The Checklist

by Addie Woolridge

  “Going out?” Bernice hollered over Neale. That woman’s hearing was the stuff of myth, Dylan was sure.

  “I’m going over to Cruise. Trying to get a little more planning in before tomorrow.”

  Bernice ambled toward the door and appraised Dylan over the rims of her glasses. “You doing okay? You just got home a few hours ago, and you are already working again. The soulless aren’t getting you down, are they?” First Brandt, now her mother. Shifting her bag, Dylan wondered if the stress was aging her already. She couldn’t remember the last time her mother had checked in on her physical welfare, let alone her mental health.

  “I’m all right. And on the plus side, the employees of Technocore would like their souls back, so who knows?”

  “Devil drives a red Tesla, and he doesn’t like to bargain, darlin’.” Bernice grinned, which made Dylan smile against her better judgment.

  “Perhaps Mephistopheles is feeling generous?”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Bernice said, turning back to the kitchen, where Neale’s braying had come down in volume, probably so she could listen in.

  Dylan stood alone in the hallway, marveling at her mother’s sudden interest in her well-being. It felt oddly comforting, like the memories of her mother drawing hearts on the Band-Aids Dylan had put on her own skinned knees as a kid. For a second, she considered wandering into the kitchen and telling the yelping women inside about her day. Asking them for guidance might not be as traumatic as she remembered it being. Then again, if their guidance was anything like their singing voices . . .

  Dylan smirked, and the impulse passed almost as quickly as it had come. She was not in the mood to listen to suggestions ranging from set the establishment on fire to perhaps a séance? Technocore needed a framework for survival, not an interpretive poem. An unexpected warm, fuzzy feeling about her mother was not a good reason to abandon her common sense, and she had roughly thirty years of anecdotal evidence to prove it.

  Stepping out into the cold air, Dylan pulled her collar a little closer as the sting settled into her cheeks. Watching her breath rise in short puffs, she inhaled the smell of pines. There was something comforting about the cold, clean smell of the city. When she was little, Dylan had thought of the rain as a bath for the world. Every day, nature washed off the day before and gave itself a clean slate. It was reassuring.

  Rounding the corner, she met the heavy wood-and-glass-plate double doors of Cruise’s Coffee House and yanked on one brass handle. Stepping inside, she was flooded by the warm, familiar scent of coffee. The shop had been there since she was in high school, and although they had several locations throughout the city, it still felt like the small, local homework joint she knew. Covered in dented wooden tables and old dark leather chairs, the house had its own roaster, and if you woke up early enough, you could smell the beans roasting across town.

  Wandering up to the packed pastry display case, Dylan bit her lip for a moment before deciding to splurge on a chai latte and a piece of pie. Dessert was usually a special-occasion treat for her. But since she’d come back to Seattle, it seemed more like a close friend she had resisted calling until things became dire.

  “Hi, what can I get for you?” the woman behind the counter asked, the usual friendly-coffeehouse-employee look stuck to her face.

  “If you had to choose, which pie would you get? Apple or berry?”

  “Oh.” The woman’s magenta lips puckered as she thought about it. “They’re both good. What are you drinking?”

  “Chai latte.”

  “Definitely get the apple with that one.” A voice from behind startled her. The barista looked up and nodded in agreement as Dylan turned to look at the speaker. Mike Robinson stood smirking down at her, as if catching her off guard in a great pie debate were an inside joke.

  “Hi, Dylan,” Mike said, his voice mellow against the whirring of the espresso machine.

  Dylan blinked a few times, staring at the gray cashmere covering his broad shoulders, racking her brain for the right response. Her sister was right: even Bernice, sworn enemy of the Robinsons, would think he was good looking. Honestly, who looked good in sweater-vests after the age of ten?

  “Dylan?” Mike was still smiling, but one eyebrow was raised in a question.

  “Um . . . sorry, I was spacing out. Long day.” Dylan shook her head, pulling herself up to her full height and tearing her gaze away from the well-fitted vest. She wished she were wearing her heels or at least not such dorky tennis shoes. She also wished she hadn’t left her vocabulary at home. Since when did she greet people with um?

