Taking into consideration Ian and Tom’s outlier personalities, the ten engineers on my development team work well together—we all have a strong mathematical background. Two other engineers on my team are big-time San Francisco baseball fans. In the month I’ve been here, I have learned a lot of baseball statistics. Before joining this group, I didn’t even know what an RBI was. Now I know who leads the team and what their RBI score is. Cassie says that’s the first thing I’ve learned in all my years of schooling that may come in handy one day in landing a guy.
At 11:50 a.m., I get an internal IM from Hita—the only other woman on my team: Ready for lunch?
Hita and I have been friends since our freshman year of college. We were in the same classes and quickly became study partners. Back in the spring she got me in to interview for this job, lucky for me the position was still open when I decided to leave my boyfriend in London. Hita’s American, but her parents came from India. She’s tall, about five foot ten, with long runner’s legs, thick, shiny hair that goes down to the middle of her back, and she has an easy-going, happy personality with a quirky sense of humor that can get her in trouble.
Our freshman year there was seven of us that decided to go to the Halloween parties at school as princesses. Hita was one of the princesses, Pocahontas. Get it? –Indian. My hair is very dark brown, my skin is pale, and my eyes are brown. I was Snow White. Initially, the seven of us had nothing in common except a desperate need to make the most of campus life, which we did, starting with that Halloween party. Six years later, I’m still tight with this group of women. We jokingly refer to ourselves as “The Princesses” to this day—and at times refer to each other by our princess names.
As Hita and I walk down the hall, she asks, “Hey, how’s it going?”
“Fine, though I’m looking forward to the day I can do more than run other people’s algorithms through MATLAB.”
“Give it some time, it takes a while to get the hang of what we’re doing.”
Changing the subject, I can’t help but tell her, “There is the most beautiful guy at swimming. I saw him again this morning.”
She chuckles, “Juliette, you’ve been back what, a month, and you’ve already eyed your next man.”
“How long do I need to be back before I can start checking out guys?”
She shakes her head. “You’re amazing, I don’t even know what happened in London.” Then she gives me a long look and I can tell she wants details. Since I don’t say a word she jokes, “Hey, if he doesn’t work out, Tom can’t get his eyes off of you.”
Scrunching up my nose I say, “Of all the guys who have to have the hots for me, just my luck, it’s Creepy Tom.”
“It could be worse, it could be Ian.”
“Ewww, could you imagine having to eat dinner with Ian? I think I’d barf if I had to look at all that white hairy skin while I ate.”
“I never realized how much I should have appreciated my high school’s dress code.”
“Someone’s got to get that guy to put some clothes on.”
“Do you think men look at, or care about, what some other dude is wearing?”
We both roll our eyes.
Hita follows up with, “Unfortunately those creepy guys from school all got jobs and some of them are now working here.”
By now we’ve reached the cafeteria. Hita spots Caroline, who works on the client side of engineering using PHP to develop our dashboard—what our customers see when they access the solutions departments like mine create.
After standing in the sushi line to get lunch I head into the company dining room to find my friends. It reminds me of my high school cafeteria; everyone is there. You have your bro-grammers, those ex-jock and fraternity guy code-monkeys who are known for their cocky attitude, being bad at math, and sleeping around a lot, a feat made possible by their six figure salaries. Then you have the artist and psychology majors turned programmer types. They work on people's cognitive interaction with technology, write code, smoke a TON of weed, and make art on weekends. They tend to live in social collectives, and are a big reason communal living is making a resurgence in San Francisco. Both of those archetypes are the ones who go to hackathons, and play video games for hours on end. Probably most annoying is that they get to take advantage of that unfair and dumb double standard that allows them to be both nerdy and cool at the same time, while women are not.
Harder to pick out from just looking at them are the engineers and the physicists. The engineers are simple guys who like to solve problems and excel in higher math. My mom always jokes that they make terrible boyfriends since they’re devoid of comprehending romance, but make fantastic husbands since they’re practical, handy and helpful. The physicists, on the other hand, usually can’t do anything around the house and also seem to be arrogant pricks. At companies like mine, we also have mathematicians. They tend to be weirdos; think: UniBomber, Hairy Ian, or Creepy Tom. We also have a gaggle of the H-1B visa carrying guys, mostly from India and China. They tend to hang out together, wear ugly polyester shirts and slacks, and have a habit of giggling and nervously ogling when a woman is near. This list doesn’t even include any of the marketing, sales, customer support, or finance people that work here.
As I look over at the table, I see that Hita is already sitting down with Caroline and Kami. Besides their boss, we are the only women in engineering at this company. As I join them, Caroline looks at me appraisingly.
Shaking my head at Hita, I ask, “What did you tell her?”
Caroline laughs, “Nothing. We’re on our favorite topic: hot guys.”
“I thought our favorite topic was sex,” I respond.
“And the difference is...?” Hita says with a smirk.
“Oh, Abs Guy is definitely hot.” I respond.
Hita starts laughing. “Abs Guy, you’ve already named him.”
“What, it’s not like he had his name written across the back of his speedo.”
“Who cares about a name, what did he look like? Besides the six pack,” Caroline pushes.
