Chapter Twenty-One
Twenty-One
By the time Friday rolls around, I’m nervous, but I’m ready.
True to his word, Connor helped me plan the whole weekend down to the last detail, never once teasing me about the intensity with which I selected every bar and restaurant, or why I believe my sister’s entire future hinges on how much fun is had this weekend.
Tonight I will begin Operation Liberate Shannon. But first, I have to get through the workday.
Things get off to a shaky start. Connor is summoned to Brad’s side first thing, Ben joins him not long after and they’re gone for hours, only increasing my unease.
It feels like there’s something going on that they’re not telling me, a feeling that grows when I ask Connor how it went and all he manages to say is yeah, good.
While Ben and Connor are busy with their mysterious backroom dealings, Martin, John, and I wade through the backlog of dashboard support requests, which come at us thick and fast now that we’ve succeeded in getting more people to use it.
It’s amid these stirring activities that an email comes in letting me know I have a visitor waiting downstairs. This is unexpected; I never have visitors.
I consider the possibilities as the elevator glides downstairs and decide that my mystery visitor is most likely to be my old teammate Leon, who emailed last week letting me know he’d found a new job and wondering if his desk cactus had survived.
His new office was also based somewhere in FiDi, and I promised we’d meet for lunch one day soon to return the precious cargo back to him.
I’ve taken less than six steps before I realize how far off the mark I was—I’m just rounding the security gates when I catch a glimpse of my sister sitting on a leather bench by the window, scrolling on her phone, when she wasn’t supposed to arrive in New York for another four hours.
I rush toward her, and she glances up when I approach, popping up and sliding her phone into her pocket.
She looks as pristine as always, though not dolled up today like Real Estate Barbie.
She’s in jeans (surprising) and a camel-colored trench coat, rolled up to the elbows so she can showcase her many bracelets.
Though hers are about four times the price of the bangles Mom wears, the effect is the same.
I wonder if I could point this out to her or if it would be considered an act of war.
We embrace, and I search her face when I pull back, looking for signs of distress.
“Is everything OK?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I just—what are you doing here?”
“Visiting you for the weekend, remember? You didn’t hit your head or anything, did you?”
Her exaggerated concern draws a small smile from me, but I won’t be deterred. “No, I mean, what are you doing here, at my office? Your plane hasn’t even taken off yet.”
She opens her mouth to reply, when I see an arm snake around her shoulder. Daniel.
“What is he doing here?” My voice drips with venom.
“Hello to you too, Annie.”
If I don’t look directly at him, maybe he’ll disappear. I keep my focus firmly on Shannon, hoping she’ll have some reasonable explanation for all this.
“Well,” Shannon begins.
Dan interjects. “We thought we’d make a weekend of it.”
“We already were making a weekend of it,” I reply. “Shannon and me.”
“Dan wanted to come and see the city too,” Shannon says. “He’ll make himself scarce tomorrow when we’re dress shopping. It’s no big deal.”
No big deal to you! I want to scream. I can’t believe she’s falling for this crap.
“You should have told me,” I say, ready for mutiny. “Sam won’t want more people in the apartment.”
“I know,” she says, contrite. “Don’t worry. We got a hotel.”
The mention of a hotel room irritates me further. It suggests a level of premeditation I don’t care for.
“Where are your bags?”
“In our room. We got here yesterday.”
Yesterday. I cast a wounded look at my sister who drops her gaze the second our eyes lock, guiltily looking at her feet.
“Wow. Thanks for telling me.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” Shannon says. I can’t tell whether she truly means this or it’s a flimsy justification she’s using to make this all seem OK. “We got in really late last night.”
“But—what about the reward flight?”
“I’ll pay you back, OK!” she says, an edge in her voice, like I’m giving her shit here for absolutely no reason.
I shake my head to clear the thought.
“Where are you staying?”
“Dumbo.”
“But I live in Manhattan.”
Dan just shrugs. “I’m sure this place has Ubers.”
My nostrils flare. If I shoved him hard enough, I wonder if I could send him flying back through the revolving door.
“Looks like you’ve got it all figured out,” I say flatly. “But I still don’t understand. What are you doing here?”
“I was hoping you could give us a tour of the office,” Shannon says. “I really want to see where you work.”
I did offer this to her when we were first planning the weekend. I childishly thought it would be nice to show my big sister what I do all day. But I will take Dan upstairs over my dead body.
