3. Frederick

Chapter 3

Frederick

After I spent some time with Saber’s résumé, I actually felt a lot better about him joining my team. He had exceptional grades from one of the top engineering schools in the country, and his uncle was a smart guy, so there was no reason for me to doubt that Saber was competent.

No one liked a nepo-baby, but as long as I was being forced to hire someone, he didn’t seem like the worst choice ever.

I spent the next few days organizing my files and creating a list of things he could start on. Easy stuff that I’d be able to quickly test and approve to gauge his style. And if all was good, most of those updates could be pushed out to production servers within a week. If he wasn’t completely useless, I felt pretty confident that my next quarter would actually meet some of the customer goals I’d set a year ago.

Saber was scheduled to be in orientation with HR first thing in the morning, and right at ten, Anne from HR came into my office with the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in my life right behind her.

She waved to the desk across from me and told him to put down his stuff as I stood up to greet him. “Hi there.”

Anne took a step back as Saber stepped closer to me. “Fredrick, I don’t think you’ve met Saber yet, but he’s very eager to get started.”

I stood there staring for a few seconds too long before snapping out of my shock and holding out my hand to him. “Nice to meet you, Saber. Welcome to Floom. I’m happy to have you on my team.”

He chuckled in a self-deprecating way that was kinda charming. “Well, I hope that’s true, but even if you were forced to take me, I assure you, I’m a hard worker and will do my best to exceed your expectations.”

I couldn’t help but smile as Anne raised an eyebrow from where she was standing slightly behind him. She was as impressed by his easy charm as I was. “I have no doubt. Please, have a seat and get settled. This will be your desk.” I placed my hand on the desk directly across from mine and then waved to the two other empty desks in the room. “For now, it’s just me and you in here, but I’m hoping to add one or two more people to the team over the coming months.”

He slipped behind his desk to unload the branded backpack he’d been loaded down with.

Anne gave my shoulder a squeeze on her way toward the door. “Thanks for your flexibility, Frederick. I think this will be a real help for your team. Just make sure you delegate as much as possible, so you can focus on the more strategic decisions.”

“Will do. Thanks, Anne.” I smiled at her and stepped back to my chair, trying to ignore the way the air suddenly felt heavier once it was just the two of us left in the office.

I buried my head in my computer, trying not to stare across the room. I couldn’t avoid him forever, but I could buy myself a few more minutes. My thermos of tea was almost empty, and right when I stood up to get a refill, Saber looked my way.

“Ready when you are.”

“Yeah, great.” I rolled my chair over to his desk and walked him through some of the systems that we used.

Fortunately, he had some experience using everything that was relevant to our work during his summer internship at a data mining company. I pulled up the list of initial tasks I thought he could get started with and handed it over. “Let’s start with these. You can get comfortable with the code and then we’ll move on to the bigger stuff.”

Saber looked at the list and smirked. “Yeah, no problem. I should be done with this before lunch.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “There’s no rush, Saber. Take your time to get familiar with how we do things. These have been on the list for months. A few more won’t hurt anyone.”

“This entire list will probably take me an hour, Frederick. I can handle more responsibility. Let me help you.” His grin dropped, and he stared intensely into my eyes like he didn’t want me to look away for a second. “That’s why I’m here, Frederick.”

“Oh, okay…” The heat seemed to crank up, and I was suddenly sweating, my empty teacup long forgotten. I had hoped my list would keep him busy for at least a few days, maybe a week or two, while I figured out what I could trust him with. Even if the company didn’t care about my product, I still cared, and I wanted to put our best foot forward every time. “There are a few other things I planned to work on today. Some new features our customers have been asking for and we just haven’t been able to prioritize. Maybe I can give you one of those to think about.”

“Perfect.” Then he winked. This kid who was working his first job out of college and meeting his manager for the very first time, winked at me. My high hopes for a professional experience with him began to fade as I realized this might not be a good match after all.

No matter how nice he was to look at.

I cleared my throat and scooted away from his side. “Okay, go ahead and work on this punch list of bugs, and when you’re done with those, you can walk me through the code.”

I went back to my desk and pulled up the list of roadmap features I’d been too busy to get started on. One was particularly important and ridiculously tedious, so I’d been putting it off for months. It wasn’t complicated, and anyone who was detail-oriented could dig through the code and find all the places that needed to be fixed. It was just the kind of labor-intensive task that would take several days of uninterrupted effort, and I hadn’t had that kind of time, so I continued to backburner it.

But it was the perfect project for an arrogant new hire who felt like he could do anything. I read through the requirements again to refresh my memory of what had been requested and then wrote up a brief for him to follow.

Every few minutes, I glanced up and peeked over at Saber.

And most of the time, while I was staring at him, he’d peek up and look at me. I tried to keep my eyes down and not look at him, but there was something about Saber that made me unable to resist.