Loathe at First Sight

by Suzanne Park

  We stayed in the bathroom a while, chatting about the pregnancy while we freshened up. When we were ready to rejoin the festivities, we walked back to an empty room. Candace asked, “Where’d everyone go?” The balloons and flowers were all removed, too. The prerehearsal dinner party had vanished. I checked my watch. We were in the bathroom for only thirty minutes.

  On the table next to our purses were two silver domes on top of two plates. One where Candace was seated, the other where I had been, next to Jane. I handed Candace one of the sets of silverware in the center of the table where the orchid arrangement had been.

  She lifted her dome first, revealing a small can of ginger ale, a cup of chicken soup, and a pack of oyster crackers.

  Under mine? A “skinny girl” salad, fat-free Italian dressing, and a small square of engagement cake with Jane’s face on it.

  Classic.

  “Hey! Where’s my cake?” Candace moaned.

  I slid mine over to her. “Baby can have first dibs.”

  Chapter Nine

  Five thirty A.M. wakeup times were the worst, but I could either wake up at the asscrack of dawn or stay at work way past midnight to get the game launched on our accelerated schedule. Neither choice was good, and both were worse options than rocks or hard places. I chose the asscrack.

  Already, these long days and nights had taken a toll on my body. But I had to do this. To prove to all the naysayers at work that I could handle it. Plus, with the Seventeen Studios brand name on my résumé I could go anywhere next. It had cachet like Google or Apple. AND . . . my game idea was going to be produced by ME! That was maybe the coolest thing to ever happen in my entire existence. Who cared if my life span shortened by a few hundred days because of the grueling work hours I imposed at age twenty-seven and a half?

  On my drive to work I called my mom, who had texted that they were back from Italy. Eight in the morning central time was a perfectly reasonable time to call them. After all, she often called me presunrise in Seattle, presumably by accident.

  Mom picked up on the first ring. “Melody-ya, what’s matter? You in hospital? You hurt? Why you call so early?” Her voice was more shrill and panicked with each sentence.

  “I’m on my way to work and thought I’d call you while I had time in the car. I’m not in the hospital. Oh! I wanted to ask you something.”

  My dad jumped on the line. “You finally have boyfriend? Is that why you call so early morning?”

  Oh my god. I didn’t realize that calling at an unusual time translated into me being injured or announcing I was actually dating someone.

  “No, Dad, I don’t have a boyfriend. I just called because I had time to check in with you.”

  I could feel my parents’ hearts sink with their weighty silence.

  “Well, at least you not in the jail.” Thanks, Mom.

  “And you not call to tell us you move back home with us.” Thanks for looking on the bright side, Dad.

  Time to change the subject. “So how was Italy? What cities were your favorites?”

  “Rome. Vatican City. Venice. Very wet in Venice, you need special rain shoe,” Dad said. “Too many pigeon.”

  “So did you have a good time, though? Did you go to a lot of museums and walking tours? How was the pizza and pasta?”

  Mom chimed in. “I got sick of too many cannoli. Too much cheese in all our food. So we ask around for Korean food.”

  “Wait, you ate Korean food in Italy?”

  Dad cleared his throat. “Most of time. We miss some tours because we looking for it.”

  I rubbed at my brow. “Seriously? You ate mostly Korean food there?”

  “And some of your Carnation instant breakfast.”

  I shook my head. Time to change the subject again. “Well, I hope you had fun. Anyway, remember when I downloaded the Liftr app on your phones when you came to visit me a long time ago?”

  “Yes, we have some trouble, I remember, and you help us.” The trouble she referred to was when the app prompted her to enter a username, and she entered in all caps, “I.DO.NOT.HAVE.USER.NAME.SORRY.” Luckily, Liftr rejected it because it had too many characters.

  “Have you guys used that app recently? I got some feedback from a driver that there had been some recent passenger activity that I wasn’t aware of.”

