Page 10 of The Grump I Loathe (The Lockhart Brothers #3)

“I don’t think I would have regretted it.” I scowled after Connor as he led the potential distributors into a glass-walled office. He flicked the blinds closed. “What’s that?”

“Connor’s office.”

“Why is it down here and not on the admin floor upstairs?”

“He likes to keep a close eye on production.”

“Mm-hmm.” Lord LockMill in his watchtower. “I’m sure he does.”

After Leigh passed me off to Darius, where my suit was forever immortalized in my ID photo, I sorted out parking and computer access and was told to help myself to any of the snacks in the kitchenette.

I didn’t feel any desire to check them out.

They were probably all chalky health bars chosen by Connor himself.

When we were done, Leigh introduced me to the rest of the high-level team.

Aside from Max, who I’d met at the interview, there were a slew of gameplay designers, level designers, programmers and artists.

Coming from the indie world, it still amazed me every time I landed a role with a big company where every job was done by a different person .

“I’m bad with names but great with faces,” I promised.

“So give me a couple weeks to get it all down.” I got a lot of stares, some curious, others pitying after witnessing my run-in with the boss.

To make things more awkward, it was becoming increasingly clear that I was one of the youngest people here.

An unsettling bead of doubt crept into my mind. Did I really belong here?

“I’ll leave you and Noah to chat,” Leigh said. “You can fill him in on your idea for the POV shift for the opening sequence.”

“Right,” I said. Noah Beckett was the lead writer. He had mousy brown hair and glasses and wore an adorably nerdy sweater vest. When the rest of the team had cleared out, I plopped myself down on the edge of my desk. “So you been working for LockMill long?”

“A few years,” he said, dragging over a spare chair.

“Do you like it?”

He shrugged. “It’s good.”

“Did you work on the first game?”

He nodded.

I sighed, giving him a smile. “Either you’re super introverted and not great with strangers, or I’ve already made an awful impression.”

Noah shoved his glasses up his nose. “Sorry, was I supposed to?—”

I jumped up, rifling through my bag. “First of all, just relax. I’m not assessing you or whatever.”

“Er…” He fidgeted in his chair. “Okay.”

I found the Tupperware box of snacks I’d packed. “You wanna hear my ideas for the opening?”

He pulled out a notepad. “Sure. ”

I shook my head. “Oh no, that notepad has to go.”

He blinked at me, startled. “What?”

“I don’t want you to write down what I say.”

“You don’t want me to take notes?”

“I mean, yes. Notes. But not like that. It doesn’t feel very collaborative. Do you guys have a…” I glanced around the floor, spotting a darkened conference room with a giant whiteboard inside. “Field trip!” I grabbed my snacks and marched on. Noah scrambled after me.

“This is more like it,” I said, flicking on the lights.

Noah glanced around. “We only use this room for team meetings.”

“Is there a team meeting this morning?” I asked. “I mean, are we going to be in anyone’s way?” There was no point in setting up shop if we’d get kicked out in ten minutes.

“Well…no,” he admitted.

“Awesome. Then there’s no reason for us to not make use of the space,” I said, snatching up a marker.

I wrote the word ALIENS in the middle of the board, drawing a big arrow to the word JUNI .

“So, we need to get from here to here, and I think we should open with a bang, you know? Immediately capture player attention. Speaking of bang, how do you feel about music?”

“Music?” he said, settling himself down in a chair. “You mean, in the game?”

“Absolutely in the game, but I actually meant right here and now. Mind if I play some? It helps get me into the thinking flow.”

Noah didn’t say no, so I went ahead, keeping it low enough not to disturb the rest of the floor. Yeah, we were behind a closed door, but I didn’t know how good those glass walls were at blocking sound .

“Okay,” I said. “Back to business. The last game started with the aliens slaughtering half the ship. So for this game, we need to make them feel less slaughter-y and more like beings the players might actually want to help.”

Noah still looked entirely bewildered. “Slaughter-y?”

“Yep.” I broke out my pack of M&M’s, offering him some. “Chocolate also helps me think.”

He waved me off. “Connor’s not a fan.”

That was the second time I’d heard that this morning. “Of chocolate? Give me a break.”

“Eating at our desks—or in conference rooms. We have the kitchenette for that. Or the cafeteria down a few floors. And the music probably isn’t going to go over very?—”

I sighed. “I’m getting the feeling Lord LockMill would like to live in a bland, gray, noise-canceling bubble.”

“Um…” Noah clearly didn’t know how to respond. “I don’t…I’m not sure. He’s just…sort of intense, you know? Sometimes he’ll just stare across the floor, locking in on you, and you know you’ve messed up.”

I leaned against the table, lips twitching. “Sounds like you’re scared of him.”

He blinked. “Aren’t you? He’s, like, the definition of scary.”

“What, you mean he walks into a room and Death Star music starts playing?”

Noah looked taken aback. “Well, no…but?—”

“The color palette of the room changes? Shadows start stretching over the walls? ”

Noah finally cracked a smile. “Not exactly.”

“Do horses scream in the background every time you say his name?”

At this, he just looked confused. “ Young Frankenstein ?” I tried.

“Frau Blücher? Nothing?” He shook his head.

Oh, this poor misguided soul. Good thing he had me now.

“It’s cool, no worries—we’ll have a Mel Brooks night sometime.

It’ll be great. But anyway, what I was getting at is that Connor’s not a master villain.

