Page 31 of Written By a Woman

“That’s fine,” I shrugged. We were only interviewing three, now four, people. At this point, I felt like these were just interviews to make sure these people were worth interviewing with Nikhil himself. That their resumes weren’t just complete lies, and that they responded to meeting requests. That’s where the bar was, apparently.

Truth be told, I thought it would be better to have someone from engineering here to help guide Jacqueline and me since neither of us coded or knew the languages the company used to develop software. However, I was excellent at picking up vibes and figured I could spot a liar easily enough.

Jacqueline tapped on her iPad, a small frown on her face as she thought about what she was reading. I felt my phone vibrate again, so I pulled it out and saw another message from Mary.

It was an image.

I lowered the brightness on my phone and held the phone closer to my chest. Mary had sent me some not-safe-for-work content before, usually some funny thirst trap or a funny meme. I had no idea what to expect, so better safe than sorry.

When I opened the image, I had to focus my eyes on it intently, because I couldn’t wrap my head around what I was seeing.

It was an image of the resort Mary and the others were staying at. It looked like everyone was poolside, Mary’s feet were at the bottom of the picture, propped up on a side table. Nikhil sat on the foot of one lounge chair, his elbows on his knees as he slouched with his head turned to talk to Zaid.

Zaid was shirtless and in short bright blue swim trunks.

I could feel the saliva start filling my mouth, and I internally chided myself for being a hussy—but first, I scanned every detail of the image Mary sent me.

Zaid had his hands behind his head, dark hair dusted his armpits and chest, and his biceps popped a little with the relaxed posture. He wasn’t flexing, but his stomach was still flat with little dips where defined abdomen muscles showed themselves. His ankles were crossed, resting behind Nikhil based on the side view I had.

My phone buzzed with another text.

Mary: Did you know the CTO was hiding all that?

I gulped because frankly, I suspected.

Because I was a pervert.

Another text from Mary came in.

Mary: As someone who is a big fan of titties, I am a girls-girl first, so I figured I would share the view with one of my straight friends who would appreciate it.

I sent back a wide-eyed emoji, as well as a hot emoji and a melting emoji with the words:

Me: You’re doing the Lord’s work, Mary.

Mary: Just spreading the good word.

She replied with a thumbs-up emoji.

“They’re here?” I heard Jacqueline speak, making me jump and quickly exit out of the chat thread before pocketing my device again. My heart was racing, as if I was busted, but when I glanced over at Jacqueline, she had her phone on speaker and was talking to someone.

“Yeah, she just logged in,” the voice on Jacqueline’s phone said.

“I’ll set us up.” Jacqueline nodded before ending the call, “Let’s get the show on the road.”

The brunette woman who showed up on the screen in front of our table was about my age, with a bright smile and friendly demeanor. She was surprised to see women in the interview, which made my heart break a little bit at her immediate visible relaxation.

She was friendly. The vibes were looking good with her, so I let Jacqueline ask most of the questions to determine her knowledge of the field. All her answers sounded like complete nonsense to me, which was probably a good indicator to prove that she knew the languages the company used well enough.

The next interviewee was a man, who was smaller in build and unprepared to talk to a woman in an interview. Though he seemed knowledgeable, it was his vague comment about sending the pretty girls in to scope out the candidates first that gave me the ick.

Even Jacqueline visibly frowned at him.

Next.

The third was also a man, who was friendly and said nothing weird about men or women. He was professional and spoke about coding and development and other stuff I had no knowledge of. He seemed just as qualified as the first interviewee, which…

“So, we’re going with Alice, right?” I whispered to Jacqueline after the guy logged off, even though we were the only two in the conference room.

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