With a quick rifling-through of our trade show closet, I found what I needed: a floor display of one of the most-hated characters from our studio’s UFC games, Maverick “Chile” Morita, the tattooed, insult-hurling, hypermuscular cage fighter. I dragged it back to my office, printed out a copy of Ian’s face, and taped it onto Chile’s bulbous head, then faced new-and-improved Ian out toward the hallway for everyone to see. I kept the office light on so he could be easily visible to anyone passing by.
WHEN I GOT into work the next morning, all the cutouts had been removed from my office. No more Kaizen Six. No more UFC cage fighter Ian. The lights were turned off, with no signs of retaliation.
Yeah. That’s right.
Good game, bishes.
Chapter Four
“I’m Asher. My bros call me Ash.” My new officemate barely looked up from his computer screen when he introduced himself. Apparently, I wasn’t worth his wholehearted attention. While I grabbed lunch and ran a quick errand, this guy had moved in and rearranged the entire office, pushing my desk flush against the wall. His toy-covered desk stood in the center of the room, and he still had boxes strewn all over the floor, overflowing with what appeared to be hundreds more tchotchkes. And what did he mean by My bros call me Ash? That only friends called him that, or that only GUYS could call him that?
I heaved my desk flush against his so we faced each other. “I’m sorry, who are you again?” Because I couldn’t believe this guy was in my work space confines, I hadn’t paid attention to his uninspiring introduction.
Asher sighed as he stood up. He easily cleared six feet tall and was a weird mix between nerdy and fratty. He had the sort of body that suggested he used to be athletic, and then he met beer and pot.
“I’m Asher—I’m an assistant producer who worked my way up through QA. Who are you?” He had to be a foot taller than me and definitely used his height to intimidate.
Neither of us feigned any excitement about being office roomies. Within the first few seconds together in the same room, we knew instantly that we despised each other. Insta-hate, for both of us. His massive presence would suck up most of my available oxygen with his 230-pound body. And he’d jack up the office temperature with his substantial amount of body heat. This did not bode well for me.
“I’m Melody. The person who had this office first. The person whose name is on the door. The person whose shit you moved around without permission.”
He laughed and held his hands up, like he was simultaneously surrendering and pushing away my crazy. “Look, I don’t want to start anything. Ian told me yesterday he’d get me an office, and this morning he sprang the news that I’d be sharing it with some new chick—uhhhh—person, and that I should move my stuff here today. I had high hopes.”
Ian didn’t say a word about any of this to me, though. Bastard.
Asher asked, “Are you an artist or something?”
Nearly all the women I’d met at my company worked in marketing, in HR, or in the art department. I couldn’t fault him for assuming that.
“No, I’m in production, too. I used to be a copywriter at an ad agency. I managed a creative and production team to develop a few game apps and also did a lot of localization stuff . . . now I’m here.”
Asher said flatly, “Huh. I’ve never heard of someone getting into game production with your background. You’ve never actually worked in the industry.” He pressed his lips together and stared at me.
“Well, it’s hard to break into gaming if one of the prerequisites is already having game experience under your belt. How do you get gaming experience if no one will let you get a job in the first place?” Game companies complained all the time about needing more women in the industry, but at the same time, the job requirements precluded women from actually being able to get those positions. At my first company happy hour last week (Booze Day Tuesday!), one of the women in recruiting explained to me that upper management white dudes tended to hire other like-minded white dudes. And since women didn’t fit in the white dude demographic, well, they had trouble finding women for key positions here.
Asher shrugged and went back to rapid-fire typing. Maybe, just maybe, Asher wouldn’t be so bad after all. He’d been on the testing team and had clearly been at the company a long time given the massive number of Seventeen Studios collectibles he had amassed. Maybe he could help me. Maybe we could help each other.
The clicking of the keyboard stopped. He asked, “Wait, are you that girl who flooded the QA team with fluorescent lights a few weeks ago? All those testers were so fucking pissed.”
Oh my god. How’d he know?
“Yeah, I did that,” I said coolly.
Asher tossed his head back and belly laughed. “That was pretty fucking embarrassing. Almost as bad as that anonymous idiot who tripped over the power cord in the war room this morning. Did you hear about that?” That idiot he referred to was also me, but I had escaped without anyone seeing my face.
