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“WALKING ON SUNSHINE” — KATRINA AND THE WAVES
Tavey
I know it’s going to be a good day when I arrive at my desk and find a contraption out of LEGO Technic pieces waiting for me. For the uninitiated, LEGO Technic are the fancy LEGOs with gears and moving parts.
This gadget looks like a kid’s scooter, but when you push it, the “handlebars” flap like wings. Beneath it, there are five pages of printed line art dragon pieces … heads, bodies, wings, and tails. On the top page I find a scrawled note that reads:
for inspiration
if you want todecorate it
Oh … it’s going to be a very good day.
Of course, I recognize the handwriting. It’s Miller’s.
Not that I needed the handwriting, or even the note, to know that Miller left the contraption for me. I know it’s from him because he’s the person who does things like this for me.
Miller Evans is my coworker at FMJ, a nerdy tech company in Austin, where I’ve worked since I moved to Austin three years ago to be closer to my brother and his family. Miller and I both work in the security department. Before you imagine him in a uniform and cute little hat, wandering around the building at night with a flashlight, no, it’s not that kind of security. (Though, that would be hot.)
Not that that kind of security is unimportant. It is. But what we do … creating the protocols that protect our systems from being hacked, is way more important. Especially since FMJ creates cutting-edge technology that pretty much everyone on the planet would like to have a preview of.
FMJ has flex hours, which is a fancy way of saying that they expect us to put in long hours, but they don’t care when during the day those hours happen. The huge fourth-floor bullpen, which has space for about forty desks, is only about half occupied most of the time. I’m extra early this morning,so the bullpen is nearly empty. And, yes, I’m one of those obnoxious morning people. Don’t judge me!
Of course, Miller isn’t in yet. He only leaves toys for me when he stayed at work late the night before. Since it’s a Monday, that means he came in over the weekend. Which means he probably found and fixed the bug we’ve been trying to track down.
Miller has been with FMJ for years. If he was a different kind of guy, he’d be in management by now. Probably VP of Very Important Things.
But he’s Miller, and that kind of thing is not for him. So he sits in the bullpen with the rest of us schlubs. We don’t have cubicles on the fourth floor. Cubicles are so last century!
No, we have “work islands,” which is a fancy term for a bunch of desks squashed together in an “organic formation” to encourage the flow of ideas throughout the workspace. All of which is clearly bullshit, because there is nothing organic about desks, even if they are rhombuses instead of rectangles.
As much as I laugh at the corporate speak, I adore my “work island” because it means Miller’s desk is catty-corner to mine. Most days — i.e., days when he didn’t work too late the night before — I only have to glance up to see him.
And, yes, Miller is super hot in a taciturn,growly, uber-competent kind of way. Which, in my opinion, is the best way to be super hot.
And, no, I don’t enjoy sitting near him just so I can creep on him throughout the day.
He might be hot and single, but our friendship isn’t like that.
Unfortunately.
Much to the eternal dismay of my delicate heart and my starved-for-attention lady bits.
This particular morning, I settle in at my desk, carefully setting aside the coloring sheets Miller left for me—I will play with those at home where I have access to my complete collection of markers, colored pencils, and other art supplies—and log in to my workstation.
I pull up the intra-office messaging center and find—as expected—detailed notes about Miller’s progress from the night before. I open up the files to review his work, occasionally pushing my little contraption around to make its wings flap as I bop along to Katrina and the Waves playing on repeat through my noise-cancelling headphones.
About an hour in, I take a bathroom break and check my personal phone to find a message from the familygroup chat.
Family Chaos
Holly
Hey, I need a yay or nay on the Fourth of July
I assume you’re coming, but I need to know if you’re staying the night because the house is filling up.
