answered no , and decided going the extra mile to block their accounts was worth it. I was just too embarrassed to admit that I love writing girly love stories in my spare time to someone as cool and kickass as Mary, and that my claim to fame involved readers loving a fictional man inspired by our superior.
“Ah, I, myself was just writing a long-ass message to Andres,” Mary matched my position by resting her chin on her fists, “But I decided I didn’t want to stare at screens anymore, so I came over and decided to harass the office manager with requests.”
I lifted an eyebrow at her, my lips twitching with the hint of a smile as I waited for whatever request she was about to pull out of her ass, “You don’t have a bug to fix or something?”
“I do,” Mary responded with an eye roll. She was a senior software engineer, the only woman engineer on the team, “But, I’m waiting for fucking Andres to finish troubleshooting his part before I can work on mine.”
I nodded.
I had little to no knowledge of how coding or troubleshooting worked, and whenever Mary or anyone at the company tried to explain the details of back-end coding to me, I could feel my eyeballs physically glaze over as they spoke. It was like speaking a different language. I tried to keep up, but I didn’t go to school for software engineering.
“Ah,” I nodded at her.
“Anyways, the snacks.”
“The snacks.”
“What if we got better ones?”
“Are you saying that the cheapest snacks that I could find online to stock the vending machines are not up to your standards?” I asked, knowing that she would prefer it if we had catered food every single day.
“Yes, you get it.” Mary nodded.
“I do, and yet,” I shrugged, “We have a budget. If you don’t like the snacks, feel free to bring your own.”
“It’s the least the company can do.”
I agreed with her. But I also didn’t care about this place because I wasn’t destined to stay here. It was unlikely for people our age to stay at one company long term anyway. Five years was generally the longest anyone was willing to stay at a company now because the only way to keep up with the cost of living in Orange County, California was to accept a new position elsewhere.
However, Sun Steer was breaking workplace stereotypes and norms by giving their employees fairly livable wages and providing significant benefits and bonuses. We were reaching the point, however, that they needed to do something again. Employees like Mary were starting to feel run down keeping up with all the demands people put on the software engineers, and usually, money was the only way to make an employee feel valued after putting in crazy overtime hours.
The elevators dinged. Loud voices and laughter echoed toward my desk as men started to waltz toward Mary and me.
“Oh, good, Nikhil is back.” Mary stood up from my desk and waited for her manager to approach us. Nikhil was one of the nicest managers at the company, in my personal opinion. He always smiled and said hi, and asked how I was doing with genuine interest. He did that with everyone. He never let his position or status make other employees feel like plebes for not being high up in rank.
Something upper management ( I’m looking at you, Brandon ) could learn to do.
It sounded like Nikhil had just finished chatting about the vacation he took with his wife over the summer, where they visited his side of the family in India, and finally turned to meet Mary’s eyes.
“Uh oh,” Nikhil spoke, smirking at the way Mary was drumming her fingers on my desk with obvious impatience, “At least let me get to my desk before you come at me, Mary.”
“But I’ve been waiting for you to tell Andres to hurry up!” Mary groaned, making Nikhil chuckle and shake his head.
Beside Nikhil, the two men he was speaking to watched the exchange with interest.
First was the CEO, Brandon Moore. The man who looked like every other man in his mid-thirties in Southern California. Tan, blonde, blue-eyed, obviously goes to the gym regularly. Unlike Nikhil, Brandon had no idea how to talk to lower-level employees. He kept his distance from people like Mary and me and preferred to have managers like Nikhil be a third party to filter communication. If Brandon ever needed something from me, he preferred to tell me via email. It was fine.
Then there was Zaid, barely towering over the two men, he stood just a step behind as he also watched Mary and Nikhil joke around.
I stared at him, waiting for him to make eye contact with me. I couldn’t help myself; he was just so pretty. I forced myself to at least scan the faces of everyone else who had approached Mary standing in front of my desk, before finally looking back at Zaid again at the same time his eyes landed on me.
And then he immediately looked away.
Like always.
