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Irested my chin on my fist and stared at the phone on my desk, willing it not to ring. Technically, the phone wasn’t actually physically on my desk. It was an interface on a computer screen, a “soft phone,” it was called. When that new software rolled out, I rolled my eyes so hard. They came up with the dumbest names for things. It saved my neck from having to hold the receiver but never gave me quite the same satisfaction of being able to slam a receiver down when I hung up on a particularly difficult customer. Not that I would ever hang up on them. I would wait until they hung up, then slam the receiver down. But then a few years ago, they swapped out all of our physical phones for these soft phones. It really took the fun out of hanging up.

Still, I was five minutes away from the end of my shift, and I knew it was going to ring, and I would be stuck on a call with someone for God knew how long. Too long. The conversations were always too long. It wasn’t that I hated my job. It just seemed to get more and more boring as the years went on. I answered the same questions, pointed people to where they could find the information on the website, or I simply walked them through how to do it on their own while I followed the steps that were all located on the website.

I suppose working over twenty years at the same company was bound to make a person a little jaded.

Ten years ago, a lot of our processes had still only been able to be done via phone calls to the call center. Now they were managed much differently. We only got the difficult calls. The ones the chat bot couldn’t handle, where the person was too technologically challenged to manage, but even those customers were fewer and farther between these days.

I must be getting old. Incredibly old.

I was just forty-five, but still I felt older, and yet I was still several years away from retirement and not willing to change jobs to get a new skill set. I really didn’t want to go into management, so I was stuck on the fence. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t good at my job. I was fantastic at it. I was highly rated, and some customers even requested me by name, not that we were supposed to allow them to do that. Management would prefer we all act like indistinguishable robots, but I always liked to add a little personality to my calls.

And of course, it was 4:58, and my phone lit up again. I didn’t get to hear the actual ringing in the headset that I had directly on my head. The ringing was just a fake tone. I let out a sigh and put the headset over my ears, dropping the microphone down so that it was placed correctly.

“Thank you for calling. How may I help you today?” I used my customer service voice. It wasn’t unlike my regular voice, slightly higher pitched, and I enunciated carefully. I really hated when I had to repeat myself, and more often than not, people called me from less-than-stable connections. Or they were of a certain age and couldn’t hear well. Not that I had any room to talk, I’d noticed myself turning the volume on the TV up just a littler higher these days.

“Yeah, I’m calling, and I’ve already been transferred around all day, so please, for the love of all things, don’t transfer me again.” The gruff voice of a man, a real man, not a young one, echoed through the phone. His voice was like smooth whiskey and sent shivers down my spine.

I kept my voice neutral while fighting against the rapid beat of my heart. Something about his voice was doing things to me. “Of course. I’m sorry to hear that you’ve had a frustrating experience. I’ll do my best to take care of your needs today.” I bit back a chuckle at the double entendre. The last thing I needed was to be reported for being inappropriate.

“Okay, I understand it’s 4:58 and you probably want to get on with your day, so you can go ahead and drop the call center voice.”

The corner of my mouth twitched as I fought back a smile. I loved that he said that like it was an actual option.

“I won’t deny that it’s the end of the workday, but I am here to help you with any of your needs. Just let me know how I can help and I’m more than willing to stay on the call for as long as it takes to resolve the issue.”

He snorted. “All right, now I’m starting to think you’re a robot. Am I talking to a robot? If so, you are very convincing. I thought you were human.”

I giggled. I couldn’t help myself. Finally, I did drop the call center voice.

“Mr. Sullivan,” I read his name off the screen, having pulled up his account thanks to his phone number. “What seems to be the issue? Seriously, I can probably help you, but you do have to tell me what’s going on.” It was weird to talk on the phone while at work in my normal voice. If I wasn’t careful, I would slip totally out of my customer service persona.

“Ah, that’s better. My check hasn’t cleared. It usually has by now, and — well, honestly, it really doesn’t matter. It’s not like I need the money, but I didn’t have anything better to do today, right? ‘Course, I thought this was going to be resolved super easily this morning, but I seem to have the whole company stumped as to what is going on.” He let out a soft chuckle, and I could almost picture him casually sitting somewhere. He probably had a beard and dark hair with waves of silver.

“Can you just verify some information for me? I have to make sure that you’re a legit person.” I couldn’t help the smile that crept into my voice. My job was to stay calm and neutral, yet with this guy, I wanted our interaction to be fun.

“My passcode is A-Y-A-M.”

Clearly he knew the drill, answering the questions before I asked them. “That is correct. And how long have you been a member with us?”

“Oh, for freaking ever.”

I had to laugh. But then when I looked at the note in the comments of his account, it did indeed say, “for freaking ever.”

I pulled up his information, clicking through to see what might be causing a delay in his check. And then, of course, my computer froze.

“Damn it,” I said.

He chuckled. “See, that’s more like it. What’s management going to say when they listen to this recording? I don’t want to get you in trouble. What’s your name in case we get disconnected? I want to be able to request you. I’m so tired of dealing with the menus and pressing buttons and trying to get these robots to understand me.”

“I’m Connor — I’m sorry,” I said. “Please excuse my—”

“No, seriously, I appreciate your candor, and I promise not to tell your boss that you swore on the phone.”

I blushed. I thanked my lucky stars that he couldn’t see me. This was getting weird. It was just a phone call with a guy with a hot voice. For all I knew, he could look like a troll. Never mind the fact that I was picturing a hot daddy type.

“I do apologize, sir, my computer has frozen, and like you said, it is the end of the day, and I do want to help you as soon as possible so that we can both get on with our day.”

“Hot date planned for tonight?” he asked.