2
JESSICA
Being a temp was not as glorious as I'd expected.
"Jessica, where's that software inventory?" Mrs. Arnold called across the office. "I told you I needed it for my 10:00am meeting!"
Okay, so it wasn't glorious at all. But I hadn't expected it to be this shitty.
"I thought I sent it out," I mumbled, hastily alt-tabbing across my computer screen. I stopped when Outlook popped up. "Yeah, here it is. Sent 45 minutes ago."
"Well I didn't get it, Jessica," Mrs. Arnold said, growing impatient. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her rise from her desk and stride over here. "Don't blame technology for your own fuck-ups."
I pulled my metal hair clip from the band of my Apple Watch and twirled it in my fingers, a nervous tick I'd had since I was a teenager. "You're right, I'm sorry. I'll send it again."
She stopped behind me and crossed her arms. I could practically feel the burn of her gaze over my shoulder as she watched me open a new email, attach the software report, and hit send.
"If you had done that the first time I would have gotten it," she muttered.
I did send it that way the first time, you blind fucking witch of a woman. Ohh, it would have felt so good to say that right then. But the feeling of having a job, no matter how shitty, felt better than the fleeting satisfaction of telling her off, so what came out of my mouth instead was, "You're right, Mrs. Arnold."
"If anyone needs me, I'll be in that Asset Management meeting. The one you've made me late for."
She strode from the room with her laptop.
Still twirling my metal hair clip, I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, savoring the silence.
The temp job was only scheduled to last another week, but I still had high hopes that it would turn into a part-time, or even full-time position. That didn't seem likely, based on how my boss acted, but I clung to the irrational hope nonetheless.
This was the first real job I'd had as a temp since graduating. Two contracts as a secretary, and one as a data entry drone, and then this. Systems Administrator, running real-time software and hardware reports against the company's database. Infinitely more satisfying, Mrs. Arnold aside.
But the server-client system they used was a mess when I arrived, a chaotic jumble of folders and sub-folders and sub-sub-folders. It'd taken me a full week just to figure out the data schema, and I'd been banging my head against the wall ever since. Whoever I was temporarily replacing was a huge dick.
It didn't help that Mrs. Arnold kept interrupting me every ten minutes with some new, menial request. It was tough to get into a groove in SQL when you kept getting distracted.
So I savored the solid hour of time while she was in her meeting. Slipping the hair clip back into my watch band, I created three new reports that had sat on the top of my to-do list for too long, and then created email subscriptions off those that would go out once a week. With that finally done, I went in and begun cleaning up some of the computer collections, sorting them by location and software type and other categories that would be useful later.
Hopefully useful to me, if I somehow turned this into a full-time gig.
Mrs. Anderson didn't return from her meeting, which meant she'd gone straight to lunch. And feeling extra motivated by the solitude, I decided to skip my own lunch to get more work done.
I was not going back to the temp agency after this. I was too smart, too hard of a worker. Especially compared to the other temps who worked there. Most of them only had administrative experience: glorified secretaries, men and women who thought the real world boiled down to sending emails, scheduling meetings, and taking notes. I wanted to do real work.
My cell phone flashed on my desk with a text message. Careful not to look at it, I flipped it over so the screen was face down. I couldn't deal with him right now.
I pulled up Mrs. Arnold's calendar and looked up her later meetings. A 3:30 with the head of the I.T. Security department, probably to go over the compliance numbers for the most recent Anti-virus upgrade. After that she had a meeting with Legal, which would be about the new Exchange Mail data retention policy. I pulled up my SQL code and proactively began running the reports I knew she'd need for those meetings.
If she was going to treat me like shit, I was going to kill her with kindness. Even if it killed me in the process.
I was halfway done when my desk phone rang. It was Mrs. Anderson.
"I was just--" I began, but she cut me off.
"Why aren't you at the airport?"
I blinked. "The what?"
"You were supposed to be at the airport ten minutes ago!"
I quickly opened my calendar. What the fuck was she talking about?
"Ethan's flight comes in at 12:30," Mrs. Arnold explained, sounding annoyed at needing to. "Didn't you get the email I sent?"
Don't blame technology for your own fuck-ups, I wanted to spit out, but with a saint's worth of restraint I stopped myself.
"I must have missed it. Ethan who? And why isn't a car picking him up?"
