Page 9 of Written By a Woman

“What are ya looking at?” Mary asked, leaning over more to look at my phone resting in my lap. I glanced down and saw the screen was black, so I just smiled and set it next to my keyboard.

“Just texting.” I sighed, resting my elbows on the desk, and setting my chin on my fists. I ended up blocking Mary and Jamie from my new account as soon as I made it, as a precaution. The platform had just asked me if I wished to sync my contacts with my friends list, to which I aggressively answeredno, and decided going the extra mile to block their accounts was worth it. I was just too embarrassed to admit that I love writing girly love stories in my spare time to someone as cool and kickass as Mary, and that my claim to fame involved readers loving a fictional man inspired by our superior.

“Ah, I, myself was just writing a long-ass message to Andres,” Mary matched my position by resting her chin on her fists, “But I decided I didn’t want to stare at screens anymore, so I came over and decided to harass the office manager with requests.”

I lifted an eyebrow at her, my lips twitching with the hint of a smile as I waited for whatever request she was about to pull out of her ass, “You don’t have a bug to fix or something?”

“I do,” Mary responded with an eye roll. She was a senior software engineer, the only woman engineer on the team, “But, I’m waiting for fucking Andres to finish troubleshooting his part before I can work on mine.”

I nodded.

I had little to no knowledge of how coding or troubleshooting worked, and whenever Mary or anyone at the company tried to explain the details of back-end coding to me, I could feel my eyeballs physically glaze over as they spoke. It was like speaking a different language. I tried to keep up, but I didn’t go to school for software engineering.

“Ah,” I nodded at her.

“Anyways, the snacks.”

“The snacks.”

“What if we got better ones?”

“Are you saying that the cheapest snacks that I could find online to stock the vending machines are not up to your standards?” I asked, knowing that she would prefer it if we had catered food every single day.

“Yes, you get it.” Mary nodded.

“I do, and yet,” I shrugged, “We have a budget. If you don’t like the snacks, feel free to bring your own.”

“It’s the least the company can do.”

I agreed with her. But I also didn’t care about this place because I wasn’t destined to stay here. It was unlikely for people our age to stay at one company long term anyway. Five years was generally the longest anyone was willing to stay at a company now because the only way to keep up with the cost of living in Orange County, California was to accept a new position elsewhere.

However, Sun Steer was breaking workplace stereotypes and norms by giving their employees fairly livable wages and providing significant benefits and bonuses. We were reaching the point, however, that they needed to do something again. Employees like Mary were starting to feel run down keeping up with all the demands people put on the software engineers, and usually, money was the only way to make an employee feel valued after putting in crazy overtime hours.

The elevators dinged. Loud voices and laughter echoed toward my desk as men started to waltz toward Mary and me.

“Oh, good, Nikhil is back.” Mary stood up from my desk and waited for her manager to approach us. Nikhil was one of the nicest managers at the company, in my personal opinion. He always smiled and said hi, and asked how I was doing with genuine interest. He did that with everyone. He never let his position or status make other employees feel like plebes for not being high up in rank.

Something upper management (I’m looking at you, Brandon) could learn to do.

It sounded like Nikhil had just finished chatting about the vacation he took with his wife over the summer, where they visited his side of the family in India, and finally turned to meet Mary’s eyes.

“Uh oh,” Nikhil spoke, smirking at the way Mary was drumming her fingers on my desk with obvious impatience, “At least let me get to my desk before you come at me, Mary.”

“But I’ve been waiting for you to tell Andres to hurry up!” Mary groaned, making Nikhil chuckle and shake his head.

Beside Nikhil, the two men he was speaking to watched the exchange with interest.

First was the CEO, Brandon Moore. The man who looked like every other man in his mid-thirties in Southern California. Tan, blonde, blue-eyed, obviously goes to the gym regularly. Unlike Nikhil, Brandon had no idea how to talk to lower-level employees. He kept his distance from people like Mary and me and preferred to have managers like Nikhil be a third party to filter communication. If Brandon ever needed something from me, he preferred to tell me via email. It was fine.

Then there was Zaid, barely towering over the two men, he stood just a step behind as he also watched Mary and Nikhil joke around.

I stared at him, waiting for him to make eye contact with me. I couldn’t help myself; he was justsopretty. I forced myself to at least scan the faces of everyone else who had approached Mary standing in front of my desk, before finally looking back at Zaid again at the same time his eyes landed on me.

And then he immediately looked away.

Like always.

I felt my lips twitch a little bit at how predictable his behavior was at this point.

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