Capítulo 42: A Blind Date
Jonah hated pretending to be Troy because he had to tiptoe around certain topics. Like work. And 'his' music. Most of all, he hated having to stick to Troy's schedule to text Eden because that meant he couldn't contact her at all on Thursdays or Fridays.
He did his best with the fake schedule he had been given though. They texted most of Saturday night and Sunday when he wasn't out playing basketball.
At least Troy's shifts usually ended around 4 PM so he was able to text Eden when he finished his usual work-from-home schedule most weekdays. It was a bit of a problem how dependent he was becoming on hearing from her.
Jonah ended up calling her twice more the week before Easter because he wanted to hear her voice. He could almost imagine her smiling that way. He really had it bad.
What was he supposed to do about these feelings? It wasn't as if he could suggest they hang out in person. They wouldn't do anything but continue to pointlessly grow until they crushed him. Then what?
He never should have gotten involved in the first place. When had taking Troy's advice ever gone well for him?
Much more of this and he was going to lose his mind completely. It didn't help that he probably wouldn't hear from her this weekend either because she would be busy with her family. That only made his mood worse.
On Friday, he prepared himself for a very long weekend before he would be able to talk to her again. He had to go into the office too for his monthly meeting with his supervisor and wasn't exactly looking forward to that either.
Everyone was going to stare at him. They always did. He tried setting his meetings in the middle of the day so at least he wouldn't get caught by people coming and going from the parking lot but that hadn't worked out for him this time.
His supervisor wanted him to come in toward the end of the day because that was the only time he had available. And what the supervisor wanted, the supervisor got.
Jonah knew he had no right to protest. Once he found a good stopping point, he forced himself to get dressed into business casual clothes and head out for his meeting, hoping to get this over with as soon as possible.
He drove over to the office and used his rarely utilized ID badge to get into the building. As expected, he got several stares on the way in.
If Troy was the one being stared at, he would pull a face or something to make the people staring feel ashamed of themselves and look away. But Jonah had never been as gutsy as Troy. He kept his head down and walked to his supervisor's office as quickly as possible.
"Come in, Jonah," Kaleb Markle instructed when he spotted him lurking outside.
He slid into the office and sat down at a chair on the other side of the desk, wishing he was back at home. There was honestly no point to these meetings. Any potential issues or updates were given over email so why bother with this farce?
Unless Jonah physically needed to pick something up or drop something off—which wasn't often—there was no need to actually be in the office. So why go through with it? To make him feel included?
Ha. He would never feel like a part of the software development team because he wasn't. He didn't sit around the break room joking with these people like everyone else. He wasn't a part of the planning meetings when projects were assigned.
He was an outsider. All of his projects were given to him via email. All of his correspondence with the clients was through email as well. His entire job was able to be done from his home computer. He didn't want or need to be here.
"Tell me how your latest project is going," Kaleb requested.
What a joke. They had literally emailed back and forth about this two days ago. But Jonah gave his update anyway.
"It's going according to schedule despite having to tweak the bits of the code we discussed earlier. It should be ready before I take my time off in May. I'll have enough time to run all of the necessary debugging programs before then."
Kaleb smiled. "Excellent work as always. You're a real asset to our team."
Sure he was. "Thank you, sir."
They ended up discussing a few other things that also could have been done over email until it was time to leave. Jonah was able to use the actual time clock for once instead of clocking out on his phone.
It was at the time clock that he ran into one of the few people in this office that felt sorry for him and attempted to be friendly on the rare occasions they met. A pale beanpole of a man named Owen Williams.
"Hey, Jonah! Long time no see," he greeted a bit awkwardly.
"Yeah. How's it going?" Jonah asked because it was the polite thing to do. He hated small talk with those that pitied him.
"Pretty well! I've got a blind date with a friend of a friend tonight. She's hot according to her picture so fingers crossed it goes well. It's been ages since I've been on a date because I suck at talking to girls. But you probably know how that is. I don't think anyone in this office has a girlfriend."
Owen was referring to the natural nerdiness of the software development field but his comment still rankled. Jonah knew how that was for an entirely different reason.
The only date he had ever been on was when a girl that was trying to make a good impression on Troy asked him to prom so they could double. That had been a disaster. He hadn't bothered trying to go out with anyone since because he knew it wouldn't end well.
Aunt Mel kept telling him that there had to be a girl out there willing to see past appearances and suggested looking up burn scar support groups to meet women that way. As if that would help.
It wasn't all a matter of looks. You couldn't stick two badly burned people together and assume they could have a relationship because they shared one bit of trauma. Personalities had to be compatible too.
Eden was beautiful but that wasn't the main reason Jonah had fallen for her. It was how easy she was to talk to and how much fun he had doing it.
"Good for you," he said coolly.
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