Chapter 5
The First Question
Monday, on her way back from lunch, Nicole walked with Lila across the courtyard instead of the main path.
The campus lay spread in clean sections. Quad 1 with its cafeteria and smoothie bar. Quad 2, with its all-glass front and coworkers lounging on picnic blankets. Quad 4, farther down, for R&D and training, with its windows tinted just slightly darker than the rest.
And then there was Quad 3.
Nicole could see it across the green.
It wasn’t really a quad. It sat lower than the others, a wide, nearly windowless building tucked behind a thin spray of trees as if it hadn’t been invited to the brochure photos. The siding was matte black. There were no benches or walking paths, just a set of heavy doors, a keypad, and a sign mounted beside it saying: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
During orientation, a guide had driven past it in a golf cart. They mentioned in-house manufacturing, vertical integration, and quality control. The words had floated past Nicole like every other catchphrase had that day.
Nicole slowed her pace.
The lot outside Quad 3 held a handful of white, unmarked delivery trucks. But the loading bay door was shut. And no one was there.
Nicole tried to remember if she had ever seen someone badge in.
She hadn’t.
“Can I ask you something?” Nicole said to Lila, her eyes still on the building.
“Hmmm?” Lila turned to her. The woman wore her red hair in a high bun. A spray of freckles coated her arms.
“Have you ever been inside Quad 3?” Nicole asked.
Lila’s brows lifted. “Manufacturing?”
“Yeah.”
Lila laughed softly. “I like my job.”
Nicole couldn’t tell if that was a joke. “It’s that serious?”
“I mean, it is shift-based,” Lila said. “Different hours than us. I don’t think they want Marketing wandering around heavy equipment.”
“Do they really make all of the supplements in-house?”
“Well, American-made is one of our selling points, but… ”
“It’s not?”
Lila hesitated just long enough for Nicole to notice.
“I mean, it depends on how strict you want to be with definitions,” Lila said. “The casing, the plastic, some of the compounds… the raw material comes from wherever it’s cheapest. Global supply chain. That’s normal.”
Nicole watched her face as she spoke. Neutral. Like this wasn’t some conspiracy, just the practicalities of doing business.
“And, don’t tell anyone I said this, but we make half the store brands too.”
“Really?”
“You didn’t think this was all us, did you? Look around,” Lila said, gesturing to the campus. “ It has a way higher volume than our own line too.”
Nicole thought about it.
“You noticed it during orientation, didn’t you?” Lila asked. “You’re not the first person to get curious about it.”
“Why wouldn’t they just show it?” Nicole asked. “If it’s such a big selling point?”
“It doesn’t match the campus vibe.”
Nicole pictured the yoga mats of Quad 2. The pressed juices of Quad 1. Quad 3 didn’t fit.
“Quad 3 is like the sugar daddy you keep out of photos,” Lila said, smirking. “Ugly, but pays for everything.”
Nicole laughed.
Lila pulled open the door to their building.
A production update banner scrolled across monitors inside Quad 2.
QUAD 3 OUTPUT EXCEEDS WEEKLY TARGET.
The numbers beneath it updated in real time, ticking upward.
Nicole stared at the live feed.
Had they shown production updates before? She racked her brain, trying to remember.
“See?” Lila said lightly. “Very real.”
Nicole watched the digits climb steadily.
Maybe it had always been there, and she’d missed it. She’d only been there a week.
“You okay?” Lila asked.
“Yeah,” Nicole said quickly. “I’m fine.”
Lila headed to her office. “Don’t let it get to your head,” she said. “Marketing is just a creative way of telling the truth.”
The office manager stopped at Nicole’s desk late Thursday afternoon with a clipboard tucked under one arm. He had neat locs pulled back at the nape of his neck.
“Nicole, right?” he asked.
She looked up from her screen. “Yeah.”
“I’m Kurt.” His smile came slow and sure. “You settling in okay?”
“I think so.”
He tipped his head. “That sounded polite, not true.”
Nicole laughed softly. “Maybe I’m still figuring it out.”
“Fair enough.” He leaned one arm on the cubicle wall. “If you need anything, I’m actually useful. Which already puts me above half this building.”
She smiled. “Good to know.”
His eyes moved over her face, long enough to make her aware of herself. “Yeah,” he said. “I thought you should.”
When he walked away, she caught herself smiling at her screen.
There’s a lot of cute guys here.
The next morning, Nicole crossed the quad with her badge tapping lightly against her sternum.
