‘Morning, boss.’ Dexter saluted me from his desk. We were the first to arrive. I’d had to trek back to my flat painfully early to grab a change of clothes, only allowing myself five minutes under the delicious hot steam of the shower so that I could get into the office on time. The sooner I arrived, the sooner I could lose myself in a task and feign busyness to Rory. I’d caught Maeve texting in the kitchen the night before last, grinning at her phone whilst she waited for the kettle to boil. As soon as she’d noticed me, she’d put her phone face down on the table. The plot thickened, and I was pretty sure I was spot on about the narrative. I looked into our office. Rory’s jacket wasn’t on the back of his chair. Success.
‘Any progress on the compatibility glitch yet?’ I straddled the chair opposite Dexter. You could tell a lot about each of our employees by what they chose to keep on their desk. Ella had a Polaroid of her and Darcy, an industrial-sized hand sanitiser, and more often than not, a packet of Love Corn. Harriet had a tiny fan, hairspray, and a box of Maltesers. Dexter had a Lego houseplant and an endless supply of Red Bull.
‘Every time we test the new system, it fails. We’re on the sixteenth attempt.’ He sighed, deflated, combing his hand through his hair. ‘It’s connecting the compatibility rankings from user to user that doesn’t seem to be working.’
On the whole, our app had launched with very few glitches. We’d been prepared to weather much worse storms than our most recent glitch: some users appeared to be matched to someone, only for the other person not to have the match appear on their profile. Dexter could appear as a compatible partner for me (hypothetically – he liked sushi and video games way too much for us to be destined to be together), but for some reason, I wasn’t currently appearing on his profile. Connecting users, ironically, was harder than it looked. I leaned over his laptop, scanning the current report.
‘Have you tried looping back to the sequence that we used here?’ I pointed at one of the old sequences, from a previous attempt. A bit of tweaking and I was sure it could work. I’d had the conundrum stuck to our bathroom mirror for the past week, staring at it for two minutes every morning and night whilst I brushed my teeth.
Dexter paused, thinking it through. ‘That might be worth a try, actually. I’ll give it a go this morning and report back.’
It felt good to flex my programming brain a bit. People in business didn’t tell you how everything changed when you finally launched. Sometimes I missed those all-nighters at university. It had seemed glamorous in theory, but I was learning that maybe I didn’t need glamour, just the chance to be creative.
‘Oh, and by the way,’ Dexter said without looking up, ‘that just arrived for you.’
I looked over at my office, where I could see a brown paper delivery bag from Gail’s on my desk. Surely not again.
‘You really landed on your feet, snogging that mystery man.’
I thumped him with the newspaper I’d grabbed on my way into the building. ‘Shut up.’
As extra as it was – getting daily office deliveries – I was starving, so I had my fingers crossed that there was something edible in there. Something buttery and warm. I’d been texting Daniel on and off since the weekend – he was a pretty consistent communicator, choosing real words over GIFs and always assuming I got his jokes, rather than mansplaining (it was a low bar). He was incredibly flirty, and he wanted me, which was a nice change after Isaac.
I read the label on the front of the bag under my breath. ‘One extra-large, extra-hot oat milk latte, and one cinnamon bagel with butter. Thank you, dating gods. You know I deserved this.’ I immediately delved into the bagel, moaning when the sweet cinnamon came through. ‘I could definitely get used to this.’
‘Get used to what?’
I jumped out of my skin, completely unaware of Rory’s presence behind me. I quickly wiped the crumbs from around my mouth.
‘Jumpy much?’ He walked over to my desk, pulling the to-go cup out of the bag and reading the message printed on the side. I had my fingers crossed it wasn’t anything flirty.
‘Penny,’ Rory started reading. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t forget the sugars. Look in the bottom of the bag. I still think you’re sweet enough, Daniel.’
He pulled a face. ‘God, this guy is embarrassingly persistent. Does he not take no for an answer?’
I didn’t respond, feigning ignorance and taking the drink from him.
‘Wait a minute.’ Rory hung his jacket up. ‘You called him, didn’t you?’
I pretended to be extremely interested in my – colour-coordinated – sticky notes, tabbing up some of the meeting prep I’d done last night whilst I was sitting with Mum.
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Penny. That guy was a sleaze.’ Rory crossed the room, his steps heavy. Looking at him up close, I realised that even in the depths of my suspicion, I’d missed him.
‘I’m pretty sure sleazes don’t send flowers and lattes to offices.’
He shot me a look. ‘I think that’s exactly what they do to get what they want. Did you order the penis straws yet?’
I snorted despite myself, making a note to order the goods for the sten do, which was fast approaching. ‘Quite the conversational diversion.’
‘Is it? I imagine there’s quite the overlap in the Venn diagram for men who pester women in offices, and novelty penis straws. It’s obnoxious. Why do the rest of us need to be involved?’
I bit back a comment about how he was only irritated because he didn’t feel like he could parade his new fling around the office. My rush of affection for him was dwindling fast.
‘What’s got into you? You met him for precisely one minute before you made him feel uncomfortable enough to leave.’
‘Let’s not get into this, shall we?’
We worked in silence for approximately ten minutes, both of us passive aggressively slamming down our coffee cups and typing like we might accidentally break the keys.
He sighed. ‘I just … didn’t think he was good enough for you.’
I wasn’t quite ready to bury the hatchet. ‘You don’t know him.’
‘Neither do you.’
‘I think that’s the point of dating. If it isn’t, then we massively misunderstood a major part of our careers.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘Very funny. If this company does go down in flames, I’d start writing your stand-up set if I were you.’
He was joking, but it hit a nerve. We weren’t on the lookout for investors just for fun; it turned out that there was a lot of expenditure in the first few months of a business launch.
‘Anyway,’ I said around a mouthful of cinnamon-y goodness, ‘good enough or not good enough, I hadn’t eaten this morning.’
Rory looked up from his laptop. ‘I could have bought you a bagel, Penny. It isn’t ground-breaking stuff. Shall we go?’
Ella was ready and waiting for us with another batch of potential partnerships, waving through the glass of our office.
I took the second half of my bagel for the road. ‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’