  “Are you together?” the woman behind the counter asked.

  “I’m not that lucky, but a guy can dream,” Mike said. His smile was innocent enough, but his eyes betrayed him as they ran a hot look over her, giving her a fleeting up and down. Dylan’s heart rate tripled almost as fast as the goofy grin appeared on her face. He thought someone would be lucky to get coffee with her in her gym clothes. Mike tilted his head toward her bag, the fleeting look of mischief still playing around his eyes. “Are you staying?”

  The sound of his voice jogged her brain. Gym clothes were irrelevant, because Nicolas had the regular honor of seeing her in them. It was still a flattering thought, though. He was Sexy Robinson, after all.

  Fixing her face, she tried to say sure, but whatever came out was more babble than a word. Dylan nodded and wished her ponytail would stop bobbing around. If she couldn’t use her words, she wanted to at least salvage what was left of her adult image.

  “Then yes, we are together. May I also have a chai, please?” Mike said, adjusting the strap of his computer bag and drawing Dylan’s attention back to his shoulders.

  “Two chais and one apple slice,” the woman said, cheerfully ringing them up as Dylan slid her credit card across the counter and into the woman’s hand.

  Mike opened his mouth to say something, but Dylan cut him off. “I insist. As a thank-you for solving the light situation.”

  “I don’t think asking my mother to redirect a spotlight deserves particular thanks. But I’ll accept it nonetheless,” he said, scooping up the pie and a mug of chai. Dylan replaced her credit card in its proper spot in her wallet, then picked up her mug and followed him to the table. She wanted to think she was smiling over the neat leaf design in her foam, but she acknowledged it was nice to have an unexpected chai with someone who was at least charming enough to flatter her and pretend she was a catch.

  Mike set the slice of pie down on a low coffee table and collapsed into an oversize leather chair, leaving the adjacent love seat for Dylan. She set her drink on the table and lowered herself onto the cushion, tucking her legs under her. Across from her, Mike pulled out a tablet and started poking around. His denim-clad legs were so long they nearly hit the edge of the table.

  “So what are you doing here? Dinner with the parents again?”

  “Sort of. I was dropping something off, then decided to force myself to go over my lecture notes before I get home, because”—he looked up from his tablet and smiled at her—“the last thing I want to think about when I get home is teaching a bunch of sleepy undergrads. What are you doing here?”

  “I don’t even want to talk about it.”

  “That bad?”

  “Yes.” She groaned into her palms and closed her eyes, as if by shutting them, she could shut out the mountain of information she needed to sift through.

  “Tell me about it.”

  Dylan moved a hand, cracking one eye open and fixing it on Mike, who was situated in the chair exactly as one would imagine their professor to be. Straightening herself up, she took a big breath, considering how best to gloss over everything.

  “I’m listening,” Mike said, still looking like he wanted to know why her term paper was going to be late.

  “Fine,” she said with a massive exhale. “I might be in over my head at work, and when I got tired of the paint on my office walls, I thought, Go home, get some food, a little peace and quiet, t
hen try solving this whole Technocore mess. Only, it’s my parents’ house, so that is like going to a preschool and expecting order. Thus, I’m here.” Dylan felt the tension leave her shoulders as she watched Mike process everything.

  “Preschools are a great place to conduct business.” He deliberately took another sip of chai, managing this with a straight face before busting up. Dylan’s smile gave way to laughter. The image of her in a suit conducting business at a plastic table with three-year-olds made its way through her mind.

  “How are you in over your head? On Friday night you seemed to have the world figured out. It’s been four days. What changed?” Mike asked, smiling over the edge of his cup.

  Dylan debated for a moment how much to tell him. Sure, her parents didn’t trust the Robinsons, but Mike seemed all right. Besides, who was a PhD student going to sell corporate secrets to? Really, half of the details surrounding her job were already in the press. Taking a deep breath, Dylan leaned in. “Okay, but you can’t tell anyone this, because I am legally obligated to keep my mouth shut.”