Two women jogged along the path near the fountain. On the lawn by the wellness pavilion, a row of employees held yoga poses on mats while an instructor paced slowly between them.
The glass front of Quad 2 caught the morning light. For a second Nicole saw herself layered over the reflection of the building in front of her: pastel top, tote bag, her hair in long, layered extensions. She looked like she belonged here.
Across the courtyard, Adrian stood next to a man in a tucked collared shirt and khaki pants. Probably a client.
Even from a distance Adrian looked expensive, the kind of man who bought basics that cost three times more because the seam sat differently on the shoulder. His attention stayed on the man, then turned and landed on Nicole. Almost as if he sensed her there.
Adrian gave a small nod.
Nicole waved.
Quad 2’s lobby opened into the main corridor, today, the screens cycled through company updates and glossy photos of wellness retreats. Nicole walked past a planter of ferns and a wall of framed employee portraits.
She found her section, A12, and slid into her chair.
She entered her login information and waited.
The spinning icon rotated. Then the screen refreshed and bounced her to a dashboard she had only seen during training, sparse and blank, as if someone had erased her day before it could start.
Access permissions under review.
Nicole tried again.
Same result.
Great. Heat climbed her neck. Her fingers hovered over the keys, then she forced herself to stop and think.
She tried the steps Lauren had mentioned offhand last week. Close everything. Restart. Re-enter. Try again.
Access permissions under review.
Nine-thirty came and went. Her manager sent her a text message asking if she was online. Nicole watched her coworkers glide into their systems without effort. She heard the soft percussion of typing on keyboards and the chirps of Slack notifications. It wasn’t a system-wide issue.
She opened her phone, pulled up her ticket to IT, and saw the automated reply she’d gotten the first time.
We’ve received your request. Estimated response time: 24–48 hours.
Two full days of sitting at a desk like decoration while her manager sent her texts every hour. Most of her tasks lived behind the intranet. Training modules. Intake forms. Internal docs. Without access she had no work and no way to at least pretend otherwise.
Her manager sent her another text message.
Nicole’s stomach tightened.
She pulled up the directory on her phone and searched his name. A little profile tile appeared. Peter. Operations Systems Analyst. Quad 2. Office A14.
Not far.
She found the placard with his name beside a half-open door and knocked lightly.
Peter looked up. Wired headphones sat in his ears. His hair was down today, dark curls falling past his shoulders and tucked behind one ear. He wore a gray Henley with the sleeves pushed up.
Surprise crossed his face. “Hey,” he said, pulling one headphone out.
“Sorry to just show up,” Nicole said. “My login keeps timing out. IT hasn’t responded, and I remembered you said you used to be in software before you moved to ops.”
Peter’s chair rolled back slightly as he stood. “Yeah. I can take a look.”
Relief moved through her so quickly that it almost felt like dizziness. “Thank you.”
He grabbed his badge, his phone, and followed her out. That alone eased something in her chest, that she didn’t have to explain anything. People who made you justify help always made it feel like a transaction.
At her desk, Nicole slid her chair back so he could sit. He sat and leaned toward her laptop.
“Okay,” he said. “Show me what it’s doing.”
Nicole typed her password. The screen blinked, then kicked her back to the dashboard.
“How many times did this show up?”
“Three,” she said. “Before nine-thirty.”
He clicked around. “You’re locked out,” he said. “That’s different.”
Nicole watched his hands. They were large. Veins ran along the front of them, faint but visible as his fingers flexed over the keys. His arms filled the sleeves of his shirt in a way that suggested the fabric had given up arguing with muscle. When he reached forward, the movement pulled across his shoulders. Clearly, he worked out.
The cords of his headphones hung at his collarbone, the wire crossing over the fabric of his shirt.
No ring.
She forced her eyes on the screen.
He clicked again. A permissions panel opened.
Her name appeared in black text. Her title: Administrative Coordinator beneath it. A bright yellow triangle sat beside her access level.
Peter went still for a second.
Nicole tried to keep her face calm. “Is that normal?”
“For a new hire, sometimes.” He clicked again. “For admin, less often.”
The screen flashed something behind the panel for a split second, a log window with timestamp rows. Nicole caught a glimpse of her name and a word before he minimized it.
Escalated.
Peter leaned back slightly. “I can mirror my access to you for today,” he said. “It’ll let you work while IT sorts it out.”
“You can do that?” Nicole asked.
