Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Connor wants me there bright and early on Thursday for a breakfast meeting with my new team. Which I absolutely would have been on time for, if my fucking keycard wasn’t deactivated again.
This time, I calmly make my way over to the security desk and wait until I can explain the problem.
I’m informed that unfortunately I will need a new keycard, which it is not in their power to give me, since I am unauthorized.
I will need to take this up with the reception desk at Taskio on the twenty-first floor.
Which I can’t access. Because I don’t have a working keycard.
I am now ten minutes late for my breakfast meeting.
The security guard, sensing that my mood is turning, suggests I check in as a visitor, so that my manager will receive a notification letting them know I’ve arrived.
“Could you please let Connor Reid know Annie Winstead is here to see him,” I say through gritted teeth.
I then submit to having my photo taken on a small, badly placed webcam. It gets printed out in grainy black and white, then clipped onto a garish yellow lanyard with the word VISITOR stitched across it in lettering so chunky it could be seen from outer space.
I wait for Connor. He doesn’t come. After another ten minutes I ask the security desk to email him a second time.
When he finally does appear, I am seething.
“Wow, late on your first day, huh?” he says when he sees me. I am too annoyed to do anything but glower at him.
The security guard buzzes me through the barrier. Connor sweeps me into the elevator and upstairs.
“The guys are up in the Scratch Kitchen,” he says.
“Mmm.” I nod.
Here’s the thing I don’t get. Did he not even notice I was late? I was supposed to be here twenty minutes ago.
“After that we’ll go and sort out your keycard.”
I give him a halfhearted thumbs-up.
Where did he think I was, exactly? I’m over twenty minutes late and he didn’t so much as wonder what had happened to me?
I could have fallen into a sinkhole for all he knew. And that’s where I’d still be, with rats crawling all over me, probably eating me for breakfast, because my new boss didn’t even realize I wasn’t there. On my first day!
“Can I just say,” Connor says, leaning in close. “That. Is a very fetching lanyard.”
I look down at the stupid yellow visitor necklace.
He’s making fun of me. I KNOW he’s making fun of me. His eyes are twinkling at me, willing me not to sulk, but to laugh with him instead. I won’t do it! I bite down on the inside of my lip, hard. I refuse to let him charm me.
He seems satisfied with this, chuckling under his breath as he straightens.
“I’ll introduce you to the team,” he says over his shoulder when the elevator dings open. “They’re just over here.”
He leads me across the canteen until we come to a halt in front of three guys, all huddled around a laptop. My first assumption—that they’re working on something important—is swiftly corrected when I hear a garbled sound coming through the laptop speakers.
“Isn’t that insane?!” the one in the middle says, while the other two marvel at whatever video or meme it is they’re watching.
“Good news. I found her,” Connor says, calling his teammates to attention.
All three of them push back from their seats and rise, and Connor makes the introductions one by one.
Ben, the purveyor of the laptop, a tall, wiry redhead in a striped long-sleeved rugby shirt.
John: shorter than Ben by maybe one or two inches, with perfect curly brown hair and glasses that I can only assume were purchased at a Harry Potter gift shop.
And finally, Martin: the shortest by several inches, impeccably dressed and sporting a shock of jet-black hair that’s actively fighting the earth’s gravitational pull (and winning).
We all shake hands, and Connor disappears to order some coffees for us while the guys drag a couple of extra chairs over and then carry on with their merriment like I’ve been there the whole time.
Unfortunately, I have done that thing where instead of remembering their names, I focused on remembering my own name, and already have no idea who is who.
“Sorry,” I say, halting the conversation abruptly. “Can you tell me your names again? More slowly this time.”
I pay better attention second time around—repeating each of their names several times under my breath and quickly developing nicknames to try and tell them apart. From now on they’ll be known as Curly John, Martin Short, and Big Red Ben.
Ben, I realize, is the one Martha told me was hotter than Connor, and honestly, I’m surprised; he isn’t.
Though I can appreciate he has a certain allure.
Of the three, he’s the quietest—so far, anyway—and though I couldn’t exactly say why, it feels like he’s watching me closely.
His eyes are the color of what might best be described as seafoam, and give the uncanny sensation of being almost transparent.
Though the shortest, Martin is also the loudest, and very clearly the team’s court jester. Curly John falls somewhere in between. He strikes me as a little sweetie.
“Nice to have a girl on the team,” he says, turning to me with a smile.
