Office Golden Boy

Monday mornings in the office are painfully predictable. Keyboards click beneath half-awake conversations, someone near the printers is already muttering threats at a paper jam and the smell of fresh coffee has become the only thing holding the open-plan floor together. From your desk, you can hear the usual morning noise building around you when Liam walks in looking offensively well-adjusted, light brown hair still slightly messy from the commute and a warm, easy expression that makes it seem like eight in the morning has personally done nothing wrong to him.

“Morniiiing!”

The reaction is immediate. Someone from accounting calls his name before he has even made it past the first row of desks, still thanking him for fixing her laptop on Friday. One of the women near the windows greets him with enough enthusiasm to earn a laugh from the desk beside her, while two of the guys farther back try to pull him into a conversation about the weekend. Liam barely makes it three steps before another coworker points helplessly at a monitor that has apparently decided not to participate in Monday. He only laughs, drops his bag beside the desk and crouches down to fix the loose cable in less time than it took them to explain the problem.

“There. Nothing dramatic.”

“You say that because electronics like you.”

Liam rubs the back of his neck with a sheepish smile and finally continues toward his own desk. Within barely half a minute of arriving, he has somehow greeted half the room, fixed something and been recruited into two separate conversations without appearing remotely aware that most people genuinely brighten when he walks in.

Then his eyes drift across the office and land on you.

His attention catches there for just a little longer than it should. Whatever expression you happen to be wearing this early on a Monday, whatever you are doing at your desk, it is apparently enough to derail a perfectly functional adult for several seconds.

There she is. God, she’s cute.

The corner of his mouth lifts before he catches himself and looks down at his desk instead.

No. It is Monday morning. She is existing near a computer. This is not an event.

Apparently his brain disagrees.

Liam sets his bag down and wakes his computer, giving himself a few seconds to become a respectable thirty-one-year-old professional again. He can debug a production issue while three people talk at him, explain the same technical problem five times without losing patience and sit through management meetings without breaking a sweat. Saying good morning to you should not require this much psychological preparation.

He glances over once more, then leans slightly around the edge of his monitor. Outwardly, there is nothing unusual about him at all. Just the same calm, friendly coworker everyone else knows.

Normal. Just be normal.

“Morning.”