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“I don’t know,” she said. “I just really like my job and working with you.”
“And I think you’re fantastic at what you do, but seriously, you should try this out. You have a talent for coding that surpasses a lot of people that have been doing it for years. Maybe I could put you on a project and see how you do?”
She seemed to think about it for a minute and then nodded. “Yeah, that could be fun,” she said. Still, there was something in her voice that told me that maybe it wasn’t exactly what she wanted. Some people needed the confidence of another person telling them they were good at something to take the leap, and she was good. Really, shockingly good. If I could give her that shove and she found something she was even better at than being my assistant, it could be a whole new career for her.
Standing, I drained the rest of the mug and grabbed the clothes I wanted to wear for the rest of the day.
“I’m going to grab a shower,” I said. “Then we can get down to business figuring the rest of this thing out.”* * *The afternoon was winding down, and I was getting increasingly stressed-out. As we moved further and further into the prototype engine, more coding issues were popping up faster than we could solve them. I knew the team back at the office was working on it, too, but we needed the engine up and running immediately for beta testers. For the third time in the last hour, I picked up my phone.
“Thanks, Kiesha, keep up the good work. I’ll check in one more time before you guys get out of there,” I said, hanging up the phone.
“Any luck?” Amanda asked, turning in the desk chair and stretching her arms high over her head. I couldn’t help but let my eyes wander to the way her cleavage pushed together when she did, and then snapped back to the laptop on my lap.
“Not really,” I said. “Small fires being put out, but the big one is still a problem. Every time the team goes in to modify the source code, it just knocks something else out of alignment. I’m getting worried we might have to start from scratch.”
“How long would that put you back?” she asked.
“Weeks. Maybe more. Months. It all depends, really.” I glanced down at the phone to check the time. “Alright, I’m going to call my brothers again and see what they’re getting done.”
Amanda nodded and stood. “I’ll give you some privacy,” she said, heading to the door. “A nice walk sounds good anyway. Anything, but that chair,” she said, smiling, and headed out. I hit the Call button on Mason’s number, and he answered on the second ring.
“Hey, Tom,” he said. He sounded frazzled. Immediately, I worried something had gone terribly wrong.
“Mason, what’s going on?” I asked.
“The same thing that was going on the last time you called an hour ago. Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, not nothing, nothing. Just nothing that will solve anything just yet.”
“So there’s something?”
“Well, I feel like we’re getting close to tying it all together with Danny, but it might take time.”
The conversation continued for a solid thirty minutes, and Amanda returned from her walk. When she saw me on the phone, she tried to duck back out, but I waved her in. I was on pins and needles and like I might lose it at any moment. The more Mason and then Jordan talked, the more I felt like I was losing a grip on everything. While we had been talking, I had gotten at least four text messages and two emails from the team at the office with questions and concerns. Then, just before Amanda came in, an investor emailed, and the tagline had simply said, “Glitches?”
“I have to go, Mason. Please, if anything else changes, call me.”
“I will, Tom,” Mason said. “Try to relax. We’ll get this figured out. It has to be Danny.”
I hung up the phone and stared over at Amanda. Even in my panic and worry, she was absolutely stunning. Something about the way she sat across from me, one leg bent over the other, drove me insane. More insane than everything else was at least.
“Amanda, could you email Richie and Paul and tell them I need status updates every hour. On the hour. Starting with one in ten minutes,” I asked.
“Sure,” she said, pulling her tablet to her. “Did something happen while I was gone?”
“Nothing I want to mention to the team yet, but apparently word is leaking out we’re having trouble with the pre-beta. We need this fixed immediately.”
“An investor?” she asked, her eyes wide. I nodded. “On it,” she said and began drafting an email.
I stood up to pace the room, racking my brain to try to figure out the latest piece of the glitch puzzle. Two of my best debuggers had moved on to other companies in the last few months, and I was tempted to call them and offer them handsome bonuses if they could work as consultants on this for me. It would be a conflict of interest for at least one of them, who went, with my blessing, to a competitor. But at this point I was willing to take whatever help I could get, even from a supposed enemy.
