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Jeans, work boots, black pullover with some sort of logo next to the three-quarter zip, and a Patagonia fleece jacket; he just needed a hard hat and he’d look like the host of an HGTV home-flipping show.
Which made sense, because according to his profile, he was a senior project manager for a construction company.
The biggest construction company in the state.
Somehow, his realness at the coffee shop—both in appearance and personality—put me at ease.
Perhaps tomorrow’s wedding wouldn’t be so bad.
Ugh, I was already nervous, though.
Could I do it? Could I actually stand up in front of everyoneat a wedding and object to a couple’s union? I was used to giving presentations to large groups at work, but a church full of strangers expecting romance was something else entirely.
“Good morning, Sophie,” I heard from the office to my left.
“Good morning, Ben,” I replied on autopilot, not even looking in that direction.
Our president was big into promoting the idea that at Nesbo Inc., we were more like a family than a corporation. He’d implemented the Daily Goodmornings, which was basically a decree that if you saw someone walking in to start their day, you took the two seconds to say good morning.
It sounded innocuous enough, but since my cubicle was all the way at the other end of the building, one of those super-collaborative open-floorplan configurations, I was subjected to a daily lineup of seemingly endless good mornings before I’d even had my first energy drink, and Iloathed it.
My teeth should be ground to bits from the amount of gnashing that occurred each and every day.
“Morning, Sophie,” from my right, to which I responded, “Morning, Dallas.”
“Morning, Soph,” from the cubicle in the corner.
“Morning, Betsy,” I murmured, opening my purse to look inside for my AirPods. God, I hoped I hadn’t forgotten them, because the office was so quiet that the sounds of typing drove me insane. Headphones were my only salvation from the brink of madness.
“Good morning, Sophie,” Izabel said.
“Good morning, Iz,” I replied, rummaging through my tote.
“Good morning, Sophie,” Stuart said.
“Good morning, pathetic tosspot,” I muttered, now in a full-on panic that I’d left them at home.
“Good morning, Sophie,” I heard from the corner office.
“Good morning, Amy,” I replied, giving up on the hunt. I’dclearly left my AirPods at home and would now be subjected to the overbearing sounds of silence.
Wonderful.
I could see that Edie was already in her office and on the phone when I reached my cubicle and set down my bag, so I gave her a hand raise, to which she responded with a subsequent chin nod.
No matter how early I came in, she always beat me.
Which was fine, because she was my boss; that was the way it was supposed to work, right?
As long as I beatmyteam in, all was right in the world.
And Ialwaysbeat them.
I sat down and opened my laptop, drinking more of my Americano as my computer came to life. I knew it was going to be one of those wall-to-wall-meeting days, so I needed to fill myself with preventive caffeine.
The Nesbo database bleeped and up popped the start message—Good morning, Sophie Steinbeck, HR Director—and the smiling-robot prompt to enter my password.
As I typed in my very secure eight-digit passphrase with both symbols and numbers, I daydreamed—like I did every morning—about the prompt saying,Good morning, Sophie Steinbeck, VP of HR. I knew I was younger than the VPs of the other business units, but I wassoready.