"Because it's silly to send a car when we can send you," she said. "Ethan Masterson. His office is down the hall." And without another word, she hung up.
I stared at my screen, proactive reports only half completed.
I didn't know Ethan Masterson, much less anything about his flight, and I sure as hell didn't want to call her back to ask her. I pulled up his calendar, but nothing was noted there. I did a search for his name in my inbox, but that gave me too much info: he was CC'd on most of the emails I had. Not to mention I only had ten days worth. His office had been dark since I'd been here.
Eventually I called our Travel department and found his flight info that way. And sure enough, he'd landed ten minutes ago.
Great. Another person to disappoint today.
I grabbed my keys, cursed to myself, and ran out the door.
*
I was thirty minutes late by the time I pulled up to C Terminal at DFW Airport.
I'd realized too late that I had no idea what this guy looked like. He could be my age, or he could be an octogenarian, though the latter seemed unlikely since he worked in the I.T. Department. So what did I end up doing?
"Ethan?" I asked a balding man who walked the window of my car. He looked at me like I was crazy. "Hey--are you Ethan?" I asked the next guy--who ended up being an acne-faced teenager, once he got close enough for me to see.
Not wanting to make that mistake again, I left the car running and got out.
For the next five minutes, I was the crazy lady accosting every man who walked by. The airport cop monitoring traffic even came over to make sure I wasn't legitimately crazy, but she gave me a sympathetic look when I told her what I was trying to do. I found two Ethans, both of whom looked shocked that I magically knew their name, but neither were the one I wanted. I twirled my hair clip nervously, not wanting to return to Mrs. Anderson empty handed. That was a hole I didn't think I could dig out of.
I'd almost given up entirely when I found him.
"Ethan?"
The guy exiting the terminal wore khaki shorts and a tight-fitting T-shirt over a broad chest. "Yes?" he said, blinking in surprise.
"Ethan Masterson?"
"Also yes."
"Oh thank God." I almost hugged him I was so relieved. "I'm from the office. Mrs. Arnold sent me to pick you up."
A funny smile crept onto his face, and he gazed at me with eyes so green it was like they were neon signs. "She too cheap to pay for a car?"
"How'd you guess?"
We hopped back in my car and left the terminal. I looked sideways at him as I exited onto the freeway; he was gorgeous, especially the way he filled out that shirt with muscle, but his eyes were bloodshot and he looked like he couldn't breathe out of his nose.
"You sick or something?"
He waved a hand. "Just hungover."
"You look worse than hungover. You sure you're not gunna give me the Spanish flu? I can take you home instead of the office."
"Thanks for your concern."
I eyed his sandals. "You can't go into work dressed like that."
He shook his head and said, "I've got a change of clothes in my office. And I've got too much shit to do when I get there. Lots of catching up."
"Yeah, that place is a mess right now. It doesn't help that Mrs. Arnold makes every inconvenience out to be the end of the world."
He snorted in agreement. "I got an email from her when I landed. The ditsy temp they sent fucked up all my database schema while I was gone. It'll probably be days before I have it all back to normal."
I felt a pang of surprise, then rage. "Wait, you're Ethan? Login account GID0224?"
"In the sunburned flesh."
It was him. He was the reason I'd struggled adjusting to the department: his stupid, shitty organization in the database.
I drove for a few minutes, and then couldn't hold back any longer.
"Maybe the database was fucked up before, and now that the collection boundaries are all configured to proper Microsoft standards everything will run smoother."
He gave a start, slowly turning his head toward me. "We don't use proper Microsoft standards for boundary discovery because we have more than 20,000 clients in our environment. It just makes everything crash. At least, until we upgrade to the newest version of System Center."
My face must have gone white as a ghost, because he suddenly smacked himself.
"You're the temp we brought in while I was gone, aren't you? Shit. I called you ditsy, didn't I? Shit. Shit."
"I'm Jessica, yes. And it's fine," I said curtly. "Ditsy was probably Mrs. Arnold's description."
"Actually, it was!" he seized on the excuse. "But seriously. Did you really redo the entire database schema?"
I stared straight ahead, and then said in a small voice, "Maybe."
"Whelp. I know what I'm doing today. And tonight. And tomorrow."
I wanted to apologize, but the weight in my chest wouldn't let me.