I felt my lips twitch a little bit at how predictable his behavior was at this point.
“…Can I?” Mary asked, making me blink and focus on my friend and the conversation she was having.
“No.” Nikhil laughed at Mary right when he met my eyes. I had missed a sentence or two of conversation, “Can you do that?”
“I’m sorry, what?” I asked, blinking, and focusing back in. Damn, how long had I been staring at Zaid’s beautiful, sculpted cheekbones?
“Simon is going to be out for a couple of weeks,” Nikhil smiled, not irritated at all that he had to repeat himself, “And we are hiring two more senior-level engineers. Would you mind sitting in with me on the initial interviews?”
I smiled at Mary, whose arms were crossed over her chest in irritation, “Of course.”
“Excellent.” Nikhil reached out and patted Mary on the shoulder, “You won’t ask fair questions and you will scare my interviewees off.”
“Maybe you should interview more competent engineers then.”
At that, Zaid’s lips twitched a little bit as he fought a grin, before his hand came up to wipe across his face to hide it.
“I am trying, but we need to give them a chance to prove their competence in a friendlier environment,” Nikhil jutted his thumb toward my direction, “Which is why Signe is sitting in instead of you.”
“Ugh,” Mary playfully rolled her eyes before starting to walk back to her desk and calling over her shoulder, “I’m still waiting on Andres!”
“I’ll talk to him!” Nikhil gave her a thumbs up before turning back to me, “Jacqueline has already screened these candidates and helped me narrow things down. So we only have two or three short interviews in the next few weeks. I can’t quite remember which day. Does that work for your schedule?”
I nodded, grabbing my mouse to click open my calendar to double-check, but my days were always flexible, “I think so.”
“I’ll send you the invites when I get them,” Nikhil smiled and turned to Zaid, “Hopefully we can get these two hired and ready to go in time for the product team to calm down.”
“Hopefully,” Zaid’s low voice agreed.
“This is Brandon…” The CEO suddenly answered a phone call and started marching off toward his office, lifting a hand to wave goodbye to the two men in front of me. I waved my hand goodbye, but he didn’t acknowledge it. So I shifted my hand underneath my desk and flipped him off.
I then turned to glance back at Zaid and Nikhil, still chatting in front of my desk, only to see Zaid lifting his gaze from my lap, tipping one corner of his lips up a little bit. It was almost a smirk.
My whole body froze.
Did he just see me flip off the CEO underneath my desk?
Based on the knowing look in his eye before he turned to pay attention to whatever Nikhil was saying, probably. Shit . Like every other awkward interaction I had with Zaid, I pasted a smile on my face and got to work on my computer to pretend that nothing weird happened.
The method was tried and true.
Finally, Nikhil and Zaid continued towards their offices as they finished their conversation, something I tuned out because it involved more coding and development words that I didn’t care too much about. What I did care about, shamefully, was getting my fill of Zaid’s glorious backside as he walked away from me. If I found out a co-worker was staring at my butt as much as I stared at Zaid’s, I would be fairly uncomfortable. And yet, here I was. I blatantly ogled him whenever I could because I was officially a huge hypocrite.
I just wanted to bite his hammies, nothing crazy.
I reminded myself in these moments that it wasn’t like I actually wanted to sleep with Zaid. I hardly knew him beyond our roles in the office, but our first one-on-one interaction together had been…underwhelming.
Zaid was shy, that much was obvious.
As was the way he wouldn’t meet my eye at all for the first few days of me starting here, even when I made sure to paste a friendly smile on my face every time we passed each other. I constantly remembered our first real conversation, where he basically told me to leave him alone until he was in the right headspace to train a new employee on how he liked his reports and presentations formatted.
I was an assistant to Zaid, the CTO; as well as Jacqueline, the head of HR; and Brandon, the CEO. Talks were being made about officially hiring a CFO here soon, but that hadn’t happened yet. I had plenty of work to do for Jacqueline and Brandon when I first started, so I wasn’t too disappointed that Zaid had dismissed me so suddenly, but it was still a little disappointing, nonetheless. Especially seeing how chummy the guy seemed to be with Brandon over the last year or so.