  “Melody! What you blame us for?” In a flash, I had triggered my mom’s anger. You could hear it in her shrill, antagonistic voice, and she would soon detonate if I didn’t diffuse this hostile situation right away.

  “A Liftr driver informed me of some unusual activity on my account, and apparently my passenger rating is really bad.”

  My parents, having a muffled sidebar conversation in Korean, whispered words like cheongmal (really), aigoo (oh geez), ssawoseo (argue), and then in English, “black person driver.” Uh-oh.

  My work commute moved faster than the GPS had predicted. I needed to wrap up this conversation before I entered the no signal parking garage entry ramp. “Hey, Mom? Dad? I’m pulling into my building now, so I have to go. I’m going to remove you from my Liftr account today, okay? My car is dying and I need Liftr. If you want me to set up your own account, I can help you with that, but not now. Maybe this weekend.”

  I had every right to remove them for their questionable conduct. So why feel so bad about deleting them from my account? I was a few steps away from being banned from the service, and I needed that riding option in case of an emergency. Like my car not starting. Nope, you will not feel guilty about this, Melody.

  Rather than raise hell, my mom said without any fight in her voice, “We don’t use it much anyhow. Just few time when we going around downtown. Why you drive to work? You should walk. You need more exercise.” Was this one of her proud you need to be healthy like your dad and me moments, or one of her let’s talk about your weight segues? Since I’d moved to Seattle a few years ago from Chicago I’d gained about ten pounds. And she noticed, because she mentioned it every few conversations.

  “I’ll call you later!” I zoomed down the garage ramp and took my pick of widely available parking spot options. The only other car here? Ian’s fucking new Tesla.

  Before I could put my stuff down in my office, I heard Ian bellow behind me, “Melody! You’re here. In my office, NOW.”

  I had been quiet, how did he know I was here? With my overstuffed computer bag, old raincoat, and worn-leather purse hanging off my arms like a TJ Maxx last-chance clearance display, I padded over to the executive corridor.

  Ian scooched out of the doorway to let all my schlepped belongings and me through. On the wall monitor were my forecast and budget PowerPoint slides I had put on the shared drive the night before. Seated in one of the guest chairs was Nolan, running his hand through his wild brown bedhead hair, scrunched flat on one side, sticking straight up on the other. His gray plaid shirt was covered in “left in the dryer a few nights” wrinkles. He had a rolled-out-of-bed-after-being-with-a-gorgeous-woman-all-night look about him.

  “Nolan and I have been going over the forecast and budget numbers you both prepared for the board.”

  I bit my bottom lip and stared hard at the screen. I never told Mr. Intern I’d be doing everything without his consultation.

  Ian continued. “For the most part, it’s correct. But your assumptions aren’t spelled out, and most of your calculations aren’t shown in detail. The board gets super in the weeds and really gets off on rolling around in data.”

  I waited for an apology for his crass remark. Of course, it never came. “I need you to do all of this over. Show the work this time with a bottom-up granular approach instead of a top-down one.”

  My brain finally woke up. “Do it all over? That took hours! I don’t have time—”

  Nolan leaned forward from his chair and adjusted his glasses. “Not a problem. I’ll work on the number crunching, and Melody can review the final version. We’ll send it to you this evening.”

  A grimace flashed across Ian’s face. “Okay, but this afte
rnoon we have the nine-hole tourney at the country club. Who’s going to be my caddy if you’re working on this?”

  My mouth opened to respond, but Nolan’s no, don’t you dare glare made me bite back my words.

  Ian sighed. “Send it to me by one P.M. today so we have time before the tournament to review it if I have questions.” Then he shooed us away to make a call.

  Once we were out of earshot, Nolan muttered, “He woke me up before sunrise so we could go over the numbers. You know, the ones you worked on yourself and didn’t even have the courtesy to share with me.”