Tripping on the main power supply in our war room where we tracked all online game activity took down our monitoring system. Because of the blackout, our ops guys didn’t see there was a problem with our game servers, which pissed off millions of players worldwide when the network went down for a few minutes. I shouldn’t have even been there, snooping around in the dark, but the door was propped open with a magazine and curiosity got the best of me.
Neither of us had anything more to say. I went back to reading email, he went back to his machine-gun typing. As minutes ticked by, Asher’s office coexistence became suffocating, quite literally. Our office had poor air circulation and the one air vent was on top of him, blowing Asher-diffused, unshowered air into our small room. Looking up from my laptop and seeing his smug face was punishment that was too much for anyone. I needed coffee breaks. Lots of them.
THE LINE FOR coffee in the kitchen was ten people deep.
“You’d think they could spring for at least two coffeemakers, right?” The guy in front of me had these tortoiseshell, bookish glasses that gave me major spec-envy.
I smiled. His curly brown hair, navy-blue-checked button-down, and new tan cords gave him a Corporate America vibe, but his vintage Air Jordans threw me off. Unlike Asher, it looked like he showered recently.
Someone in the front of the line yelled, “New batch brewing! Another two minutes!” Mr. Spectacles turned around again to continue our conversation.
I should have been taken by his lopsided smile and warm brown eyes. But all I could focus on was the C8H10N4O2 caffeine mug in his hand.
My mug.
In this random dude’s hand.
I’d never shifted to MUST KILL HIM mode so quickly in my life. “That’s my mug!” I growled. “It’s been missing and it was a gift! Where’d you get this?”
His face fell a little. “It was on my desk when I got here. It matches my coffee shirt.” He pulled open his shirt to reveal a heather-gray tee with “BUT FIRST, C25H28N6O7” scrawled on a coffeepot decal.
Then he had the nerve to smirk at me. “I’m the new MBA intern, helping out with inclusivity initiatives.”
Inclusivity initiatives? This guy? “But you’re not just an intern. You’re Ian’s nephew, Nolan Fucking MacKenzie.” Oops. Should have censored that.
His wide-eyed look expressed both horror and humor. “Some people probably call me that. Most people call me just Nolan, though.” I grabbed at the C8H10N4O2 coffee cup in his hand but he held on to it tight.
He pleaded with his words and his puppy-dog eyes. “If you take this, what am I supposed to use?”
I yanked it toward me. “Why do you even need this coffee? I saw your Keurig.”
He pulled it back. “I don’t like single-use disposables. Landfills and all that. Also, Keurig pods are expensive.”
I tugged again. “Go raid your uncle’s office—he’s probably got a ton of them sitting in a drawer. I bet your dear uncle would even expense the specialty flavored ones for you.”
Sighing, he asked, “It’s just a mug. Not worth beefing with me, right? Can I just borrow it today? Please?”
It seemed like a reasonable request. I was a reasonable person. I loosened my grip just as he yanked hard. The mug slipped out of my hands and flew out of his grip from sheer yanking force.
If the concrete floor had been carpeted, the cup might have been saved.
“Oh, shiiiiit,” he muttered, grabbing two fistfuls of his hair. He knelt down to pick up the shards. One of the handle pieces had slid under the counter, completely unreachable by hand.
Too stunned to move, I offered him no assistance. Nolan Fucking MacKenzie had broken the only personal thing at work that actually meant anything to me and “Oh shiiiiit!” wasn’t an apology. He could pick everything up himself. Plus, my denim pencil skirt wasn’t too forgiving.
“I don’t have time for this.” Glancing at my watch, I left the kitchen in a hurry. I didn’t have to be anywhere, but I could feel hot tears welling, and crying over a coffee cup in front of the CEO’s nephew was immature and unprofessional. No way could I let anyone see me like that. Especially not the intern.
With no afternoon caffeine running through my veins, punching through the postlunch slog through minimum awakeness was no easy feat. My insomnia caught up with me and by three P.M., I’d hit a wall. I cleared my calendar and made the decision to sneak out and head home early. Asher came into the office and noticed me fishing around in my purse.