He shrugged. “I used to build systems like this. A lot of it runs on shortcuts dressed up as security.”
He tapped his badge against a small device connected to her laptop and typed quickly. His fingers brushed her wrist as he reached for the mouse. The contact registered sharply.
Peter’s closeness felt practical. And still her stomach flipped.
“Try now,” he said.
Nicole typed her password again.
This time the intranet opened fully. Folders populated. Her task queue appeared. Everything looked the way it was supposed to.
Peter’s mouth curved. “And there you go.”
She turned toward him, closer than she meant to. “Thank you. Seriously.”
He met her eyes. “No problem,” he said.
Nicole’s skin felt warm. She looked away first, pretending to scan her inbox. Her stomach was doing that small fluttering thing again.
“So,” Peter said, still seated, still half turned toward her laptop. “You grew up here?”
“Robinswood,” she said. “Yeah.”
He glanced up. “You’re from Robinswood too.”
“Most people here aren’t,” Nicole said. “Everyone keeps mentioning how they moved for the cost of living, or the campus, or the growth.” She kept her tone neutral, but her words carried the small sting she always felt when people talked about her town like it was a bargain bin.
Peter nodded. “Transplants.”
“Where’d you go to school?” Nicole asked.
“Robinswood High.”
Nicole felt her eyebrows lift. “Stop.”
He smiled. “Graduated. Moved to Des Moines for a while, then came back.”
“What year?”
“Probably a few years before you.” His gaze moved briefly to her badge, and the new-hire ribbon. “You’re what, twenty-two?”
Nicole’s face warmed again. “Twenty-one.”
“Then yeah.” He leaned back slightly. “Class of ‘09.”
“‘13,” she said. “Do you ever go to alumni events?”
“Hell no,” Peter laughed. “I hated high school.”
“I think everyone does.”
“Who was your English teacher? Mrs. Harlowe?”
Nicole’s eyes widened. “You had her?”
“Everybody had her,” he said. “She gave us those grammar drills every morning, then would scream at us if we got something wrong.”
Nicole smiled. A picture came, instantly, of Mrs. Harlowe’s tight bun and red pen and morning drills. The memory felt too specific to be shared with someone she’d met two weeks ago. And yet—
“Her classroom smelled like old food and that weird perfume she always wore,” Nicole said.
Peter’s smile widened. “The perfume was called Poison. I remember because she told us it was French and we all pretended we could tell.”
Nicole laughed, feeling her shoulders relax. A shadow fell across the edge of her desk.
She looked up.
Adrian stood there, hands in his pockets, as if he’d wandered by on a whim. His gaze moved from Peter in her chair to Nicole’s open laptop, then back to her face. His expression carried amusement, like he’d stumbled upon something mildly entertaining.
Nicole felt caught. She didn’t know why, which made it worse. She sat a little straighter. “Adrian—”
“Morning,” Adrian said. “Sounds like fun over here.” He leaned over her cubicle wall.
“Hey,” Nicole managed.
Peter looked up. “Hey.”
Adrian turned to Nicole. “I heard you were having computer issues?”
Nicole’s brow furrowed. It took a moment for it to register, mostly because she wasn’t sure how he’d know that.
Peter answered for her. “Nicole’s login got locked. I’m mirroring access for the day.”
Adrian’s eyebrows rose. “Heroic.”
Peter’s mouth tightened slightly. “Just here to help.”
“Helping can still be heroic around here.”
Nicole felt a small pulse of irritation. But, she also felt the tug of his attention, the fact that he was looking at her now, not the laptop, and not Peter. That same appraisal she’d felt in the parking lot returned, faint but present.
“It’s fine. Peter handled it,” Nicole said quietly.
Peter glanced at her, a small look that held something like relief.
Adrian’s smile stayed. “Good.” He tipped his head toward Peter. “Thanks for taking care of her.”
The phrasing landed strangely in Nicole’s body. She disliked the flush it brought to her face.
Adrian’s eyes flicked back to Nicole. “See you in the meeting later?” he asked, and then he was already moving on, drifting down the corridor.
Nicole watched him go until she forced herself to look back at her screen.
“Is he always like that?” Peter asked, tone curious.
“Like what?”
“Like he’s watching a show,” Peter said, and then his mouth twitched slightly. “Only he doesn’t know he’s a part of it.”
Nicole let out a breath. “That’s… exactly it.”
“Weird guy.”
