Golden Hour

Chapter 9

Since childhood I’d always tried to separate work from my private life. Only rarely did the two spheres meet. Emily proved to be a rare outlier as both a colleague and my best friend.

Any other time those worlds collided, rampant social anxiety would make me retreat. It felt wrong. As though work was trying to encroach upon my free time like a treacherous spy lurking in the shadows.

In the US, companies often blurred the boundaries between work and play but forbade coworkers from forming romantic attachments. To be fair, they caused more problems than they solved. People in management seemed to think: "Work together; play together--but not too much."

Such a strange outlook. Keep the two worlds separate. Job done.

On the rare occasion I did meet a boss or colleague outside of work, I prayed they wouldn’t see me. Or, even worse, talk to me. Yet they always did because social etiquette dictated it, no matter how badly both sides wanted to avoid meeting.

Whoever had designed those rules were sadists. Or masochists. Or both.

With all that in mind, one might imagine my utter dismay once I'd waltzed up to the bar at Flaming Tamales. After ordering two giant frozen margaritas, I turned and spotted…

Him.

In a corner booth Neil sat amid a group of middle-aged nerds who would all fit in at a sci-fi convention or a physics symposium better than the Flaming Tamales happy hour. Laughing and joking with friends, he nursed a pint of beer and hunched over fantasy role-playing game paraphernalia. He rolled a twenty-sided die when his turn began.

No. Freaking. Way.

It felt like The Big Bang Theory had sprung to life before my eyes. Albeit with different characters. The group consisted of a burly, bug-eyed genius bemoaning the campaign design, a soft-spoken teddy bear running the game as dungeon master, an athletic rogue dressed all in black who insisted on stabbing all of the orcs before they’d even entered the room, and a clever strategist embedding his next move in a web of creative storytelling.

Neil's business persona had all but vanished. If it hadn’t been for his resting neutral face and warm brown eyes, I might not have recognized him at all. Sporting a five o’clock shadow, Neil adjusted his glasses in a way that made my heart perform a complex series of hooble-de-flips.

To complete the transformation, he wore the nerdiest T-Shirt, with a scene from the Order of the Stick webcomic featuring the necromancer Xylon next to an orc. It proudly displayed the following quote: “Sacrificing minions! Is there any problem it can’t solve?”

Yeah, damn it! How about my heart palpitations?

Neil Frost hadn’t simply appeared in my private sphere--he’d already nestled himself inside a compatible one. Long before I’d arrived. It would only take a single brave moment to enter his private world and give ourselves a reason to draw closer.

Should I go to them? Introduce myself?

But what if Neil wanted to keep his spheres separate too?

He was my client, after all.

Neil Frost the Accountant? I could resist him with a decent amount of effort.

But Neil Frost the Nerd? He could be my downfall.

“Two frozen margaritas, one salt, one sugar,” the bartender declared.

Armed with a marg in each hand, I turned to face the gaming group. My heart thudded. My body trembled slightly on the inside. In the face of crippling social anxiety, I made what might have been a bad call.