“We’re not really supposed to bring people up during working hours.”
“I thought you were kind of a big deal around here, Annie,” Dan almost sneers. “You can’t make a special exception for family?”
“Oh, I can make an exception for family. But you’ll have to wait downstairs.”
Dan is winding up for some blistering comeback, but Shannon halts him with a squeeze of his arm.
“Never mind,” she says. “We don’t want to hassle you. I thought it would be a fun surprise. We’ll go, and meet you after work instead.”
It’s been two minutes and the weekend with my sister has already gone pear-shaped. I could howl at the injustice of this. But sending them away will make things even worse. I need a new plan. And fast.
“It’s fine,” I say through gritted teeth. “You’re here now. Let me show you around.”
—
We ride the elevator up to the twenty-fourth floor in near silence. Shannon’s only comment is that we’re so high she felt her ears pop.
I give her a forced smile but say nothing. Beside her, Dan is radiating smugness. He’s ruined my weekend, and he knows it. That’s exactly why he’s here.
I realize, belatedly, that I should have taken them straight up to the canteen and left them there, rather than walk them through the office, but it’s too late now. My only instinct is to get to Connor. He’ll fix it. Somehow.
“Just be quiet,” I tell them, gesturing at them to follow. “People are working.”
Dan rolls his eyes. “They do have offices back in Canada, you know.”
My fingers curl into a fist.
I lead them toward my desk. Connor’s head pops up as soon as I’m in his eyeline.
I telegraph a silent plea for help. If there was ever a moment for him to read my mind, now would be it.
“What’s up?” he says, his focus darting between me and the two mysterious strangers behind me. “I was wondering where you’d snuck off to.”
“I had a visitor,” I tell him, my eyes bugging out to try and make him understand the enemy is among us. He stands, pushing back from his chair.
“Connor, this is my sister, Shannon. Shannon, this is Connor,” I hesitate, and then add, “my boss.”
A shadow crosses his face, there and then gone again. He turns, devoting himself to Shannon. I watch as the two of them briefly exchange pleasantries, and I’m reminded once again of his good manners—he gave me just the same smile the first time I met him.
He casts a glance at Dan, then looks back at me, waiting.
“That’s Dan.”
His eyes widen ever so slightly, but he recovers immediately, shaking Dan’s hand with a nice to meet you, man, which I sincerely hope he does not mean.
“They came early to surprise me,” I say to Connor. “Isn’t that fun?”
“So fun,” he rallies back, his eyes full of mirth. “You must be over the moon.”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
“We wanted to see where Annie worked,” Shannon says. I get the impression she’s trying to save face.
“Annie’s always bragging about how cool her job is,” Dan adds, with the obvious intention of embarrassing me. “So far this place just seems like an office, though.”
“Well then,” Connor says, swiping his keycard off his desk. “We better give you the grand tour.”
—
When Connor said grand tour, he meant it.
He leads Dan and Shannon around every floor, introducing them to department heads, showing them inside all our cool conference rooms, and even emptying out a merch closet that before this afternoon I didn’t know existed.
Shannon and Dan are now the happy owners of a Taskio-branded pen, notebook, T-shirt, beanie, umbrella, and USB stick.
There were also Taskio tote bags in the supply closet—which would have been useful to help them lug around all this crap—but Connor, surprisingly, didn’t offer those. It is, in fact, the only branded item in the whole room that he didn’t gift to them.
Prior to this, I thought the overzealous tour was a reflection of his commitment to Taskio, but I gradually realize that Connor is demonstrating commitment to me.
Shannon and Dan have long since lost interest, if they were ever even interested in the first place, and it dawns on me that Connor knows it.
This tour isn’t a perk. It’s a punishment.
He’s making Daniel eat his words. The gleam in his eye when our gazes connect confirms it.
—
“Well, that’s pretty much everything,” Connor says after a lap of the engineering department. “Unless you want to see the server room?”
“That’s OK,” Shannon cuts in hastily. “We’ve taken up so much of your time already.”
“In that case, follow me. We’ve saved the best for last.”
One short elevator ride later, Shannon and Dan are staring out over the enormous cafeteria and the panoramic views beyond.
“Wow,” she breathes, for once not faking her enthusiasm. Even Dan looks impressed.
“And all this is just for Taskio?”
“Yep,” I confirm. “Cool, eh? And everything is free. You can have whatever you want.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously. They’ll even make you that weird skinny foam thing you like.”