Mildly rude, business-obsessed, and introverted men were cute to read about in romance novels. Unfortunately, they weren’t as cute in reality. This is where another spark of Zayne and Sydney’s story came to me. I couldn’t help myself. A man with the physique of literal perfection being shy and short with his words? All I had to do was write a sentence about how he was originally shy and short with his words because his brain just couldn’t comprehend how gorgeous Sydney was, and boom. A tried-and-true romance was born.
The miscommunication trope has its problems, but many readers were suckers for it—every single time.
Personally, I liked a little bit more personality in my partners.
Not that I was against shy men, but usually if a guy was shy on a date, it was because, well, we were on a date. I had the motive to break through his shy walls and get to know him. A shy CTO that could sometimes come across as rude and demanding? I was not motivated to help him not be shy around me. We were both professionals and adults. If he wanted to be friendlier with me, he would. So far, he was a little friendlier, but not a lot. And that was fine by me. Boundaries, and stuff. Beyond the little almost smirks he would give me, or the eye contact he would break first every single time, it was clear that we would never be more than co-workers.
All of this to say, I also used these mental gymnastics I created for myself to justify writing the male lead in my romance novel. The male lead that thousands of readers were already obsessed with.
My phone buzzed, and I opened my account to see that I had passed ten thousand followers.
Whoa!
I bit my lip and made a little happy shimmy dance at my desk, only checking my surroundings afterward to make sure nobody saw me. But ten thousand followers? I quickly scrolled through my follow list, grinning to see that almost all of the followers looked like real accounts, not bots sent on a spamming mission.
Ten thousand real followers—readers—excited for my cute little story. I was doing it, I was really doing it.
That does it, I should take Michelle’s advice. I thought, Show the readers the face behind the story they’re excited about. No more delays.
I struggled to finish my reports for the rest of the workday, but I managed, and ended up getting a few emails back from Jacqueline and Brandon giving me the thumbs up on my work. I glanced at the clock and realized that it was already past six and that, based on the silence and emptiness I encountered walking through the office for my supplies check, most of the employees had cleared out already. Sometimes engineers like Mary would stick around if there was a bug they were trying to fix before going home, but as I strode to the break room to take inventory of everything, I saw that even the engineers’ desks were empty.
I glanced around, thinking that there was a good chance that I was the only employee left in the building.
A phenomenon that happened more often than I originally expected when I started working here.
I finished taking stock in the break room. I was wondering where in my house I could set up a live stream, since I didn’t exactly have a scenic backdrop like so many other influencers and authors had. My apartment was a studio, and I had lots of clutter. I wasn’t the most professional person out there, but I also wasn’t trying to live-stream all my unfolded laundry either.
Regardless of the state of my apartment, I was determined to go through with my impromptu face-reveal plan before I chickened out, and then realized that the blank walls that surrounded me were kind of…perfect. I glanced down at my nicer work clothes and played with my hair, remembering that both my hair and makeup were done.
Hmm…
I thought about the blankness of the break room as I tapped my inventory notes away on the company iPad I used. While I plugged the iPad in and stowed it away in my desk drawer (I refused to take work home with me), I thought more about the bright overhead lighting it provided. I didn’t have a fancy ring light or anything at my apartment, either.
If I were going to do a spontaneous livestream and reveal my face to readers, the break room wouldn’t be a bad place to do it. The internet speeds in this building were fantastic.
I did another walk through the office, not seeing anyone. Offices were closed, lights were turned off, and even a peak in upper management’s wing showed the same. Nothing but the sunset outside the floor-to-ceiling exterior windows illuminating the open-concept floor plan.
I nodded to myself as I entered the breakroom again and shut the door behind me, for the unlikely chance that anyone else was still in the office. I set up my phone against a box of tissues to line up my shot. The lighting was directly overhead, so I had to change positions and angles to get the light to not create an insane shadow on my face. It took a few minutes for me to figure out what angle was best and which spot worked, but eventually, I set it all up and got ready to start my first livestream, deciding that the wooden breakroom door behind me was bland enough to be a non-issue.