He’s just a guy. And no, he doesn’t scare me. Unless…”

I frowned, something new occurring to me. “He wouldn’t actually fire someone for eating in the conference room, would he? I don’t mind standing up to him, but I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

Noah shook his head earnestly. “Oh no, he’d never do that.

Daneesh brought his snake in once and freaked Janet out so badly that she screamed and threw her coffee all over a stack of important contracts, and all Connor did was have Darius take her to the coffee shop down the block to calm her down while he told Daneesh that next time, he should take a personal day to look after his sick pet instead of bringing it to the office.

Connor doesn’t fire people unless they’re dishonest, cruel, or incompetent. ”

There was a…lot to unpack in that. But just to make sure I’d gotten the main point—“So you don’t think he’d fire you? Or yell at you?” I asked. Noah shook his head. “Then what would he do?”

“He’d look disappointed ,” Noah confided.

Sweet summer child. “Well, don’t worry about that. If he has any disappointed looks to throw around, I’ll make sure he aims them at me. So…M&M?” I offered again, holding out the bag.

He gave me a tentative smile and accepted a handful of chocolate.

For the next hour, we snacked and plotted out how to turn the alien baddies into alien besties. By lunch, I was out of chocolate and starving. Leigh came to grab us, eyebrow arching as she took in the mind map on our board. “Impressive. Also, team lunch for your first day.”

I grabbed my phone. “Ooo, where are we going?”

She looked confused. “To the cafeteria.”

“Ah, come on. We can do better than that. There’s a go-kart track nearby. The pizza is the bomb and probably cheaper than anything in this fancy building.”

“I don’t know,” Leigh said, biting her lip.

“Um, I do, because the coffee I grabbed after my interview almost cost me my first-born child.”

Noah snorted.

“No, I mean,” Leigh gestured across the floor, “Connor’s probably not going to like the entire team leaving for lunch.”

I was getting sick of hearing that. What else didn’t Connor like? The sun? Oxygen? The gravity holding him to the ground? “I’ll ask him.”

Leigh shook her head. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”

“I’ve already impressed him with my epic business attire. What could go wrong?” I adjusted my suit as I marched over to breach the castle walls and get permission for a team excursion.

Inside the glass office, Connor scowled on the phone.

That was the kind of face I made when I had to call my insurance company, but it seemed to be his default.

If he was wearing that scowl while wearing full armor with maybe a dragon behind him, it would look pretty badass—but in the office setting, it just made him look grumpy.

I knocked on the door, waving to get his attention.

Connor’s eyes flicked in my direction. I held my finger up. “I just need one minute! ”

He turned his chair away. Okay, rude . I glanced over my shoulder where Leigh and Noah waited.

Leigh shrugged, but I wasn’t so easily deterred.

I jogged into the nearest cubicle and borrowed a marker and a piece of paper and wrote, Taking the team go-karting for lunch .

I jogged back, hammering on the glass and holding the paper up.

Connor glanced at the note, then did a double take. I shot him a thumbs-up.

That got him out of his chair. He flung his door open. “Not in the middle of a workday.”

“What, you want us to have lunch in the middle of the night? It’s kind of built in to happen in the middle of the day.”

“Go-karting isn’t just lunch. It’s going to bleed over into the afternoon, wasting valuable time.” He huffed like a bull. “And there was no team outing approved for today.”

“Good thing you have the ability to approve things,” I said, clapping him on the shoulder. The look he gave me could have lasered a hole in my forehead.

“My answer is no,” he said firmly.

I caught the door with my foot before he could close it.

“Listen, the whole point of a team lunch to welcome the newbie is to give us a chance to connect. There’s no better way to meld a team than by having fun together.

And you need us to meld as quickly as possible if you want this game out on schedule. ”

I looked down at my non-existent watch. “It’s already the end of March, boss. October isn’t that far away.”

His nostrils flared.

“I mean it. Look at the progress I’ve already made with Noah. This morning the guy would barely make eye contact with me. Now we’re besties, and we’re practically finished replotting the opening sequence.”

His jaw twitched. I couldn’t tell if he was considering my words or contemplating setting me on fire. I was pretty sure it was the latter and I couldn’t resist pushing him, which was sort of unlike me, but me all the same.

“If you prove you can do more than scowl,” I teased, “I’ll even let you tag along.”

Connor did not smile, but his eyes drifted over my shoulder to where Noah stood. “If I agree to this, I expect you to deliver the first draft of the reworked opening by end of day. Not whatever that scribbled mess is on the board. I want a detailed script.”

So he’d actually been keeping tabs on our meeting? I’d imagined him skulking away in his tower, out of touch with what happened in the real world. But okay, maybe he’d earned a tiny percent of respect from me as a boss. Like, five percent. “Deal.”

He smirked like he suspected I’d fail, and I revised that five percent down to three.

I stuck my hand out. Connor stared at my palm before finally reaching out. I ignored the flutter in my gut as his hand wrapped around mine, the pads of his hand slightly calloused in the same places mine were from constantly having a game controller in my hand.

“I look forward to reading your script. At five o’clock sharp.”

“It’s going to blow your mind.”

Two hours later, after many slices of pizza and crowning Max the go-kart champion, Noah and I plopped ourselves back in front of our computers. The moment we were satisfied with the reworked opening, I sent it off in an email to Connor with twenty minutes to spare.

To Lord LockMill …I typed. Please hold your applause at the epicness of the attached script. I signed off the email. Your loyal subject, Eddie .