Peter’s gaze held hers for a second, and there it was again. That flutter. The sense of being noticed by someone who wasn’t performing.
He stood. “You should be good for the day. If it kicks you out again, come find me.”
“Thanks” Nicole said.
“No problem.”
When he walked away, Nicole sat at her desk with her system open and her skin warm, her thoughts moving too fast.
She worked through the morning, grateful for the simple rhythm of tasks. Intake forms. Scheduling. Internal requests. Each completed item steadied her.
That afternoon’s meeting was held in Summit: Conference Room A35.
The Director of Client Operations, Marissa York, stood near the screen with a clicker in hand. Her dark hair fell loosely over her shoulders with silver running through it in a way that only made her more striking. The woman wore a sleeveless navy sheath and a thin gold bracelet that caught the light each time she gestured toward the numbers.
Nicole followed the flow chart on the slide. Intake started with a client submission form. Then an admin reviewed it for completeness. Then eligibility verification. Then supervisor approval before assignment. Each step had its own timestamp.
“Average time from submission to supervisor sign-off is now seventy-two hours,” Marissa said. “Our target is twenty-four.”
A loud murmur traveled around the table. Someone mentioned staffing.
Nicole flipped back a page in her notebook where she had mapped the sequence earlier in that week. The bottleneck started because files sat in a digital queue waiting for supervisor review. Meanwhile, admins were rechecking forms that had already passed eligibility.
She spoke up. “What if we reroute the documentation review to happen after provisional supervisor sign-off,” she said. “Let supervisors approve based on eligibility and risk flags first. Then, admin can finalize formatting and nonessential documentation after the case is already assigned.”
A pause. A few people glanced at the slide again.
Marissa tilted her head. “So you’re suggesting supervisor review moves before documentation completeness?”
“Just for non-flagged cases,” Nicole clarified. “The system already tags high-risk submissions. Those can stay in the current route. But for standard cases, we’re double-handling.”
Marissa nodded, noncommital. “Interesting.”
Nicole shrank in her seat.
She became aware of the glass walls, the soft chairs, the way the overhead lights skimmed across everyone’s hair and skin. She was the darkest face at the table. The only one.
She’d raised her hand in her second week, and suggested a structural change. Stepped into the center of the table instead of staying at its edge. Now the idea sounded naïve in her own head, overeager.
Too green.
The meeting moved on.
Twenty minutes later, when the screen displayed a pie chart of intake categories, a coworker across from Nicole leaned forward.
“What if,” he began smoothly, “we let supervisors sign off before the documentation review for low-risk cases? That way we’re not stacking the queues.”
The room shifted toward him. Heads nodded.
“Yes,” someone said. “That would streamline the path.”
Marissa smiled. “That could significantly reduce lag.”
Nicole kept her face composed. The taste on her tongue metallic. She lowered her gaze to her notebook and underlined the words provisional sign-off as if the ink could anchor the idea back to her.
Then Adrian’s voice cut in.
“I think that was Nicole’s suggestion,” he said, leaning back in his chair.
Light laughter flickered around the table, as if the moment were harmless. The coworker turned, his smile stiff and immediate.
“Oh, yes,” he said. “Sorry, Nicole. That’s what you were saying.”
Adrian didn’t look at the coworker. He looked at Nicole.
“Nicole,” he said, giving her a small deferential nod. “Walk us through it again?”
Nicole lifted her eyes. Adrian held her gaze steady and expectant.
She straightened in her chair and explained it again.
Afterward, she caught Adrian in the corridor.
“Hey,” she said.
He turned, attention landing on her immediately. “Yeah?”
“Thanks,” Nicole said. “For earlier.”
Adrian’s expression softened “No problem.” He looked at her for a second, then added, “This is a woman-run company, you think they would know better.”
Nicole nodded.
“ Don’t be afraid to speak up,” he said.
Nicole felt her face heat again, and this time she didn’t know which part of her he was looking at. Her work. Her. The space between.
She nodded. “I appreciate it.”
Adrian’s smile held. “See you around, Nicole.”
He moved on, unhurried.
Nicole stood for a moment with her notebook pressed to her chest. She walked back to her desk with her access restored for the day, her tasks waiting, her mind awake.
Bloomwell felt beautiful again in the late afternoon light. Glass walls glowing. People moving in calm lines. A sense of order that promised she had made the right choice.
Something in her still itched where the Quad 3 conversation had been.
She kept her hands on the keyboard and kept working anyway.