Having never done a live stream before, I opened the app and scanned the button options, feeling like it couldn’t be that difficult to manage. After a quick internal pep talk to myself, I leaned forward in my chair and pressed start .
Within seconds, I had a hundred people suddenly tuning into my stream.
“You guys!” I tried my best not to look at myself in the image. Instead, I tried to focus on all the hearts and comments that slowly started to flood the stream, “Ten thousand followers? Are you kidding me?” I giggled at some of the comments that were typed in caps lock, cheering me on, “You’re the freaking best!”
I settled in my chair and started reading everyone’s comments, answering questions about Zayne and Sydney’s story without giving away too much.
“I just wanted to pop on here and introduce myself to all the new faces who followed me recently,” I smiled at some of the excited emojis that started to dance on the screen, “My name is Signe, and don’t worry, I don’t expect you to know how to pronounce it correctly the first time. Also, I’m so excited for this journey you all helped me on, and—”
The sound of the break room door opening made me snap my mouth shut and turn to look at who was walking in on my livestream.
I first saw the tanned hand with those two distinctive veins, and my heart sank when I saw the rest of Zaid’s large body step into the break room. His head did a double take when he saw me sitting at the break room table, making me gasp and quickly turn around to mute my livestream and slam the phone face down.
I felt my face burst into flames.
Oh god no .
I quickly glanced back as Zaid walked through the breakroom towards the coffee pot, my eyes bulging out of my head when I saw him refill the container with water and grounds, brewing a fresh cup.
I was frozen. My mouth was opening and shutting, trying to figure out what to do.
Do I just end the stream? I glanced at the phone face down on the table, wondering if people were jumping off now. Was this valuable? A muted stream with a black screen while I sat here and tried not to have a panic attack? But I didn’t want to risk lifting my phone to end the stream officially and having Zaid see what I was doing.
“Were you on a call?” Zaid asked, making me jump a little in my seat. I leaned forward with my arms on the table, trying to look casual even though it was anything but.
“Um. Yup.” I shot a nervous glance at my phone while Zaid’s back was still to me, but I could feel his eyes as he turned his head to glance at me over his massive shoulder.
“Oh, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Zaid replied, opening a cupboard to grab a mug, and brewing a fresh cup of coffee. I glanced at the clock on the wall above me, it was six forty-five.
What kind of monster brewed coffee at six forty-five in the evening? Did he not need sleep?
“No worries!” My voice was higher and squeaked a little bit, but I tried to hide it by relaxing my shoulders and casually drumming my fingertips on the table. Except the drumming didn’t sound casual. I immediately stopped, but then pressed my lips together as Zaid leaned against the countertop to pull his phone out and scroll while he waited for his beverage.
I decided to turn in my seat to face him so that I could lift my phone and see who all had bailed on the muted, black livestream so far. This angle kept the screen facing me, and not him.
I was weirdly getting more viewers, so after mouthing a quick sorry one sec to those loyal homies, I decided to try to wait it out. I did, however, mouth the words what do I do? Which resulted in a lot of laughing and crying emojis.
“Are you still on the call now?” Zaid asked, making my heart thump against my chest with nerves. I widened my eyes at the stream and lowered my phone so they had a nice view of my nostrils, before I looked at him, remembering to relax my facial features. His lips were in a line, and his dark eyes darted between me and my phone behind his glasses.
“Oh! Um. No.”
Zaid blinked at me, “It just looked like you were talking to someone still.” The man had the audacity to lean a little to the side to get a better view of my phone. I quickly laid it face down in my lap.
“I am, but they, um, left the room to go get something.” It was a blatant lie, and based on the slow blink Zaid gave me after my words, I had a feeling he knew I was lying.
“I see,” he definitely thought I was lying, but didn’t seem to care enough to push the issue. Silent moments passed. Excruciatingly silent moments, and finally he reached for his coffee that had finished brewing and turned to face me again.
