Page 14 of Hacking the Holidays
Any chance you could fundamentally get off me?
Leo Rodriguez, Eleanor’s perpetually curious admin,appeared in my workspace like a wildlife photographer who’d just spotted a rare species mating ritual.
“Oh. My. Goodness. This is fascinating.” Leo’s eyes went wide as he processed our tangled tableau, then whipped out his phone.
Click. Click. Click.
“So, what exactly am I looking at here?” Leo asked. “Is this team building or role-playing?”
“Neither,” Eleanor said. “It’s just a mishap.”
Leo frowned. “Admittedly, I was hoping for more.”
“You and me both,” Eleanor said. “By the way, this is Rose, our new volunteer. Rose, meet Leo. He’s my amazing admin, and the glue that holds this place together in my absence.”
Leo gestured to us. “Looks like you two don’t need any glue—you’re doing fine on your own.” Instead of helping extract Rose from her current predicament, Leo extended his hand for a formal introduction. “Pleasure to meet you, Rose.”
“Likewise,” Rose managed, impressively achieving a handshake while maintaining her precarious perch on my ribcage.
Leo tilted his head with the curiosity of a golden retriever. “So ... is there a specific reason you’re not getting up?”
Finally! Someone asking the important questions!
Rose gestured weakly behind her. “I’m essentially being held hostage by office equipment. Can you give me a hand and set my foot free?”
“Technical difficulties are my specialty,” Leo said with a grin, then crouched down and began performing electronic surgery on the cable situation. “There we go. You’ve been liberated from your polyethylene captors.”
“Thank you!” Rose said.
Leo helped her to her feet, and she immediately began what I could only describe as the “Embarrassment Shuffle”—frantically trying to scoot cables under my desk with foot movements that bore a striking resemblance to a cat attempting to bury evidence in a litter box.
“That was crazy!” Rose bellowed with what appeared to be nervous energy, her voice reaching frequencies that could probably summon dolphins. “It was completely the cable’s fault.”
Right. Let’s blame it on the cable.
Staring at the fluorescent lights on the ceiling, I remained in my horizontal state of contemplation, wondering if anyone planned to acknowledge my continued floor-based existence or at least help me up.
Nope. Nobody.
They’d obviously left me there for dead.
I rolled to the right to extract myself from the chair, then got myself to my feet while producing enough groaning sound effects to soundtrack a zombie movie.
“I can’t believe how much of my hair got on you. I’m shedding like an Alaskan Malamute. Hold still …” Rose began methodically plucking strands of hair from my sweater. “I should charge for this service. Not everyone offers premium de-furring, you know.”
I was surprised at how much I enjoyed her sense of humor. And there was something oddly mesmerizing about the way she approached even this ridiculous task with meticulous precision, like she was debugging code instead of picking hair off a person. I noticed the way she bit her lower lip when she concentrated—a slight gesture that was far more distracting than it had any right to be.
Her eyes were the color of rich coffee, warm and surprisingly expressive. There was also something very charming about the way her dark eyelashes cast tiny shadows on her cheeks in the fluorescent light.
Wait, what was I doing? When exactly had I started cataloging the details of her face? Was I actually admiring her?
Rose glanced up and caught me studying her intently.
I quickly shifted my attention to a fascinating spot on the wall. “I don’t think that crack was there before.”
“You missed a hair,” Leo said to Rose, pointing to my neck.
“Oh—you’re right,” she said, pulling down the collar of my sweater to extract another hair, her fingers dragging along the skin of my neck.