“He got out of the pool with one big push up, every muscle in his body flexed.” I swoon as I replay the scene in my mind.
“And?” Caroline says.
“And, his body’s so buff. When he reached into the bin to get out a pull buoy the muscles of his stomach rippled.”
Caroline says, “You have no idea what his face looks like, do you?”
“Um…” I say, as I start cracking up, “he has dark hair and a nice dimple.”
Caroline chuckles and shakes her head. “You sound like you need some, bad.”
Rolling my eyes and groaning, I respond, “You have no idea.”
Hita gives me another long questioning look before asking, “Juliette, last I knew you were taking off for London to be with Stephan.” She bobs her eyebrows up and down when she says Stephan. “The next thing I know you’re asking around about jobs here…without Stephan. “
“How do we move from spotting beautiful men to my experience in London? What about your love life? I haven’t heard anything from you since I’ve been back.” I too can give the power look.
Hita sighs. “My love life consists of dodging my mother’s meddling Indian matchmaking, while finding nothing better on my own. The dating scene is totally depressing.” Her tone is mater-of-fact. “I spend way too much of my time working.” She lifts her fork and points it at me. “Furthermore, you’re changing the subject. I’ve been patient. I haven’t interrogated you. It’s been a month. It’s time you spill on what happened in London with Stephan.”
Tilting my head, I glare. “Really? You need details. You can’t figure out what happened.”
She matches my glare and says, “spill.”
It’s not that I have a problem talking about relationships with girlfriends. In fact, I enjoy talking about guys with them. As I think about why I haven’t spoken with any of my friends about what went down, I tell Hita, Caroline, and Kami, “I need time to process what went
on in London with Stephan and me. I have no perspective to talk about it.”
In her typical persistent manner, Hita continues, “So, it wasn’t as wonderful and romantic as you had hoped for?”
“Yeah, California Stephan, the one from grad school, was very different from London Stephan.”
Caroline enters the conversation. “Different how?”
Closing my eyes, I visualize Stephan last year as I tell her, “California Stephan was fun, nice, friendly, interesting, smart, and worldly. He was always ready for an adventure. He got along well with my friends. My parents liked him.”
Hita interjects, “He also had a devastatingly sexy accent.”
With a dreamy smile, I add, “That, along with his rakish quality, is what made him so irresistible.”
Hita nods in agreement as she tells Caroline, “Yeah, he kind of looks like Captain Hook from the TV show Once Upon a Time.”
Caroline gives me a second look and nods her head in appreciation. Then she prods, “So, what happened to your sexy Brit?”
“Everything was great with us when we were in the US. In London, he wanted to go to the pub and hang out with his boarding school buddies. He was really caught up in what his friends and family thought” I add, thinking about how different his London lifestyle was from the one that we shared in California. As I contemplate what I’m going to say, I remember where we broke down. “I was fine in California—we were fine in California. In London, I didn’t fit in, we didn’t make sense. None of the women in his group liked me. I was completely ignored by his guy friends. His family was polite but I could tell they didn’t approve of me.”
“Oh like when the daughter in Downtown Abbey married the limo driver,” Kami interjects.
Uncomfortably I nod. “Yeah, I guess, something like that.”
Taking a deep breath I explained what feels like the crux of my issue, “Once I showed up, he never attempted to support or help me fit in. Our relationship felt like a mistake. We stopped doing fun things, he was always too busy, and whenever I attempted to talk to him it usually turned into an argument. Every day there were a number of little things that didn’t work.” Thinking about this summer makes me feel sad.
Hita reaches across the table and supportively puts her hand over mine.
While Caroline leans forward and asks, “Did the sex change?”
“Really?” I scoff.
Kami adds, “No, it’s a good question. Was California Stephan…you know all fun and games while London Stephan was all stogy and cold?”
“Are you even talking about sex?” Caroline asks.
I ignore them and continue with my story. “He begged me to move to London. Once I was there, he acted like he didn’t want me around. Even when we were alone, it didn’t work.” Recalling how lonely I felt this past summer in London, I add, “I moved for a guy. When that didn’t work out, and my visa was up for renewal, I didn’t see any point in staying. As I said, not much of a story.”
Caroline comments, “You seem cool with it.”
“If ‘cool with it’ means not being heartbroken. Yeah, I guess I am ‘cool with it.’ All I remember is standing around, with a fake smile on my face, feeling awkward as everyone ignored me. That was my London experience.”
Kami asks, “Do you think he was too polite to break up with you?”
“What?” I’m dumbfounded by this comment.
Kami adds, “You know the British, they’re so polite.”
“I think their accent sounds polite to the American ear. Frankly, I found them to be much more direct than Californians.”
Hita then adds, “We were roommates the first year you dated him. He did have impeccable manners.” Then with a perfect imitation of Stephan she adds, “Juliette, darling, would you mind terribly if I came? It’s been five minutes; I wouldn’t want to miss the polo match.”
Everybody starts cracking up.
“Come on, he never watched polo,”
We laugh some more.
Then Hita looks at me with caring eyes. “Hey, I’m so sorry. We all thought you were having this romantic summer in London. You never said anything.”
