There

Call You?

We would meet again in the nights to follow, peculiar as it was, I thought it all to be very funny.

She would always go home late, and would log-out at about the same time as I would. This in itself was strange as all other employees would rush out of the office by the time the clock had struck eleven pm. Maybe she just took long to finish her work?

She had the peculiar problem of being enemies with the bio metrics machine as it refused to read her fingerprint. She would later on do her logging out via the more mechanical method of punching in her employee number. But, during that time it all seemed too comical for me.

I would sometimes assist her with her PC concerns and that's how we got to know each other's nick names, as our company had a strict (well kind of) rule of applying company nick names for each employee and more importantly that was how I learned to pronounce her nick name properly. 

"Say it again sir." She insisted sternly.

"Uhm... DIET-RICH?" I answered, a clear lack of confidence was heard in my voice.

"No no silly, it's DEET-RICK." She said as she smiled honestly at me.

I also noticed some interesting things in her cubicle, such as a pile of books on top of her CPU (most of which were written by C.S. Lewis), a batman cape hung behind her chair, and surprisingly a Spiderman Issue 1 comic was beside her monitor.

She had a different circle of friends, who were mainly those in her work team (mostly guys and some of the ballers). I had then stopped going to games due to my asthma progressing once more. So, there was no particular reason for me to talk to her or get to know her more. 

Besides, I was happy with the friends I had made in my team. Jester (a long time team member who had been in the company before the rest of us, he was always in a joking mood, hence the work name), Jack (always coming in to work using his motorcycle or one of his vans, Jack was a motor head with a soft side), Tank (He entered the company the same day as I did and we underwent training together, a man of few words who liked to pace himself slowly but surely) and Rosey (The only female member of our team, well besides our Specialist, Rosey was indeed the buffer of our team when things got too heated and she always added a feminine touch to our rough antics throughout the day).

One rainy evening as power suddenly went out, Jester, Tank and I, the on duty support, scattered ourselves to properly set up business operations once more. But, as we turned the server back on we discovered one fatal flaw. Wifi was dead and we had no means to report issues of teachers to our China counterparts. We panicked, ran around and soon settled in empty cubicles to do our reports. 

Long story short, I found myself at the doorway of her station, asking if she could leave her computer on so I could send an email. It was no hassle and she seemed a bit amused over what I needed to do. She even looked over my shoulder to see what my report contained.

"So sir, this station? Really?" She said teasingly as she paced outside.

"Well, yeah, I saw it and I remembered Peter Parker sitting here." I replied, and lazily pointed to the comic book she owned.

"Peter Parker is my favorite, couldn't work without him." She said as she giggled.

"Yep me too, always been Spiderman obsessed." Smiling now, I had relaxed a bit and continued to type my report.

"I think 'Parker' is a better nickname for you." She finally said after a while. I shocked, had looked at her, and saw her face much clearly this time. Dark brown eyes with long eyelashes, a cute nose nestled in between them, thin lips painted with pale red lipstick formed into a beaming smile that revealed pearl white teeth, all framed by long black hair that changed into blond as it ended. Finally finding words to speak I replied hastily to her.

"Well, you could call me that, but in return I'll call you 'Watson'." I did not fully comprehend what I said then or what I had started but as she had nodded in agreement I could tell that something big was going to happen between us.