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"Shh. I told you, no apologies. Do you want me to pick you up in the morning?"
He guessed her answer from the horrified look on her face, but it still made him grin when she spewed it out. "God, no! I mean, th-thank you for the offer, but… I already feel kind of helpless, ya know? Tomorrow, I'll be back to normal. Fingers crossed."
What? Noah's brow furrowed. "Seriously, will you be okay by tomorrow morning?"
Her shoulders fell. "Yes. I just need a good night's sleep. I tried to make a joke, but I see it fell flat. Sor?—"
"Do not say you're sorry!"
"Okay, okay! Thanks, Noah. The gate should open automatically for you." She pointed to the closed exit gate.
"Give me your phone. I'm going to put my number in it, so you can call me." He held his hand out, waiting for her phone.
She went still. "Um, I already have your number."
"You do?" His brows shot up. He blinked, caught off guard. His heart gave an extra thump.
Red creeped up her face. "Yeah, I got the core team's numbers from the directory when we first started working together. You know, just in case." She ducked her head and her hair fell forward, hiding her face.
Noah stared a beat longer than he should have, a slow smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. Just in case, huh?
Though hidden by her hair, he heard the yawn that escaped her. Right. She was exhausted. "Okay. So now you can call me tomorrow morning if you need a ride, yes?" When she didn't answer, he reached over and gently brushed her hair aside, making eye contact. "Claire? You'll call me if you need me, yes?"
"Yes," she murmured, her voice barely above a whisper. As she reached for the car door, her jaw cracked open in another long, unrestrained yawn. She moved slowly, like every motion took effort. "Thank you for the ride," she added, blinking heavily. "Good night."
"Good night. Get some sleep and I'll see you tomorrow." He backed out and waited for the gate to open. He watched her walk into the building in his rearview mirror, then turned onto the street and headed home. Driving away took everything he had. He wanted to walk her up to make sure she got home safely, but the independent jut to her chin told him she needed space.
Claire kept waiting for the boot to kick. Wait, that wasn't right. What's the saying? She searched her brain. Waiting for the shoe to drop. That's it. Geez, the word-fishing showed up in strange ways.
She'd expected Noah to mention the seizure or remark about driving her home in the weekly meeting yesterday, but so far? Nothing. Thinking he'd surely said something to the team at their usual poker night, she'd been on pins and needles all week waiting for Larry to say something snarky about it, but it never came. And today was the last workday before she and Noah left for England next week. She'd made it to Friday, and no one had mentioned it. Something unfurled in her belly at the realization that he'd kept the incident between them. She really needed to stop comparing him to The Jerkwad.
Today, she sat in the war room with the other developers. Now that the site codes were figured out, the developers were reviewing both the planned modifications, and those already completed. Nobody wanted a bug based on out-of-date specs. Claire was tickled because they were actually including her as a bona fide developer. The projector displayed Rick's spreadsheet on the screen and everyone followed along as he assigned names to items on the list.
"Okay, can I just say I love this report code solution?" Srini asked, typing away at his keyboard. He stopped and squinted at the screen before continuing.
"Yeah, far easier to use native functionality than try to reinvent the wheel," Delbert agreed. "Hours of time saved. My aching fingers thank you, Claire." He held his hands up and wiggled his fingers.
Claire giggled. "I hadn't realized you were so dramatic, Delbert."
Srini snorted. Rick added more names to the assigned column on the list. She noticed the guys typically worked in distinct areas and asked Rick about it.
"Yeah, we've all kind of settled into our lanes over time. Del and I have bounced around most of the modules, and Srini's been getting pulled into payroll more and more—despite his preference not to be the payroll expert."
"Humph," Delbert huffed, then grinned. "Better him than me."
"I hate payroll. It's so complicated and always changing. And it varies from state to state," Srini griped.
"Uh-huh. Keep in mind," Rick said, without looking up from his computer, "things which change frequently mean job security in the consulting world."
The group laughed and Claire wondered how many times they'd sat together like this over the years, giving each other grief while working on a client's system.
"Claire," Rick continued, "are you comfortable enough with our code-commit-push process to tackle some of the bigger modules?"
She nodded. "Yep. I appreciate you letting me familiarize myself over the last month with the smaller coding tasks while I learned your process. Where I was before, they actually held formal training on how to check out, mark up, etcetera, to make sure we all did it the same way."
"Yeah, I'm not worried about Claire commenting properly. Her attention to detail has already come to light. I'm hoping she can teach Srini what a freaking REM statement is." Delbert picked up a rubber ball he'd been playing with earlier and threw it across the table at Srini.
Claire laughed. She'd seen Srini's code and Delbert was right. Most coders used REM statements to explain their code and Srini's was noticeably lacking in documentation.