  “It was easier to do myself,” I huffed. “I had too many meetings so I had to work on it whenever I could find spare time. Plus, I’m sure you had your hands full last night. The last thing you probably wanted was to work on budgets and revenue forecasts.”

  Confusion flashed on his face. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing. Never mind,” I muttered. “So why does Ian want another pass at the numbers?”

  He sighed. “Well, you could have had me do the work, or at least let me review yours before you uploaded it. Some of your assumptions are too conservative, and some of your revenue projections are way too optimistic. You need to clear your calendar so we can get this finished by the deadline.”

  “Fine.” I declined all my day’s meetings on my phone calendar. “Let’s start now. Maybe if we finish early you can still make it to your treasured golf game with your uncle,” I said flatly.

  He rolled his eyes. “And I’ll book a conference room for the whole day just in case. The small one at the end of the hall is usually free.” It was the freezing conference room that had a wobbly table and was littered with broken chairs. One look at my facial reaction and he burst into laughter. “Look, it’s not THAT bad. At least it’s available. And there’s no Asher to deal with there.”

  Well, we both hated Asher. At least we had that in common.

  We walked to the always-empty Ernest Cline conference room in silence. The motion-sensor light took a few extra seconds to register our presence. When the overhead fluorescents flicked on, we could see that some evil bastard had uncapped all the dry-erase markers and scattered them on the floor, removed the rickety table, and left a graveyard of broken chairs in our midst.

  Nolan inspected our seating options and wheeled a seemingly normal chair over to me. “Okay, here’s one of the least messed-up ones I could find.” I sat, and it hissed as I slowly shrank down to the shortest setting. “Oh, I guess the height adjustment mechanism is broken,” he said, stating the obvious.

  When I stood, the seat hissed again, moving the seat back up to the original position.

  Nolan pushed another chair in my direction. This one also looked “normal” but didn’t swivel, which was fine, given the alternatives.

  For himself, he sat in one that was stained with black, brown, and white splotches. I never understood how seats could get that dirty from everyday work use. Maybe they got that way from after-hours recreational use? Gross, Melody, don’t even go there. Mind out of gutter, please.

  “Shit, we need a table.” Nolan disappeared and came back a minute later with a small circular metal bistro table that he stole from the kitchen.

  Asher messaged me as Nolan propped open the door. Just saw your ex-boo N in the hallway and grilled him about that hot girl. She was a drunk hot mess when she arrived and he put her in a cab. He also said she was boring??? Idk who cares?

  I couldn’t fight the smile forming on my lips.

  Nolan cared.

  Holding the heavy tabletop with both hands, Nolan shimmied through the door like he was holding a very large steering wheel. It was the first time I had the opportunity to take in all of his tall, athletic physique. He breathed heavily as he placed the table in the middle of the room, and I wanted so badly to push away the swath of his hair that fell onto his tortoiseshell frames. Did he notice my gaze when I followed the outline of his shoulders and chest as they strained against his button-down fitted shirt? No, no, no, Melody. It’s Nolan Fucking MacKenzie. I distracted myself by pulling my laptop from my computer bag and signing in to the network. My cheeks prickled with heat, even though the room was meat-locker cold.

  Remember, he’s your intern. “Okay, let’s get started,” I said in a clipped, businesslike tone.

  He unbuttoned his shirt a little. “That was some good strength training.”

  My eyes stared at where his fingers had just been.

  “What?” he asked, noticing my intense interest in his upper-chest area.

  My cheeks flushed with heat. “What? Oh, I was just . . . thinking I liked your shirt. Big fan of plaid.” Oh god. “It’s a good cut, too.” I couldn’t stop talking. “It’s not too baggy.”

  Over our opened laptops, I peeked up from the screen and caught Nolan watching me. His mouth curved upward as he looked back down and typed.

  “What?”

  He smirked. “I was just thinking about how you tried to do this without me. Big mistake.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, I did these types of projects all the time at my last job, even though I was a copywriter and a creative person. People like me get stuck doing other people’s work all the damn time.”

