Page 11 of The Authenticity Clause
Nine p.m.
The office, usually a symphony of quiet, productive hums, was utterly silent. The only sounds were the soft whir of the server room down the hall and the distant, muted siren song of Starling Grove settling into the night. Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, the city was a glittering tapestry of light against the deep indigo sky.
Inside, under the focused glow of their desk lamps, it was just Julian and Leo.
The Northwind deadline was a guillotine, set to drop in less than forty-eight hours. The client had requested a series of last-minute, and in Julian’s opinion, entirely unnecessary, revisions. It meant long hours, frayed nerves, and a disruption to the meticulously planned schedule that set Julian’s teeth on edge.
He stared at the lines of code on his screen, his mind a complex algorithm processing variables, functions, and potential points of failure. He was in his element, a world of logic and order where every problem had a solution, as long as you followed the process.
The anomaly was sitting three feet to his left.
Leo Hayes had been surprisingly, and unnervingly, competent for the past week. Since the disastrous client call, he had been a model employee. He was quiet, he was focused, and he asked intelligent (if occasionally bizarrely phrased) questions. He had even started producing rudimentary wireframes that, while artistically skewed, were at least recognizable as wireframes. Julian had found himself in the strange position of having nothing to criticize. It was unsettling.
A low growl from his stomach broke his concentration. He hadn’t eaten since lunch, a fact his body was now protesting with vigor. He glanced at the clock. 9:02 p.m. Unacceptable.
“We need to eat,” Julian stated, his voice sounding loud in the silence.
Leo looked up from his tablet, where he’d been sketching out interface ideas. His eyes were a little unfocused, a sign he’d been deep in a creative trance. “Yeah, I think my stomach is starting to digest itself. What are you feeling? Thai? Pizza? That weird all-night vegan burrito place?”
“Thai,” Julian said immediately. He had already calculated the nutritional value, sodium content, and proximity of the best Thai restaurant in the area. “There’s a place on Elm Street. I’ll order.”
He pulled up the restaurant’s app on his phone, his fingers already moving to his usual, highly specific order. It was a precise chemical equation designed for optimal late-night productivity.
“Let me guess,” Leo’s voice cut in, light and casual. Julian paused, his thumb hovering over the screen. “Pad Thai. No peanuts, because the texture is unpredictable. Extra lime on theside. Spice level… a three out of five. Enough to be interesting, not enough to be distracting.”
Julian’s hand froze. He slowly lifted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly. “How did you know that?”
Leo just shrugged, a small, easy smile playing on his lips. “You mentioned you disliked ‘textural inconsistencies’ in food during that debate about the new snack selection for the breakroom. And you always add a lime wedge to your water, so you clearly like citrus. The spice level was a bit of a guess, but you strike me as a man who appreciates controlled intensity.”
The analysis was so swift, so accurate, and so deeply personal that it felt like a violation. Julian’s food preferences were a carefully curated system. They were private data points. He felt a sudden, strange sense of exposure, as if Leo had just casually bypassed his firewall and read his source code.
“And to drink,” Leo continued, clearly enjoying himself, “a large black Americano, extra shot, from The Daily Grind. Not the place downstairs, because you once told Maya their beans were ‘aggressively acidic’.”
The silence that followed was profound. Julian stared at Leo, his mind, for once, completely blank. He had been observed. Catalogued. His habits, his preferences, his private little rituals—all noted and analyzed by the chaotic force sitting next to him.
It was an uncomfortable feeling. It was also, he was forced to admit, astonishingly impressive.
“Are you always this observant?” Julian asked, the question coming out before he could stop it. It was a genuine question, devoid of professional context.
Leo’s smile softened, losing some of its playful edge and becoming something quieter, more genuine. “It’s kind of mything. I’m an artist, remember? My job is to see the world. Not just the big picture, but the little details. The way someone’s eyes light up when they talk about something they love, or the way they arrange their pens on their desk when they’re stressed.” He flickered a knowing glance at Julian’s own perfectly aligned pens.
Julian instinctively moved a hand to cover them, then stopped himself, feeling ridiculous.
“That’s where the real stories are,” Leo finished, his voice soft. “In the details.”
Julian found himself looking at Leo, really looking at him, for the first time without the filter of professional judgment. The bright, almost obnoxious sweaters. The ridiculous fox mug. The constant, restless energy. He had always seen them as symptoms of a chaotic, unprofessional mind. But what if they weren’t? What if they were just… details? Part of a different kind of story?
“Is that why you became a designer?” Julian asked, the second personal question slipping out, much to his own surprise. He was deviating from the script, from the process. He was curious.
Leo’s expression shifted. A shadow, a flicker of something complex and guarded, passed over his features before being smoothed away. It was the first hint of dishonesty Julian had seen from him all night.
“Something like that,” Leo said, his voice a little too light. “I wanted to make things that made people feel something. Tell stories without words.” He gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “Turns out the world is more interested in telling stories with quantifiable engagement metrics.”
The answer was smooth, practiced. It was the answer of Leo Hayes, the Digital Experience Designer. It wasn’t, Juliansuspected, the answer of Leo Hayes, the artist. It was the first note of dissonance in their quiet, shared space.
Still, there was a kernel of truth in it, a wistfulness that felt real. It hinted at a passion that went deeper than bluffing his way through a client call. It was a crack in the facade, a glimpse of the man behind the carefully constructed, charmingly chaotic persona.
“There is an art to data,” Julian found himself saying, the words surprising even himself. “There’s a story in the numbers, if you know how to read them.”