I held my breath when Zaid said, “We need more filters.”
“I know,” I replied.
He took a step towards the door but hesitated after my words. God, Zaid was so handsome. Even as he hesitated a step towards the break room door, he moved gracefully. Heat burned through my veins simply from being alone in a break room with him.
Zaid furrowed his dark brows for half a second before smoothing them and continuing towards the door, “Just a friendly reminder, employees are forbidden from filming personal content on company property.” Zaid stopped a step or two away from said door, and at his words, I felt my lips part in horror.
“Oh—oh god—I’m not—I mean, I am—but I didn’t know—”
“I’m not reporting you or anything, just a friendly reminder.”
He had one large hand on the doorknob, clearly intending to walk through it, but hesitating for whatever reason.
“Thank you, I’ll wrap it up.” I gave him a wide, apologetic smile. Hoping we could just blow past this situation, but he just studied me in that thoughtful way of his.
Ohmygodgothefuckaway , I wanted to scream.
Zaid’s lips twitched again, one of his large hands coming up to mess with his hair as he shook his head and finally, finally let himself out of the breakroom. Shutting the door behind him.
I sat frozen in my chair, watching the door and listening for his footsteps to thump away from the break room before I released a very loud and very obnoxious breath as I set up my phone again, getting ready to professionally end the stream for what little followers stuck around—all for that nothing they just experienced.
“Oh my god that was so embarrassing,” I slammed my elbows on the table and covered my face with my hands, before remembering to unmute the livestream. I had reached forward to do just that before I took a closer look at the mute button.
Which wasn’t a mute button, but instead was just a button to add a filter. My face currently had digitized freckles on it.
That, and my stream had almost fifteen hundred viewers now.
Emojis, hearts, fire, and sweating faces were flooding the screen.
What the hell ?
I smiled and used my index finger to start scrolling through all the comments that I had missed while Zaid was in the room, “Okay, where was I again?” I felt my eyes widen in horror as I read the comments people had left.
OH MY GOD WHO IS THAT
Did I really just see Zayne casually walk into the room?
Zayne?? That you, bro??
Who is THAT, Signe!?
That is the hottest man I have ever seen.
Is he really that tall or is that the camera angle?
How do I get him to narrate audiobooks? That VOICE!
Zayne!!
OMG IT’S ZAYNE!
HOLD UP are you at work? Do you WORK with ZAYNE??!
No.
No, no, no .
My face was beet red.
“Oh no,” I mumbled out loud, my hand coming up to cover my mouth. I was frozen as I read the hundreds of comments people had left. What had I done? Fuck, fuck, fuck .
I quickly ended the livestream.
I almost had two thousand people tuning in, but it didn’t matter. Everyone had clearly seen Zaid and noticed. They knew. The internet knew . The internet wasn’t stupid. Everyone had seen the cartoonish fanart that people had created for Zayne and Sydney’s story, so it was easy to see the living breathing Zaid and notice the similarities. I mean, based on their personalities I was pretty sure Zayne was wildly different than Zaid. Almost a completely different person, even. But in appearance?
They were the spitting image of each other.
Because I was a creepy, weird, pathetic person who wouldn’t accept that I had crossed a boundary until it came back to bite me in the ass like this.
“Shit!” I ground the heels of my palms against my head, making me groan as I struggled not to panic.
Only about two thousand people tuned into the stream.
Not everyone who tunes into a stream actively watches it, which was good.
That was also not as much as my followers, so hopefully, it would blow over.
Also, nobody knew Zaid’s name. I hadn’t said it in the livestream, so his privacy was still pretty much protected. As far as I knew, he had no social media accounts. I knew because when I looked him up to see if he had a side-gig as a model or influencer, nothing came up.
I inhaled through my nose and exhaled through my mouth.
It was just a fluke, nothing serious.
I ended the stream before people speculated more.
People were probably already forgetting about Zaid appearing in my livestream.
I chanted these reassurances to myself as I finally packed up my things and rushed out of the building, desperate to curl up on my couch and eat my stress in potato chips.