  Mike’s grin was lopsided as he tried to force a straight face. “Secrecy. Got it.”

  “When I assess a company, one of the first things I do is talk to the staff to find out what’s going on,” Dylan said, tucking her hands in her lap to keep from flailing them in the air. “This is only my first day of staff interviews, and it’s already a mess. Worse, it is a mess my boss wants turned around in just over two months.”

  “That seems a little quick to try to fix a company recently rated an ‘egomaniac haven’ by Time.” Mike frowned and took a breath before adding, “What are the problems? Maybe there are a few quick fixes you can start with?”

  “My plan exactly, Professor.” She grinned into her mug. “However, it’s clear the quick fixes are going to involve some concessions from everyone’s favorite hoodie-wearing CEO.”

  “First, I’m going to put it out there. I like hoodies. They’re comfortable—”

  “And yet you didn’t wear one to work. Because you know deep down hoodies are a curse upon the human race and the tech industry. Mark Zuckerberg effectively took the pocket protector and replaced it with a hoodie, dooming all nerds to look like they’re coming from the gym at all hours of the day.”

  “You give the hoodie too much credit. Nothing can dethrone the pocket protector.” Mike leaned forward and picked at the pie with a fork. After taking a bite, he added, “The rest is yours. I only wanted a little.” Dylan cocked an eyebrow at him, and he waved the fork at her to continue. “Back to the issues at hand. Tell me what’s wrong with the hoodie wearers.”

  “It comes down to three things. First, the employees feel underappreciated and overworked, like most people. Then there’s the whole disappearing-management act. Technocore used to be so small that three years ago everyone knew everyone by name. Employees had direct access to Tim. Now, he has an entire floor to himself, where he is holed up with the coffee cart.” Dylan paused to catch her breath as Mike hissed in disapproval. Hogging the coffee cart was the equivalent of commandeering the watercooler in another office. It was corporate-culture massacre. No one wanted to be caught outside the CEO’s office chatting about the Seahawks when the guy decided to get a cup of coffee.

  “Okay, what’s the third?”

  “You know what the third is.”

  Mike inclined his head. “Yeah, but I want to hear your professional diagnosis. This is interesting to me.”

  Dylan wanted to hug him. No one found her job interesting—not her family and certainly not Nicolas. Hell, half her coworkers thought it was boring. “Fine. No one wants to work at douchebag central. That video of the fight with the old ladies was the final straw.”

  A few months ago, Gunderson and several of his friends had gotten into a shouting match with some elderly women from the community softball booster club over who had the right to sit closest to home plate. Someone had actually recorded Tim shouting, “Move it, Nana! Technocore bought these damn seats.” One of the poor octogenarians had started crying and begged to wait until the next inning because her grandbaby was playing third. Eventually, the women had picked up their walkers and shuffled slowly out of frame, mumbling about how rude young people were. The internet had had a field day.

  Mike pursed his lips, his eyes sparkling.

  “Say it,” Dylan mumbled, picking up the fork and taking a big bite of pie.

  “I think your professional assessment of ‘douchebag central’ is funny. I mean, maybe I wouldn’t phrase it like that to Tim, but it’s funny.”

  “I was thinking it would go over better as Technocore isn’t well received by the community.”

  “Hmmm . . .” Mike wrinkled his nose.

  “What?”

  “I mean, that’s true. But the bigger issue is, people are embarrassed to work there, right?” Dylan nodded through a mouthful of pie. “Maybe you should tell him that. I mean, phrase it better. But make sure he knows his behavior impacts all the employees.”

  “You’re right,” Dylan said, setting the fork down. Mike’s gaze flickered over to the pie for a moment. “Please. No one ever has just one bite. Go on.”

  “Two bites, then,” he said, picking up the fork.

  “So tell me. What are you teaching?”