Yes, I think. Definitely a sweetie.
“Thank you,” I say, “I’m kind of nervous. It feels like the first day of school.”
“I get it,” Ben says, chiming in from the head of the table. “When I was a kid, my family moved and I had to start fourth grade at a new school. I was so scared I threw up all over my T-shirt when I got there.”
“You did not,” Martin says, amazed.
“I swear,” Ben says. “I had to walk all the way back home with puke all over me.”
“What happened then?” I ask him.
“My mom made me change and walk back.”
John laughs. “That’s savage.”
“How have I never heard that story until now?” Martin asks, visibly suspicious that Ben’s story is some kind of hoax.
“Ask Connor,” he says.
“Ask me what?” Connor materializes at my elbow and drops a coffee in front of me.
“Ben’s saying he puked all over himself on his first day of school,” Martin tells him.
“Ah, the great Pennsylvania State Move,” Connor says. “An important story in the Benjamin Canon.”
The guys riff back and forth, Martin interrogating Ben’s story and John interjecting now and again to ask for clarification, while I sip my coffee and catalogue as many details about them and the group’s dynamic as I can.
It’s clear they’re all close—I’d be willing to wager they hang outside of work—and judging by Connor’s prior knowledge of Ben’s first day of school story, those two go back even further.
After five minutes it’s official: I love them. I will happily live out the rest of my days with this merry band of dorks.
“You should tell us about yourself, Annie,” Martin Short says to me. “Are you in a—”
Connor cuts him off immediately. “No hitting on the new girl on her first day.”
“I wasn’t,” Martin protests, then turns to me: “I swear I wasn’t. I was just going to ask if you were in a—”
“Band,” Ben jumps in.
“Doomsday cult,” John adds, hot on his heels.
I laugh. “I am not in a band, a doomsday cult, or a relationship, if that’s what you were going to ask.”
Beside me, Connor groans. “We’re going to get reported to HR before 10 a.m.”
“You would no matter what,” I assure him. “My best friend is in HR.”
He looks at me like ah, this all makes sense now, but I’ve interacted with Connor enough to know he won’t hold that detail against me. Besides, I’m on the team now. No take backs.
“So are you on any of the apps, then?” Martin asks, like this is all a standard part of the onboarding process.
“Not currently,” I say. “But I’ve been known to dabble.”
“I’ll add you to my contacts so you don’t come up in my matches,” Martin tells me. Chivalry isn’t dead, folks.
“She wouldn’t match you,” John ribs him.
Martin shrugs, supremely unconcerned. “Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn’t. I have a very good profile.”
As it turns out, Martin is a bit of a legend on Hinge. After years of striking out on the apps, he underwent a rebrand, embracing his status as a short king.
“I just put it right in my bio now. I get so many more matches that way. Really gives me a niche, you know?”
Despite the fact that the guys clearly engage in this kind of rolling back-and-forth all day long, for whatever reason, the subject of Martin’s Hinge profile has never specifically come up in conversation before, and gets them all thinking.
“I wonder what my niche would be,” Ben muses.
“Antacid king,” Connor offers.
“Sun rash king,” Ben replies with a grin.
John bounces a pencil against the edge of the desk. “Mine would be like…curly king.”
“That sounds like a shampoo brand, dude.” Martin, it is clear, is the arbiter of king status.
“Yeah, OK,” John says, dejected for a moment. He brightens. “Well, see? It just goes to show you. Not everyone has a niche. It’s a smart move.”
“That’s what I’m saying.” Martin nods. “You know I even get tall girls matching me sometimes. They like that I own it.”
Ben is doubtful. “How do you know they’re tall? Does it say tall queen in their bio?”
We never get to find out: Connor flips the screen of his phone over and tells us, “Time to go. We have a call in five.”
Class is dismissed.
—
What was once a bank of four desks is now a bank of five.
Martin Short and Curly John take their places at the same desks I saw them at last week.
Big Red moves to the head of the table, and Connor takes the seat closest to him, which means…
I’m sitting beside Connor. Great. Perfect. Loving it already.
His desk, if it’s possible, is even more of a catastrophe than the last time I saw it. The mountain of paper has doubled. I assume this is because he emptied the entire contents of his drawers to clear them out for me, and hasn’t found a new home for all of it yet.
“So we’ve got this call,” he says, trailing off as he searches under a pile of paper, fishing out his headphones. “Hopefully won’t be too long. Then you and I can catch up about the dashboard.”