“Just saying how you make me feel,” I tell her. “And Kat . . . I love you.”
She smiles, then giggles. “You love me all the way up to your chest from the way it looks. Glad I make you wear a condom, or else you’d have come shooting out my nose.” I grab my discarded t-shirt, wiping off the mess a bit.
We chat for about another thirty minutes until Kat yawns. “Ready to turn in?”
“I’m beat,” Kat admits. “I just hate getting up to an alarm. You wake me up so much better.”
“After your presentation Friday, I can wake you up just the way you like more and more often,” I assure her. “Uhm . . . maybe this is too quick, but if you’d like, you can move some things over here. I’ve got space in my closet for you.”
“The closet barrier, huh?” Kat says, giggling when I give her a confused look. “I’ll explain later. Let me think on it, and I’ll call you after work tomorrow. I love you Derrick. G’night.”
“G’night, Kat. I love you too.”
Chapter 18
Kat
It seems almost prophetic as I walk into the office, chugging what’s already my second coffee of the day. It’s Wednesday, and of course the local radio station is cranking it loud. I don’t wanna work, I want to bang on the drum all day . . ..
“How nearly appropriate,” I mutter to myself, half slinging my backpack onto my desk. Looking up, I see Tyler, one of the other coders. “Hey Tyler, you mind turning that down?”
“Oh lighten up Kat, it’s Hump Day!” Tyler, who isn’t facing a deadline and certainly isn’t worried about proving himself in this industry, calls back. “If you want, I can change it. Maybe some Rihanna on repeat? Work, work, work!”
I give him a glare that says I’m ready to work, not joke around. “As soon as the ode to Wednesday ends, can you turn it down though? I gotta focus and get this done.”
“Will do,” Tyler says. “Hey, Kat?”
“Yeah?”
“Kick some ass Friday. You know . . . because you’re awesome.”
I smile, feeling good that the guys around here support me. “Thanks Tyler.”
I sit down, reviewing the results of my last bug check. With a hundred thousand lines of code, it’s a bitch to wrap my head around. Until now, it’s been a matter of sending the app to various beta testers who put it through its paces, and then tracking down the errors they find.
But no amount of beta testing is going to be able to catch everything, so I hunker down, obsessively looking at my notes and trying to hunt down which lines need to be adjusted. It’s hard, stressful work, and I’m running out of time.
Part of me knows I shouldn’t stress. Lots of programs are released without being perfect. That’s what updates and patches are for. But I really want to make sure this is good right off the bat so it doesn’t get a bad rap.
Still, it’s slow, dull work, and my mind keeps going to thoughts of Derrick. Since my talk with Elise where I realized how hard I was falling, and our subsequent confessions of ‘I love you’, we’ve texted constantly, even as he’s given me time to do work. Pic exchanges helped some, but damn there’s no substitute of being in his arms.
The day wears on, lunch scarfed while I try to focus, but by the time six o’clock rolls around, my eyes are half crossed and I’m needing a break. Firing up my browser, I go to the website that lets me listen in to Derrick, ready for my own Love Whispering on my headphones.
“Good evening, it’s my personal second favorite day of the week, Hump Day Wednesday,” Derrick says, making me grin. At least someone enjoys Wednesdays, even if it’s just for a corny opening joke.
“What’s your favorite day of the week?” Susannah asks. “Friday?”
“Nope,” Derrick replies. “Saturday. Get to sleep in, watch cartoons in my PJs, and have the whole day and night to do whatever, or whoever, I want.”
You mean you have all evening to spend with me, if the last month or so has been any indication, I think. I like Saturdays too.
Susannah gives a grade-school-worthy “Ooh!” and her delight at Derrick’s joke is palpable.
“Tonight’s show is about something that could even be more important than actual bedroom performance,” Derrick says.
“Wait, there’s something more important?”
“Yep. What’s the point of having all the best tricks in the toolbox if you never get a chance to show them off?” Derrick asks. “What I mean, of course, is flirting and the art of meeting someone. Now, unless you get all your dates off of Craigslist, you gotta actually talk to someone and meet them. That takes guts and sometimes reading signals. Not everyone has a blinking sign on their chest that says ‘take me to bed, you big stud.’”