Chapter 5
BENJI
My heart hadn’t stopped pounding. In fact, when Day smiled back at me, I thought the damn thing was going to tear a hole through my chest and plaster itself to his face.
I knew, I just knew that it wasn’t because I was in the middle of a critical job interview, and it wasn’t because I was meeting the great and influential Anson Day.
It was a reaction to the man himself. The man, not the genius or the media figure.
Not the guy who was worth millions (or was it billions?), and not the man who dominated the field I longed to call my own.
No, my heart was reacting to the ponytail and the sparkling eyes that had finally looked directly into mine for more than a second at a time.
It was the movement of his arms where they were exposed below his bunched-up sleeves and the awkward mannerisms he used to welcome and direct me to the ostentatious conference room chairs.
The facts that he was a man my father’s age, that I hoped he would become my boss, and that he was the famous founder of New Day Tech were meaningless.
Before me was a man to whom I was drawn.
I took a subtle, centering breath and thought about that twelve-year-old boy and the picture he had memorized.
I convinced myself that my reaction had to be tied to those memories.
It couldn’t be real. It had to be idol worship, no matter that the man in that conference room was so far removed from the man in the photo, and never mind that he smelled really, really good.
I tried to convince myself of that as Anson Day and I both took a seat in comfortable leather office chairs.
I had an interview to get through, after all.
There was a folder on the table with my name on it.
I could feel a smirk on my lips as I remembered reading that New Day strived to be a paperless environment.
I had done my homework on the company before my interview.
I was surprised that there was a paper folder on the glossy table and not a tablet or a laptop.
I guess as the boss, Anson Day could get away with using paper if he wanted.
Day opened the folder, and I could see the summary of my dissertation with notes etched all over it.
I knew I should be focused on the man himself, but my eyes squinted, and I worked to read those handwritten calculations.
I couldn’t even be subtle about it. I was too curious about what had been written and by whom.
The room was silent, and I looked up to find Day watching me trying to decipher the scribbles on the page. Oops. He’d definitely caught me. And yet he didn’t react to it or comment, other than to point at the sheet. My work and someone’s scribbles (could they be his?) shared the page.
“This is impressive work, Mr. Warren.” He tapped the paper and continued to stare at me intently.
It was like those eyes were a tractor beam, and I was a rebel spaceship, being sucked right in.
I’d leveled up from feeling like my heart was ready to explode to feeling like my whole body would detonate if he didn’t look away.
But I was able to separate my feelings. I may have been drawn to the man, but part of me was also excited that the great Anson Day had complimented my work. That was the important part.
“Hearing you say so is a huge honor, sir. I know it’s a work in progress, but I feel like the solution is within my grasp.
I’m confident that New Day is the right place for me to figure it out.
You’ve done remarkable things here, sir, and I’m humbled to think my work could be a part of it.
But a new patent on an exoskeleton. It would take all of the amazing work you’re doing here and just”—I was getting excited, like I always did when I talked about my work, my hands waving around, ending with one rising up with each word to punctuate my final thought—“take it to another level.”
Then I remembered that I was speaking to Anson Day and not my dad or some professor or an HR executive. Who was I to tell him I thought my work could be significant? I took another calming breath and tucked my hands under my thighs, hoping more than believing I was being subtle.
“I mean, I think my work is in line with the amazing things you’re doing here.
” Shit, had I already said amazing? “What you’re doing with precision robotic surgery.
It’s incredible, sir. I’ve wanted to work in medical technology since …
well, for a long time.” All of a sudden, those blue eyes were unwavering, taking me in.
He was quiet and attentive, and I worried that I’d overplayed my enthusiasm.
I paused and took another deep breath, hoping it didn’t sound too much like a nervous sigh.
His eyes remained locked with mine, but he didn’t respond.
The silence lingered, and I worked to come up with something else to say.
My brain rifled through all the points I had rehearsed about his company and how confident I was that I would fit in, about him and his influence on me, hell, I’d even thought about mentioning my father.
Of course, I’d never imagined I’d be saying any of those things directly to Anson Day as part of my interview.
It would have helped if he’d asked me an actual question.
The quiet was going on too long, I knew it. My chest continued to battle against me, and I sat up taller in my seat, my hands gliding up and down the smooth material of the suit pants I had bought for the occasion. I opened my mouth to talk, but Day beat me to it.
He closed the folder, and with his fingertips, spun it until it faced me, opening it again and pointing at one of the sketches I had included.
Only he was looking at me as he made the move as if he’d studied the pages within the folder and didn’t need to look directly at them to know what he was pointing at.
“You’ve solved the range of mobility issue nicely here.
I’ve been working on that for months and wouldn’t have thought of this.
” He patted his chest before standing up abruptly and looking around while reaching in his pants pocket, coming up empty.
He continued to look around the room, grabbing the tablet on the counter behind him and tapping it awake as he dropped to the chair and fluidly glided it toward me in one smooth move.
“But I think we can tighten it up even more. Your figures are close but …”
Any shock I felt at his excitement over my work and his intimate knowledge of it left me as I perused a drawing on the tablet that was similar to mine but not exactly the same.
“Something’s missing,” we said simultaneously. Any beatings of my heart or zings that traveled through my body were purely professional excitement, surely.
I rolled my chair around until I was hugging the rounded corner of the conference table. He slid his chair closer to mine, and we hovered over the tablet. My hand reached out to the screen, but I retracted it quickly. Sheepishly, I asked, “May I?”
His smile was small, but it crinkled his eyes as they shone at me like two Caribbean pools, not that I’d ever been to the Caribbean. And yet that description popped into my head. I’d never wanted to go swimming more.
“Please,” he enthused, and I scrolled through images and formulas for a few minutes, sensing Day watching me.
I mimicked a move he had made, tapping the empty pocket of my jacket and feeling around my pants pocket.
Day understood, jumped up, and rummaged through the small ornate cabinet in the back of the room.
He returned with a sleek pencil holder. I consecutively pulled out three pencils, settling on the third.
Like he understood what I was doing, he jumped to the cabinet again, returning with an electric pencil sharpener.
He sharpened one of the rejected pencils and held it up to me to inspect.
I nodded and took it from him, our fingers brushing before he let go.
And why was that subtle touch of our hands even more powerful than the handshake had been?
It was just a pencil. One perfectly sharpened pencil.
Ignoring the sparks that I just knew I had to be imagining, I dragged the folder in front of me and slapped it closed.
“If we just …” I began as I pulled elements from his design and mine to redraw the project on the cream surface of the folder.
I had no idea how long we’d been at it, sketching on the paper and on the tablet, calculating and recalculating.
At some point, he’d yanked the pencil from my hand, the other two left ignored on the table, and spun the folder in his direction.
He may have been the one stringing the numbers neatly below my drawing, but we were talking through the calculations together.
“That’s it!” I said as he finalized a formula.
His “finally” overlapped my exclamation.
Our heads snapped up, our focus pulled away from the work and toward each other. The room suddenly lacked noise, no more calculations being bandied about, no more measurements debated.
We smiled, our eyes locked. His really were a remarkable shade of blue.
News clippings and photos on the internet did not do them justice.
I almost opened my mouth to tell him but pulled my lips in instead to stop the words from tumbling out.
I tried to cover the awkward move with another crooked smile as we simply stared at each other.
It felt like something danced between us.