I really didn’t understand why Mattie refused to leave Markus. She said she loved him, but it seemed more like she was afraid she wouldn’t find another man if she got rid of him.
“We didn’t talk about it.”
“Really? Your man was clearly flirting with the bartender and probably even got her phone number, yet you didn’t want to talk to him about it? Mattie, you’re better than this. You deserve so much more.”
“I don’t like arguing with him. I’m not his keeper, and I can’t go around patrolling everything he does. We have talked about it before and he’s not sleeping with her; he’s just a naturally flirty guy.”
I rolled my eyes at the utter stupidity of her words. It sounded exactly like something Markus had probably said in order to convince her he was not the type of guy who would cheat on her again. Yet everything he did showed he was exactly that type of guy.
I didn’t care what his excuse was – he wasn’t being respectful of my friend and that pissed me off. The problem I had was that I was her friend and it seemed to upset her when I brought up what an ass her boyfriend was. I clearly didn’t want to get her upset and didn’t want to make her feel bad for staying with the guy; I just couldn’t understand why she continued to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Mattie, come on.”
> “I know what you’re going to say, but I love him and that’s the end of it. I trust him. Well, I mostly trust him. I’m not going to break up with him, so just leave it alone.”
“Fine, but just be careful, please. I really don’t want you to get a broken heart.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said as she answered a call and got back to work.
I went back to looking for my error and my computer flashed blue and then went totally black and shut down. I jumped back at the sudden noise of the computer shutting down and then glanced around the office to see if anyone else was having problems.
Everyone else seemed hard at work and were clearly not having the same issue I was. When my computer was unable to turn back on, I had no other choice but to call our main IT help desk. It was like the ultimate defeat when a computer person had to call on another computer person to help them. It was even worse when you were a female in a field that was predominately male. I absolutely despised having to call anyone for computer help.
“Hey, Tom, my whole system shut down and won’t turn back on.”
“Hi, Delilah. How are you today?” Tom said cheerfully into the phone. “That computer of yours has been causing you a lot of problems lately. Maybe it’s time we think about replacing it.”
My computer had been a pain in the butt for months. It constantly required rebooting and finagling to get it to operate even close to how it was supposed to work. The problem was I never wanted to deal with setting up a new computer. I knew how to get this one running, so I always just fixed the errors and moved on. But this time the poor old thing might have given me its last hurrah.
“I was doing well until I lost my computer. I’m trying to figure out a coding error, though; it’s a little frustrating. The damn thing normally just reboots, but this time I can’t seem to get it going again.”
“I’ll come right down and see what I can do,” he replied and hung up before I could protest.
Tom was standing next to my desk in less than two minutes. His glasses pressed deep into his nose as he leaned down near my legs to look at the computer. I tried to roll my chair away, but he had his hand on the arm rest to support himself while he looked for the serial number.
“I can get the number for you, Tom,” I offered, as his close proximity to my legs started to make me nervous.
“It’s okay, I’ve got it. You know, this is one of the oldest computers in the office. I think you should have one of the new ones since you’re doing so much programming and network projects.
“Why don’t you take the rest of today off? I’ll have our new vendor come set up the Lightning Razor computer for you in the morning. He swears by this new model and I was going to test it out, but since your computer is crap, I think it might be easier to just give it to you.”
Although I really didn’t want to have to deal with a new computer, the Lightning Razor was epic in the computer world and I was excited at the opportunity to mess around with it. If my computer wasn’t even going to turn on, then it was time for me to suck it up and get the new one. It would take a little bit of work to set it up, but once I had it running, the new computer would be ideal for my productivity.
“All right, I’ll talk with Robert and cut my day short today. What time should I meet with the vendor tomorrow?”
“I’ll have him come at eight,” he said as he pushed himself back into the standing position.
Tom leaned against my desk with part of his stomach showing from under his polo shirt. It took all the self-control I had not to look straight at his bulging stomach as I tried to wrap up our conversation.
“Okay, I’ll be here,” I said. “Thanks so much for your help. Have a good rest of your day.”
“You know, I was just about to head out early today, too. Would you like to go to an afternoon movie or something?”
“I’m sorry, Tom, I’m still not really dating right now. You know it’s just so hard to move on after losing the love of my life,” I said dramatically.
“Oh, yeah. I’m sorry. Okay. Um, yeah, I’ll touch base tomorrow after the technician leaves. Have a good day,” he said as he scurried away.
“You said you’d go out with the next guy who asked,” Mattie laughed from the other cubicle.