Page 13 of Sparks Fly
“Bro, speak,” Miles hissed while simultaneously trying to give a reassuring smile to his employees, whose faces ranged from confused to downright pissed, which Max couldn’t understand, although perhaps Miles hadn’t explained Sparky correctly. He should’ve been paying better attention.
Max cleared his throat, keeping his focus on everyone except Cherry, whose gaze he could still feel. He would talk to her later. Right now, he had to get this presentation back on track.
“Hi, hello, I’m Max,” he said. “CEO and founder of AIX, an artificial intelligence research and deployment company. And I’m very excited to introduce you to Sparky.”
Max stepped aside to let someone push through the SMART Board he’d set up his presentation on beforehand and then he did what he did best.
He started talking.
Although Max had always been interested in science and math, he was never the stereotypical shy, nerdy kid. When he was interested or excited about something, there was no shutting him up, and thankfully, so far anyway, people seemed to actually care to listen.
Today, though, as he went on and on through his presentation, allowing himself to get lost in explaining how Sparky worked and how it would only continue to improve as the Yellow Sparks staff used it, he didn’t feel the confidence he usually did. Instead, he could see people leaning over and whispering to each other or looking at their phones or computers. He was pretty sure the woman next to Cherry wassimply glaring at him, but Max couldn’t let his eyes linger over there for too long, lest they get caught on Cherry and stay there.
Max started going through the slides quicker, and he cursed Miles for having him do this at the end of the day, when people probably just wanted to leave. Surely that’s why they were looking at him like he was the spawn of Satan.
“And so that’s it,” Max said, closing the presentation. “Sparky will appear in the Yellow Sparks CMS tomorrow morning, and you’ll get an email with steps on how best to use it when creating content. When you first start using it, there may be some errors, such as typos, or it might pull in an image of Michael B. Jordan instead of Michael Jordan, so you want to keep an eye out for those, but again, the more you guys use it, the more quickly it’ll learn and adapt.”
Someone’s hand shot up, and Max looked to Miles, unsure if they were doing questions. Miles quickly stepped forward.
“Unfortunately, it’s about five o’clock, so we’re going to have to wrap it up there,” he said. “But Max and his team have graciously offered to hold office hours for Sparky tomorrow at three p.m. right here in the office, and after that they’ll be here every Monday afternoon, so if you have any questions or issues, they can help you out then.
“Have a good night, and I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Without another word, Miles quickly guided Max out of the office. Max tried to look for Cherry, but people were beginning to pack up their things even though when Max looked at his watch, he saw it was closer to four thirty than it was to five. He did not see her as his brother hustled him into an elevator away from what was obviously a very unhappy crowd.
Nine
As soon as Miles and Max were gone, the room erupted.
“What the actual fuck?” Effie said from beside Stella, except she was barely listening.
Her focus was still on Max’s back retreating out of the office. There were currently two wolves inside her: one who wanted to chase after him, and another who wanted to hide under her desk and pretend her kind-of one-night stand didn’t just show up at her place of work to tell her a robot was going to start doing her job for her.
Or something like that.
“Stella?”
Effie was snapping her fingers in front of Stella’s face, making her jerk back and blink rapidly before looking at her friend.
“Are you okay?” Effie asked.
“Uh, no,” Stella said honestly. Then she closed her laptop, grabbed her tote bag from the floor, and stood. “I have to go.”
“What? Stella, wait!”
But Stella did not wait. She couldn’t wait. She was tired of waiting. Her feet were moving before she’d even fully made the decision.
She burst through the door to the emergency stairwell, ready to run down the stairs as quickly as she could in her allergic-to-exercise body, but pulled up short at the top of the stairs when she saw Max coming up to meet her.
Or maybemeet herwasn’t right because he hadn’t seemed to notice her yet. He was running up the stairs like a track star, skipping steps. She was almost nervous to say anything to throw him out of focus, but at this rate, he was going to plow right into her.
“Max!”
He stopped almost immediately, grabbing hold of the banister to steady himself as he finally looked up.
“Cherry.”
Her (fake) name fell off his lips like a sigh, and she was glad he at least had the decency to sound slightly out of breath after flying up the stairs.
