CHAPTER FIVE
Seventeen hours. That’s how long I’d been staring at this damn computer screen. My ass was numb, my eyes burned, begging me to take my contacts out, my stomach was screaming at me to eat something, and my blood was pumping so much caffeine I might as well have inserted an IV directly into the vein. I stood and stretched. My weary sigh was the only sound this hour of the night besides the hum of the server in the next room.
Every other employee had gone home to live their lives and be with their families hours ago. I was the single putz who remained. JT had gone home at ten, claiming his mom needed help. It was bullshit, and he was probably somewhere getting laid right now, but I couldn’t hold it against him. At this point—as pathetic as it was—I was living vicariously through him and I knew he’d share all the details with me tomorrow. At least one of us was getting some.
But the code was done, and, knock-on-wood, it was working. It was one in the morning, and I wanted nothing more than to hit the Wendy’s late-night drive through and crash on the couch to my Tivo’ed episodes of Tosh.O and pass out.
I walked a few steps toward the bathroom to take a piss, shocked by how heavy my body felt. Practice in the morning was going to be brutal. Being sedentary for so long killed me, and I had a crew competition in a few weeks that, at this rate, I’d never be ready for.
After returning to my desk, I was ready to call it a night and power everything down when I saw the little envelope icon on the bottom right of my screen. I’d neglected to check my emails for most of the day, wrapped up and absorbed in coding. I knew I needed to at least check them now and make sure there was nothing that needed my immediate attention tonight.
Scanning through the barrage that could all wait until tomorrow, I noticed I had five messages from Connie, each with a title more frantic than the last.
“New employee setup?”
“Have you completed this yet?”
“Why isn’t the NE SU done yet?”
“Grant–are you ignoring me?”
“We need to talk.”
Well, f*ck. I’d been so absorbed in my project that I’d totally forgotten about the setup I promised Connie I’d do. I scrubbed the back of my neck with my hand to keep from punching the screen. This was ridiculous. There were a half-dozen other people working in the department who could have taken the ten minutes necessary to do the setup, all of whom worked below me. I went to Carnegie Mellon University, graduated with honors, practically ran this division, and my coding kept these systems operational. Why the f*ck was Connie fixated on me doing the setup when anyone else easily could have? I practically ran the department while most of the other a*sholes I worked with probably didn’t do shit today, other than sneaking around the content blocker to check their Facebook pages or watch porn on their iPads. I could hear my teeth grinding, something I only did when really pissed, and tried to take a breath to calm myself.
This was bullshit. I hadn’t even met this girl yet, and already she was on my bad side. She got Mommy to call in favors ‘cause she couldn’t get a job on her own, and now Connie expected me to jump to her aid the second she waltzed through the doors? Oh, hell no. This spoiled little sorority bitch could wait her god-damned turn like everyone else at this company.
Kicking out my chair, I heard it crash into the desk behind me as I hit reply to the last message Connie sent me. She may have been the senior administrative assistant, but she wasn’t my boss, and I wasn’t going to take shit from her for doing what I was actually supposed to be doing today.
After typing out a rant, I paced the room for five minutes trying to calm down, and then read over it again before hitting send. Shit. Now I was the a*shole. I deleted everything and went for simple and succinct.
“Another project took priority. Will be in late tomorrow, but will do the set up first thing when I get in. –G”
I hit send and powered down before gathering my keys and walking out, mindful to set the alarm before I went. All during my drive home, and even as I ate my spicy chicken sandwich and slurped down my Frostie while laughing along with the ridiculous videos Tosh presented, my mind wouldn’t relax. I couldn’t stop thinking about this yet-to-be-seen girl who had charmed Connie, seduced JT, and made me so pissed I began grinding my teeth again after five years with a mouth guard to stop the bad habit from my childhood. She was under my skin, and not in a good way.
Well, one thing was for sure: I wouldn’t fall into the same trap as everyone else. This girl was nothing but trouble.