Today's Reading
"And we have...cupcakes!" Arie grabs the big pink box from beneath his desk, distracting me from the panic threatening to take over my brain. He's barely got the box open when Priya dives in, grabbing two, and reaching for a third.
"Hey, watch that sugar intake," warns Jamal, head of Quality Assurance, as he rolls his wheelchair toward the cupcakes. He's wearing a black polo, per his usual uniform, and comes to a stop, adjusting his black Clubmaster glasses on his nose.
"You're not the boss of me," she says and sticks out her pierced tongue.
"No, but we basically share a desk, and if you're hyper all afternoon, you'll be shaking it with your bouncing knees and your sugar nerves," he says.
Jamal and Priya are polar opposites: Jamal being reserved, serious, and quiet, and Priya being flamboyant, dramatic, and loud.
"You know you love it when the desk vibrates," she coos, winking at him as she flips a bright blue piece of hair from her forehead. Jamal just sighs and rolls his eyes.
"Arie? Help, please?" Jamal asks.
"That's enough, children," Arie says in his best TV Dad voice. "Be nice. And Priya—one cupcake! Nami hasn't even gotten hers yet."
"Sorry," Priya says, sheepishly handing me one.
"No worries." I take it and grin. It's all so freakin' sweet. "What did I do to deserve all of you?"
"Signing bonuses?" a programmer shouts from the back of the crowd.
"Breakfast Mondays!" another adds.
I laugh. "Thanks so much, everyone. There would be no Toggle without you. And I mean that. I'm so grateful for all of you, your brilliance, and your hard work. Thank you for all you do to make Toggle good."
"Fun, not evil!" another shouts.
I raise my mug in a toast to them as I glance around their goofy, oddball, perfect faces, shining back at me. My heart expands in my chest. Who needs a Mitch when you've got an army of eccentric tech nerds who love you? "We're not just a company. We're a family."
Everyone claps their approval.
"And thank you for the 50 Cent," I add. "I really needed that today."
"You can repay us by giving us your official vote. For best Star Trek captain...Captain," Arie says, crossing his arms across his ID tag and nodding back toward the whiteboard, visible through the glass wall of the break room.
"My vote is Janeway," I declare. "She explores a new dangerous quadrant with a ship full of enemies, and still gets the job done."
The Picard, Kirk, and Sisko fans groan and boo, good-naturedly, and the Janeway fans, including Priya, cheer.
"I knew it. Hear that? I told you!" Priya gloats, looking at Jamal.
"She doesn't have a catchphrase!" complains Jamal, throwing up his hands in disgust. "Every good captain has to have a catchphrase."
"She does," I counter. "It's..." Priya and the other Janeway fans join me. "Do it!" we shout together.
"That's a marketing slogan, not a catchphrase," grumbles Jamal as he balances a cupcake on his knee, and then rolls back to his desk, shaking his head in disapproval.
Arie, by my side, laughs. "Okay, redshirts, back to work."
"Really? Redshirts? We're expendable now?" Priya asks.
"Always," jokes Arie as he runs a hand through his short, curly hair. "You all are beaming down to the hostile planet first." Arie glances at me. "You sure you don't want to quit being the boss and come back to code with us? Look at all you're missing."
He says it with some sarcasm, but I actually think it is a tempting offer. Some of my happiest days were early programming time when I got to throw my own Frisbees. Back when I was both programmer and corporate lawyer, melding my two favorite things together: complicated code and even more complicated contracts.
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