The Internship (Stuart Twombly)

Chapter 8

"Only two challenges remain, after which a mere handful of you will be offered full-time employment." Chetty spoke to the crowd of interns. "Now, the next challenge is manning the Google helpline. This is one of the most difficult jobs we have.. combining both customer relations and product fluency. You will be judged on both."

Juliette turned her head both ways to look at her team. They all showed faces of concentration and intense listening. Her eyes landed on Stuart, who was nervously clicking his pen in his hand while staring at Chetty, his mouth slightly agape. Her mind rewinded back to the night before, when she had basically fallen asleep on him and her heart raced from the memory. Stuart, who must have sensed someone looking at him, insecurely turned his head and his eyes met Juliette's. The brunette drew in a quick breath and blushed, looking down at the desk then back up at Chetty.

"This is a very tight race right now. I suggest you study up."

From the challenge introduction seminar the team had made its way back to their group space consisting of computers, dry-erase boards, and novelty action figures. Lyle, who Juliette found to somehow always be energetic, was pacing around the space with a smile, rubbing his hands together while using his best efforts to hype the team up.

"All right! Let's drill it and kill it!"

Neha, Stuart, Juliette, Yo-Yo, Nick and Billy - so basically everyone except Lyle - was sat at a computer, studying away at the various Google helpline issues.

"Authorization failure with Google Drive." Lyle said aloud. "Neha!"

"Permission's probably changed. Request document access."

"Bam!" Lyle cheered proudly. "Chrome connectivity issue. Nick."

"Unselect proxy server for your LAN." Nick stated with ease. Stuart glanced over at the older man in a bit of surprise. This guy, who had made it pretty damn clear that he didn't know anything about computers, was finally starting to get it.

"Nice!" Lyle applauded. "Juliette! Dangerously high CPU usage while Google Drive is running."

Juliette spun in her chair to face the leader. "Initial sync probably hasn't completed. Try quitting and restarting the program." She recited.

Stuart looked up from his computer to glance at her. She had spun back to face her monitor, and her hair swayed from the movement. Stuart forced back a smile. Somehow, this girl had never failed to make Stuart's heart skip a beat. Her gentle voice and warm smile made him forget about everything else happening at that moment. Stuart, still convinced her feelings for him were strictly platonic, tore his eyes from the beauty in front of him back to his computer screen and continued studying.

"Boo-yah!" Lyle hailed. "Billy, I'm locked out of my Google Wallet account."

Billy furrowed his brows. "Is that under Gmail or Wallet Help?"

"Uh, I don't know, sir, that's kinda what I called you for." Lyle mimicked a caller, holding his hand up in a fake phone formation.

"Right." Billy nodded uneasily. "Here's the deal. I'm pretty terrific on the phones. I could sell prosciutto to a rabbi, and I have."

"Except you're not here to sell anything." Yo-Yo cut in, looking at Billy with hard eyes. Juliette, Stuart and Neha nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, Billy, you're not gonna be able to bullshit your way through this one. I mean, the only way to nail this challenge is to study. You just.. you just gotta do it, man." Stuart said, his voice a mix of sympathy and bleakness.

Billy turned back to face his own screen. "Well, great. Then study up is what I'm going to do. I'm going to study up."

Lyle pat the older man's shoulder. Stuart and Yo-Yo looked at each other, almost as if in doubt or suspicion. Stuart squinted his eyes for a short second, and Yo-Yo pursed his lips, before they both resumed their studying.