Chapter Eleven

Valerie

Valerie is sitting in her office, intermittently watching Five-two’s tracking beacon. She’s starting to get worried again. Five-Two had spent most of the morning wandering around like usual until just before noon. Now, that they’ve been staying in the same position, almost motionless for so many hours, she fears something bad might’ve happened. She was only bluffing about not coming to help if they got hurt. She just didn’t want them to be irresponsible.

The most recent satellite update shows their location as being at a demolition site. She considers sending Mikel out to check, but after what happened to Five-One, she can’t trust him anymore. She hopes that after all that moving around, they’re probably just charging back up. They’d recognize a Werker charging station if one were there.

It’s been quite promising to see Five-Two venturing out so far into the surrounding area. It shows that they’re not too intimidated, and have a good amount of either curiosity or drive to continue developing on their own. In comparison, Five-One only lasted forty hours.

She tells herself that Five-Two is going to be fine and then reluctantly switches the tracking screen back to her project status calendar. Paul wanted a definitive scoring matrix from the team, assessing whether the prototypes are capable or not. She’s not sure what’s going to happen now that he’s out of the picture, but she still means to do her job.

Whenever she thinks of Five-Two, Aaron comes striding into her thoughts. She wonders why he keeps getting mixed up with the prototypes like this. She was almost ready to tell him everything last night, but she just couldn’t. A person with his curiosity is exactly who she was meant to not talk to. She can see why now. He’s clearly not a person to let something go very easily.

Just thinking of him makes her heartbeat feel like it’s thumping extra hard. She was so nervous telling him that she was going to go over to his place tonight, without asking. She feels like she’s made it pretty clear that she likes him, but he’s still a little reserved. At least he hasn’t shown any signs of waffling on her yet. She’s seen enough men suddenly become squeamish when they realize she isn’t simply looking for a good time. She never feels a damn bit bad about leaving someone out to hang if they’re just fucking around.

She and Clarice have always wondered about him. As far as they know, he’s hardly ever talked to anyone else in the building. No one knows who he is. It’s like all he does is bed down there at odd hours, like a buck, and then runs off all day. It was kind of fascinating to find out what he does.

With a growing smile on her face, she reclines all the way back in her office chair and closes her eyes. She’s wondering how she’ll manage controlling herself around him. She can see herself showing up to his apartment in something revealing, and watching him sweat under his collar. He’s obviously the quiet type, but those are the ones that are hard to stop once they get going. It’s amusing watching him trying to keep things cool around her. She wonders how fast he’ll melt once she gets her hands on him. She has to remind herself that she doesn’t have to rush things. She may be lonely, but she still has her dignity.

When she thinks about it, it’ll be difficult to pick something to wear tonight. She’s had all day and she still can’t make up her mind. It has to be something obviously sexy, but also not trashy. She’s aiming for something night-casual, and simple, like an oversized t-shirt, but with no bra. She can feel her face turning red thinking about it. She wonders if that’d be too forward. What if her nipples were firm the whole time? It sounds like something her sister would do. She’s at least settled on spandex shorts. She should easily have him locked in with those all on their own. Men are simply helpless against a pair of long smooth bare legs.

After catching a glimpse of the clock, she immediately jumps up out of her seat. Work hours are already over and she can’t waste one more minute. She was supposed to message Aaron, but she totally spaced it. Clarice already emailed her his phone number and everything else she had on him. Her sister is such a little spy. She hopes he doesn’t get upset about it, but it’s not like he doesn’t know anyway. She thinks about what to say for a minute, then messages him.

Hey Aaron, It’s me Valerie. I hope you’re hungry, I felt like making us dinner tonight. I’ll bring it on over after I get home and get it all ready.”

She struggles with what else to say, but decides to leave it at that. He’s the one that technically said tonight. If he’s serious, he won’t stand her up. She doesn’t even hang her lab coat up this time, and tosses it across her desk as she hurries out of her office. There’s still plenty of time to go the store and everything, but she doesn’t want to make him wait too long for dinner. At least she won’t have to worry about Clarice poking around and teasing her with googly eyes this time around. She always has a stunt to pull, especially if it’s embarrassing.

Since Clarice has been dating Mikel, she’s been spending more and more time away from home every week. Her eyebrows turn down when she thinks about Mikel. It angers her to think about what happened to Five-One. Even though most everyone else on the team felt that it was due, she still feels raw about it. The others would often say that Five-One was never going to make the cut anyway, and that it’d be better to move on sooner than later.

It makes her feel shitty, like she’s the one that’s the failure. She’s lost a lot of respect for the others over it. Maybe the others have lost respect for her. While walking to her truck out in the parking lot, she checks her phone to see if Aaron has gotten back to her or not. He hasn’t. She knows better than to get worked up about it already, but it still makes her feel a little self-conscious.