Page 8 of Technical Advances

Any shock I felt at his excitement over my work and his intimate knowledge of it left me as I perused a drawing on the tablet that was similar to mine but not exactly the same.

“Something’s missing,” we said simultaneously. Any beatings of my heart or zings that traveled through my body were purely professional excitement, surely.

I rolled my chair around until I was hugging the rounded corner of the conference table. He slid his chair closer to mine, and we hovered over the tablet. My hand reached out to the screen, but I retracted it quickly. Sheepishly, I asked, “May I?”

His smile was small, but it crinkled his eyes as they shone at me like two Caribbean pools, not that I’d ever been to the Caribbean. And yet that description popped into my head. I’d never wanted to go swimming more.

“Please,” he enthused, and I scrolled through images and formulas for a few minutes, sensing Day watching me.

I mimicked a move he had made, tapping the empty pocket of my jacket and feeling around my pants pocket. Day understood, jumped up, and rummaged through the small ornate cabinet in the back of the room. He returned with a sleek pencil holder. I consecutively pulled out three pencils, settling on the third. Like he understood what I was doing, he jumped to the cabinet again, returning with an electric pencil sharpener. He sharpened one of the rejected pencils and held it up to me to inspect. I nodded and took it from him, our fingers brushing before he let go. And why was that subtle touch of our hands even more powerful than the handshake had been? It was just a pencil. One perfectly sharpened pencil. Ignoring the sparks that I just knew I had to be imagining, I dragged the folder in front of me and slapped it closed.

“If we just …” I began as I pulled elements from his design and mine to redraw the project on the cream surface of the folder.

I had no idea how long we’d been at it, sketching on the paper and on the tablet, calculating and recalculating. At some point, he’d yanked the pencil from my hand, the other two left ignored on the table, and spun the folder in his direction. He may have been the one stringing the numbers neatly below my drawing, but we were talking through the calculations together.

“That’s it!” I said as he finalized a formula.

His “finally” overlapped my exclamation.

Our heads snapped up, our focus pulled away from the work and toward each other. The room suddenly lacked noise, no more calculations being bandied about, no more measurements debated.

We smiled, our eyes locked. His really were a remarkable shade of blue. News clippings and photos on the internet did not do them justice. I almost opened my mouth to tell him but pulled my lips in instead to stop the words from tumbling out. I tried to cover the awkward move with another crooked smile as we simply stared at each other. It felt like something danced between us.

It’s the numbers, Benji, my brain supplied, and my smile got even wider, and possibly goofier, as I pictured happy little numbers pulsating between us. The quietness went on for some time, I think. Only I’d stopped being nervous about it, stopped worrying about filling the silences. I was perfectly fine smiling and staring at Anson Day, and he seemed to be content, smiling and gazing right back. Based on his demeanor when I’d entered the room, it felt like a privilege to have his eyes locked on mine. In my periphery, I could sense his hand moving. It was devoid of the pencil and seemed to be reaching for mine, which rested on the conference table.

In slow motion, his eyes got wide, and his hand squeezed mine. He pulled away quickly, like my hand was on fire, which was ironic because that is exactly what it felt like to me. A simple, brief touch igniting my whole world.

Anson cleared his throat, and the hand that had briefly touched mine slid the tablet until it was propped up directly front of him. He swiped until he found the diagram he wanted.

“Think we should tackle this sector next?” he asked. Asked! Anson Day was asking me what I thought our next move was. I nodded, and he placed the tablet between us, pushing the folder so that it glided toward the center of the table with a whoosh. My resume scattered, hanging out of the folder. Anson eyed the mess, and I eyed Anson for a beat before standing and leaning over the table to reach for and adjust the folder and its contents. In picking it up, I noticed that the other side of the folder was already full of calculations and sketches. I quickly absorbed the work, which appeared to depict how my project differed from the work Anson was sharing with me.

I sat back down, and we dropped our heads as he brought the computer back to life. We were right back in it, reviewing and adjusting Anson’s design based on elements from my project.

I hadn’t realized how close together our heads had gotten as we leaned over the touchscreen until the opening door had us both sitting upright, startled, our chairs rolling in opposite directions as we instinctively put additional space between us, like two kids caught in the act of … something. Had our knees been touching under the table? The empty feeling I had rolling away from him led me to believe that they may have been.

A handsome man about my dad’s age, which I guess would make him Day’s age, stood in the open doorway, a startled and curious look on his face.

Henry Beckett, cofounder of New Day Technologies. Almost as famous as his business partner, and it was well known, the man in charge of the corporate side of New Day Technologies, leaving Anson free to focus on the science.

My body was still abuzz as if those dancing numbers encompassed me, bouncing off me in chaotic pops, the heat and energy from Day just out of reach, pulled away by the grave stare emanating from the face of Henry Beckett. There may have been distance between us, but Anson still focused on me in wonder, and I just knew his eyes continued to map details and run calculations, only they had nothing to do with exoskeletons. What were those seas of blue seeing in my goofy smile? In my plain brown eyes, magnified by glasses that I had never before cared were more functional than attractive?

“Anson. There you are!”

Day turned away from me and sat ramrod straight and still in his chair, glancing at the intruder before stretching forward to retrieve the folder I had tidied up some time earlier. Mr. Beckett stared at his friend for a few beats before glaring at me.

I snuck a peek at the time on the corner of the tablet to see that we had been working for close to two hours. We hadn’t gotten around to any actual interview questions, but Henry Beckett was clearly there to end our meeting. Anson looked like a kid who had been caught smoking, so I jumped in.

Clearing my throat, I stood. “Dr. Day, I so appreciate your time today,” I said somewhat performatively, some might say leading the witness as I extended my hand in front of his glazed-over face. He looked up from the folder, first at Beckett and then at me. He glanced down at the tablet, but then those eyes, (ugh, those eyes), found their way back to me, and it felt like winning the Nobel Prize. A smile flashed across his face and was gone in a second as he shook my hand, embracing it in both of his.

“Mr. Warren,” he began, keeping our eyes locked for one, two, three seconds before a throat clearing from the other side of the room broke the spell. Anson looked down again before tilting our joined hands to activate his watch. I couldn’t help but smile at the move, my hand held firmly in both of his as he checked the time. Then he glanced at Mr. Beckett, or maybe at the table in front of us, avoiding eye contact. Before long, those sparkling blues found their way back to me.

“It is still Mister Warren, correct? Until your graduation ceremony. I still remember those rare days of freedom after my dissertation and before graduation.”

He looked at me then and lit up for real. No blink-and-you’ll-miss-it flash as we continued to hold hands, just a real, bright, genuine smile. I smiled back, and it felt like my whole face wanted to reach out and communicate with his, from those dancing eyes to the crinkles that marked his skin when his face lit up, to the lips that looked like they’d be so soft to kiss.

Holy fucking shit. That had to be some residual callback to my preteen years, to that time when I was exploring my sexuality while staring at photos from a newspaper report about a revolutionary robotic arm. Definitely not a thought I should be having in that moment, about a man my father’s age, who I hoped was about to offer me a job.

Eventually, I focused enough on the words he’d said to provide a response. “Yes! That’s right. Graduation is still a few weeks away, sir, so it’s Mr. Warren until then.” Quickly, I added, “But please, call me Benji.” I may have heard a scoff from the other side of the room, but I was too focused on Day to be sure.