  “Same class as last year. A course on student motivational frameworks,” Mike said, sighing heavily and exchanging the fork for his tablet. Dylan’s thoughts drifted as he started in on an overview of the course content. She decided there were probably fifty undergrads running around the University of Washington with a crush on him on any given day. She couldn’t blame them. Sitting in a worn leather chair, talking about education, Mike Robinson was quite possibly the most adorable person in the city, if not the state.

  “But what about your work at the museum? How does that fit in?”

  “I teach one class each semester as part of my doctoral fellowship. Someday in the very distant future, I will defend my dissertation, receive my PhD, and earn the right to have only one job. Until that time, I will continue shaping the minds of youth. Scary as that is.” He laughed, tapping on his tablet.

  Dylan watched the muscles in his shoulders move as he flipped through slides and wondered where he bought his button-ups and if he was single. People who look good in sweater-vests are not single, Dylan reasoned, then stopped.

  What was she doing? Whether or not he was single and looked good in a sweater-vest was not a concern of hers. Neither were the muscles under the vest. A twinge of guilt crept toward her consciousness, and she bit down on it, jaw tightening. Maybe she could convince Nicolas to give sweaters a try. Not that he would take her advice. But a girl could dream that her boyfriend would try something new every once in a while without—

  Dylan cut her relationship musing off midthought. She wasn’t sitting with Mike in this coffeehouse to daydream about his sweater—or anything else, for that matter. Grabbing her notes, she spread them out and started looking for the best easy fixes for Technocore. Dylan felt herself slip into fix-it mode as the chai worked its caffeinated magic on her exhausted mind. She began listing like a woman possessed. Every so often, either she or Mike would reach out and grab another bite of pie. But otherwise they worked in comfortable silence.

  She was in the middle of a brainstorm on community image rehabilitation when Mike stood up and stretched his long frame. Pulling her attention away from the page, she looked around to find the café emptying out.

  “Looks like they’re shutting down. Are you ready to head out?”

  “I guess so,” Dylan said, untucking her feet and setting them on the ground. Holding her mug, she began looking at her piles of papers and wondered how she’d managed to spread out so much.

  “Here.” Mike reached out to take her empty mug, gently brushing her hand and sending tingles down her arm. Her eyes shot up and met the flecks of gold in his, her chest squeezing for a fraction of a second. The pause was almost unnoticeable, just long enough for Dylan to wonde
r if he felt the static, too, when Mike grinned. “Did you want to hang on to it?” he chuckled, lightly pulling the cup from her hands.

  “No.” Dylan forced the air back into her lungs, her answer sounding more like a cough than a laugh. He hadn’t felt it. Neale was getting to her. There was no sexy static. She laughed at her imagination as Mike walked to the counter to drop off their mugs.

  Dylan carefully replaced her files in her bag to avoid imagining any more electricity between them. “Did you walk here?” she asked over her shoulder, wedging the last file in place.

  “Yup. You?”

  “Guess we’re walking back together. Don’t let our parents see us.” Dylan watched Mike’s easy expression creep toward a smile and felt relieved. No sparks. She could walk home knowing a moment ago had been a fluke. “How’s the fundraising going?” she asked as she ducked under his arm and out the door, feeling the cold push against her skin.

  Mike hesitated, sucking air between his teeth. “Honestly, not well. My museum is in a low-income neighborhood; most big donors don’t know we exist. It’s hard to convince people to invest in something they’ve never heard of before, in a part of town they’ll never go to, for people they’ve never met.” Mike’s scowl deepened as they passed through the golden shimmer of a streetlight, the glow catching the edges of his jaw, reminding her of Bruce Wayne in old Batman cartoons.

  “I could help.” Dylan felt herself speaking before she had fully thought about what she was offering.

  “Really? Are you an expert in museums too?” Mike laughed, his face relaxing in the pale-gray light left by the cloud-covered moon.

  “Well, no. But I’m good with public perception and business-plan assessment,” Dylan answered. She reminded herself that no matter how swamped she felt at Technocore, she should help. Every child, regardless of their financial means, deserved a top-notch learning space.