  He pushed away some chairs and lifted a projector off the floor and placed it on the table. Connecting it to his laptop, he turned it on. It whirred for a few seconds before a beam of light shone on the white wall.

  “Well, I don’t know what the standards were at your last job, but you forgot some key assumptions in your projections and budgets. I have a list of them here.” A mirror image of his laptop screen appeared on the wall. Nolan typed in his password and a detailed Excel sheet popped up.

  My eyes moved down his spreadsheet, taking in each of his detailed line items. All twenty-three of them.

  I had only half of them accounted for, at most.

  When I finished scanning, I thought I’d find a smug I told you so expression plastered all over his face, but surprisingly, I didn’t. He leaned in closer. “Do we need to add anything else?”

  I pulled up the presentation from the hard drive. “I had two others. One is for music licensing costs. The other one about whether we make an Android version.”

  He nodded and added those to his spreadsheet. “Anything else?”

  I shook my head and updated the spreadsheet I had used for all the previous calculations. With Nolan’s added caveats, my revenue projections and budgets had changed by 12 percent. Not a huge amount, but enough to probably get fired if we ever had to request additional budget or missed our financial target.

  My lips pressed together. It killed me to say it, but not saying something would be wrong. Looking at my laptop keyboard, I mumbled, “Thanks for your help.”

  He cleared his throat to get my attention. He had his index finger behind his earlobe when I looked up. “I’m sorry, what did you say? I missed that.”

  I pinched my mouth. Damn it, Nolan Fucking MacKenzie.

  I exhaled. “Thank. You. For. Your. Help.”

  He beamed at me. Arrogant bastard. Leaning back in glory, he nearly fell because his floppy chair back was broken. I burst into a fit of giggles as he skittishly sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.

  Feeling bad about my outburst, I asked, “You want to double-check my numbers before we email them over to Ian?”

  Tingles of excitement passed through me as Nolan scooted his death-trap chair next to me. With him this close, I could really see how attractive his features were, with his gleaming dark brown eyes, full lips, and powerful, broad shoulders. I found myself subconsciously leaning closer, removing the distance between us. Swallowing hard, I tried to focus on the numbers on the screen and not the heat radiating from his body. Could he hear my heart thudding against my chest? Thud-thud-thud-no-no-no-no-Mel-Mel-Mel . . .

  He tapped the down arrow key on my laptop. “I ran into Asher in the hallway. He mentioned that he was at a rehearsal dinner with you yesterday and you both saw me.�
�

  Oh no.

  Oh-no-oh-no-oh-no.

  Sweat sprouted in the usual places. Forehead. Upper lip. Armpits. My bra underwire area.

  He shrugged. “It was the first time I’d tried online dating since I moved to Seattle.”

  “Oh, how’d it go?” I swallowed hard and stared at the laptop screen.

  “She introduced herself by saying she had just met up with another guy earlier and they’d had too many drinks. And guess what?”

  I bit my lip and looked at him.

  “After I complained to your officemate about how she was twenty minutes late for our date, that she had already had three drinks and wanted to do shots with me, and then asked me flat out how much money I made, Asher slapped me on the back and asked for her number.”

  I laughed so hard it hurt my sides. What a classic Asher move.

  He smiled and his gaze shifted from the screen to my face. “Everything checks out.”

  “What?”

  “The numbers. All the formulas and inputs look good.” Nolan took off his glasses to wipe the lenses with his shirt. When he put them back on, he lowered his head and looked at me through the top of them. “I have to ask, why didn’t you just let me work with you?” His long lashes are so distracting. “It was easier to do it together.”

  My face burned with equal parts attraction and embarrassment. “I wanted to prove I knew what I was doing. At my last job I worked my ass off and was rewarded for that.”

  He nodded slowly. “Every job and every company is different, though. With new situations, you might need to adapt.”