Page 127 of October
“No, but Molly and I want to,” she said. “I don’t want her getting into any trouble because we’re a couple. She’s in HR. India wasn’t.”
“Molly, you’ll have to get put on another team.”
“I know. That’s fine.”
“Can I say something not as HR for a second?”
“Sure, I guess,” Finley said.
“I can see it.” Stacey pointed between the two of them. “I can see this. You and India… Not so much, if I’m being honest. But this, I can see this. I’m happy for you two.” She dropped her pointing hand. “Okay. Now, I’m in HR again. You two really like to make my life difficult, don’t you?”
Finley and Molly both laughed a little.
“Well, all right. Let me get someone from legal in here to make sure that this is all good, and I’ll print the form for you to sign. There’s no rule against you dating. This is mainly to protect both of you and the company, but mostly the company, so keep that in mind before you sign anything. If this isn’t serious, it might not be worth it. I can still reassign Molly to partner with a different team just in case, but no one else needs to know.”
“It’s serious,” Molly replied.
Finley smiled over at her and said, “Definitely serious.”
???
“Okay. It’s all done,” Finley said and handed Molly the laptop.
“Why does it look completely different from how it did when you showed it to me the first time?”
“Itisdifferent,” Finley replied. “I may have added a lot more to it than I said I would, but now, it’s basically state of the art.”
“Finley, I don’t need this. You should keep it.”
“But I built it for you.”
“I wouldn’t even know how to use it.” Molly opened it. “Is it special or something?”
Finley smiled and ran a hand through Molly’s hair.
“I built it for you, so yeah, it’s pretty special.”
“What does it do that my work computer doesn’t?”
“Well, you might get mad at me…” Finley turned it on for her as they sat on her sofa and swallowed. “I had to call in a favor from Juliet, so now I owe Gwen tech support for her grooming business, but don’t be mad at her if this isn’t okay.”
“Ifwhatisn’t okay?”
“It’s a regular computer. I mean, I added a few things that’ll make it run faster, and there are a couple of programs on there that I thought you might like, but…” Finley faded when she saw the wallpaper appear.
“It’s my dad,” Molly said. “And me. You put a picture of us on here?”
“Yes, but I did a little more than that. I’ve been working on this whenever I could. I got Juliet to ask your mom for stuff, and she sent it to me, so here you go.” Finley clicked on a desktop folder. “I digitized all of your old family photos. Well, not all of them, probably, but most of them. The ones your mom sent me, at least. Luckily, cell phone cameras became a thing a while ago, but all your younger photos were still in photo albums. Your mom trusted me with them, and I sent them back already, but you now have all of the photos on your computer here.”
Molly looked over at her in shock.
“Mad?” Finley asked.
“What? How could I be mad about that? When? How? My God, Finley. You really did all that for me?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I know you’ve been struggling a bit, and I thought this might be a nice thing.”
“It’s more than a nice thing. Are you kidding?” Molly opened one of the folders and clicked on the first image. “I’m a baby here. I haven’t seen this in years.”