“It’s over. I’m back. I’m lucky that three months later the position I applied for was still open and they still wanted me.” While my insides twist remembering how disappointed I was when I told Stephan I might not renew my visa and his reaction was, relieved.
Hita adds with a cocky look, “Analytics is where it’s at; engineers get a lot of job offers.”
We all nod our heads in agreement.
“The only thing I really lost out on was my summer. The weather sucks over there. Next time I follow a guy to another country, he’ll be an Australian.”
Caroline then adds, “I hear they love going down under.”
“Ew! Worst pun ever!” we all say in perfect unison as we stand up to head back to our desks to spend the rest of our day programming.
Chapter 3 – Meeting Cassie’s Friend
I’m jarred awake by Cassie’s fancy new speaker system. Ugh. My roommate was out partying and brought some guy home. My eyes are closed, but I’m awake in bed. My sister, Leigh, warned me not to move in with Cassie. She said Cassie would make a terrible roommate since right after a divorce many women go through a promiscuous, wild period. My sister can never say anything nice, so I disregarded her advice. Now I’m regretting that decision since I really need my sleep. It’s 2:17 a.m. I don’t want to be dragging tomorrow. Should I go into the living room and ask her to turn the music down? The low rumble of a man’s voice—alongside her higher-pitched laughing—reverberates through the walls into my room.
Not wanting to go out there since I look a mess in my oversized T-shirt and pajama pants—not to mention the bedhead I’m sporting—I close my eyes as I contemplate my next move. Our upstairs neighbor, Charlie, will complain; that way I don’t have to be the shrew. Maybe I could fall back asleep with all the noise. Not having to wonder for long, I hear heavy banging on our front door.
Charlie yells, “It’s two o’clock in the morning, turn that thing down!”
Even though I’m not able to make out the words, I know my roommate is grumbling, but the music stops. One less conflict for me to deal with. Phew.
The party moves from the living room to her bedroom, which is right next to mine. I spoke too soon. Ugh, do I really need to hear them having sex? All I want to do is sleep.
All too soon, my alarm rings. It’s 5:50 a.m. I’m meeting Meredith for a run. It’s time to get dressed and get moving. Throwing off my pajamas and the oversized T-shirt, I pull on my running shorts, sports bra, and top, and head into the bathroom. While leaning over the sink to spit out my toothpaste, the door opens. Turning my head, I get an eyeful of a naked man—as in full frontal nudity. Yes—a cock shot.
A gravelly voice says, “oh, sorry,” as he recloses the door.
For about a minute, I’m paralyzed. That was a rather shocking wake-me-up visual. Cassie has the master bedroom, so I never remember to lock my bathroom door. Once I finish brushing my teeth, I grab my sneakers, maneuver through our dark condo, and run outside so I can meet up with Meredith.
Meredith was another college princess. She was Cinderella, which makes sense due to her blond hair and real life step monster. Meredith and her boyfriend, Sam, recently moved only a block away from Cassie and me.
We meet up about halfway between our apartments, and head out on the five-mile loop. We run down the middle of the road because every fourth lot of this tree-lined street has construction—the downside of living in a booming town.
About a mile in, I tell Meredith, “Cassie came home at 2 a.m. with some guy. I sort of got to meet him this morning.”
“Yeah? How’d that go?”
“It was eye-opening.”
She gives me the ‘there’s a story here, are you going to share?’ look and says, “So, is he cute?”
“Well, um, he has dark hair….”
“Juliette, to what are you allud
ing?”
“He walked into the bathroom when I was bent over the sink. I got a perfect, full frontal. It kind of freaked me out.”
She gives a quick chuckle before asking, “So...is he well-endowed?”
“That’s your question?” I respond in horror.
“Well, it’s not like I can ask if he has nice eyes.”
“Ah, I really have no interest in looking at strange guy’s private parts.”
“You and Cassie were high school friends, right?”
“Yeah, friends since kindergarten.”
“Besides the little morning wake up visual, how’s Cassie as a roommate?”
“Actually it was a rather large wake up visual,” I add. Then follow up with, “She’s good…and strange at the same time. The last six years of our lives have been so different. I guess the jury’s still out if living with Cassie is one of my better decisions.” As I realize that I couldn’t pass up living with Cassie since I find her shockingly fascinating.
After my run, I grab my work clothes and head into the bathroom for a shower, making sure I lock the door. Pulling on my favorite clothes, I dress in skinny jeans, a girly, long sleeve T-shirt, and a new pair of black knee-high riding style boots. I’m relieved that there are no additional full frontal nudity surprises. By 7:30 a.m., I’m at the office.
At lunch time, as Hita and I walk down the hall towards the cafeteria, Hita starts laughing and says, “I understand you had a very erect—I mean direct—encounter with Cassie’s midnight rendezvous.”
“Really? Please tell me you haven’t spent the morning working on that pun.” She chuckles and shrugs. I continue with, “I hope Meredith didn’t blast that little bit of information across Facebook. I don’t need some future employer seeing stuff like that.”
Jennifer and Rocket (The Princesses of Silicon Valley Book 6) Page 18