Nix - Applied Electromagnetism

I t was Friday afternoon, and Olivia Woerner was engaged in a battle of wills with herself.

Just get up and go talk to him.

She stared across the office at Adam Cortinas. All she could see over the walls of his cubicle was the very top of his head, but that hadnt stopped her from staring at him for the better part of an hour.

Just go over there.

It didnt have to be a big deal. It was a simple ask. The odds of him saying no were pretty slim.

Probably.

All she had to do was walk up to Adam and say one sentence: Will you write me a reference for the Future Leader Development Course?

It was a new program the company had announced last week, and Olivia wanted to be a part of it, more than shed wanted anything professionally since shed first started this job.

Aside from the obvious leverage it would provide when year-end review and bonus time rolled around, it would be nice to be officially recognized finally as someone with leadership potential. A person worth developing into something more than a junior analyst on the commercial systems team at an independent power producer, which was where shed been stuck for the last four years.

Jesus tap dancing Christ, her job sounded so boring she was putting herself into a coma just by describing it.

It pretty much was boring, except the part where she was on call at all hours and sometimes had to get up in the middle of the night to fix some code in a system that had gone offline, or else Very Bad Things happenedlike hospitals and airports losing power, or grandmothers either freezing or dying of heatstroke, depending on the time of year.

That was what Brad, the CIO, always told people when he thought they might be slacking off: imagine if it was your grandmother without heat in Nebraska in the coldest January on record, or without air-conditioning in Reno during the worst heat wave in a decade. How would you feel if your own beloved grandmothers power went out because someone wasnt paying enough attention to their job?

Other than thatthe part where Olivia was helping keep grandmothers aliveher job was mega boring.

Not that she expected work to be exciting. Shed accepted that most people spent their lives doing boring work in boring jobs. Even if you had an exciting job like paramedic or bounty hunter or hostage negotiator, she imagined there were still probably lots of days where it felt ho-hum.

But Olivia had been in the same role on the same team for too long, and she was in danger of stagnating. If she wasnt careful, shed end up as one of those people in their fifties whod been stuck in one job their entire career, until suddenly the technology changed and rendered them obsolete.

What she needed was a challenge. An opportunity to grow into something more.

But despite raising the subject of her professional advancement multiple times with her boss Gavin, opportunities never seemed to arise. Or when they did, they always seemed to be earmarked for someone else.

This leadership course was her chance to stand out. To be noticed, finally, and taken seriously.

Shed already finished her application. All she needed now were two professional recommendations. Gavin had already agreed to provide one, but the other had to be from someone on another team.

That was why she needed Adam Cortinas.

He worked on the plant systems team and spent half his time in the field. Whenever one of the companys power plants was having an issue, Adam was the guy theyd throw at the problem. The CIO loved him, because Adam had saved his bacon about a million times by parachuting into a disaster and fixing whatever was broken. He was a troubleshooting rock star.

If Olivia could get a recommendation from Adam Cortinas, it would give her a serious edge up on the competition.

She and Adam interacted pretty regularly, keeping the company data systems that she maintained integrated with the plant systems that he maintained, and she thought he liked her okay.

Adam could be tough to read. He was a littlebrusque. But he was like that with everyone, even the CIO. It was just how he was. Adam wasnt interested in small talk or making friends around the office. He was laser-focused on his work, and since he was a rock star, he could be as brusque as he wanted.

Olivia wasnt especially into making friends around the office either, but she didnt have a choice about playing nice. She wasnt a rock star like Adam. She was a woman in a predominantly male field, and if she didnt put in the extra effort to suck up and make friends, it would bite her in the ass professionally.

So now here she was on a Friday afternoon, trying to work up the nerve to talk to Adam, which she wouldnt have had a problem with under normal circumstances. If shed needed to talk to him about an ordinary work thing, shed go straight up to him, no problem.

But this wasnt an ordinary work thing. This was a favor she was asking him to do for her.

Olivia hated asking for favors.

She preferred to solve problems on her own. Asking for help felt like an admission of weakness, and she already had enough of a problem seeming weak because she was small and female, not to mention so pale, with her alabaster complexion and light blue eyes, that she practically disappeared into the industrial beige walls.

People had a tendency to look right through her, or right past her, or right over the top of her five foot three inches. It was why she always wore thick, black eyeliner and the darkest, most dramatic lipstick she could get away with in the office. To try and make herself seem tougheror at least less invisible.

Her reluctance to ask for favors wasnt the only thing keeping her from going over to talk to Adam. There was also the small matter of her long-standing crush on him.

Adam Cortinas was the most attractive man in the office by a considerable margin.

Admittedly, there wasnt a lot of competition for the title. Most of the IT guys she worked with were a lot older than Adam, who couldnt be much over thirty, and most of them looked exactly how youd expect middle-aged IT guys to look. A few of the energy traders upstairs were okay-looking, she supposed, if douchebags were your preferred typebut they most definitely were not Olivias.

Adam looked more like an Instagram model than systems analyst. He would have been the hottest guy in any office.

For starters, he had beautiful bronze skin, piercing dark eyes, thick black hair that fell across his forehead in luscious waves, and a jawline that could cut diamonds. Then there was the matter of his body, which was practically a work of art. The guy definitely spent time in the gym. The same vendor-branded polos that hung shapelessly on everyone else around the office pulled tight across his broad chest and clung to his muscled arms like theyd been custom tailored just for him.