I'm still buzzing the next morning when I sit down to breakfast, dodging Emma dancing around the kitchen with the strawberries she just cut to accompany the toast.

I don't make the rules, I just live by them. Strawberries and toast isn't the worst combo she's made us try, so I'm just trying to be happy about that.

"How was your night last night?" Melanie asks, shooting me a stare across the table. I cannot see her mouth because it is obscured by the orange juice, but I've known her long enough to know she's smirking.

"It was fine," I answer, trying not to draw extra attention to myself.

"Mmhmm," she hums, putting a layer of strawberries on her peanut butter toast and picking it up to take a huge bite out of it.

"I'm serious, Mel," I counter, taking a bite out of my own toast. "We just went to a haunted house and came home. It wasn't major."

"Sure, Alex. Just remember you're related to me and I used to sneak out, too. I mean, I was in high school, but I snuck out."

"Ha ha, Melanie. Maybe I'm just trying to keep you on your toes for when the girls grow up."

"I'm already grown up," Julia says. "I'm seven, you know."

"I do know." I ruffle her hair. "But Ernesto is going to be here to pick me up any minute and we cannot afford to be late for work today, so I gotta go. Nice slicing on those strawberries, Emma."

"Thanks, Uncle Alex."

I make sure my keycard is in my bag and double check that I've removed all potentially incriminating evidence. Jack's shirt was in there, so it's hiding in my closet now where Melanie won't find it and make suggestions about things that didn't happen.

Or worse, things that did.

In no time at all, I'm out the door and waiting at the corner, tapping my toes against the cold pavement until Ernesto's purple Toyota blows around the corner and skids to a stop in front of the snow bank, splashing me with a little bit of muddy slush that covers the roadway.

"Hey, man," Ernesto says, turning the heat down and the music up. "I didn't see you there."

"I stand on this corner every morning waiting for you to take me to work," I reply. "How could you not see me here?"

"You're so suave and put together this morning," he laughs. "And I'm still waiting to hear what happened after you beat up Luther Bellsworth."

"I didn't beat anyone up," I protest. "I barely even looked at him."

"That's not how Tea Sip is telling it, bro. They say you and Jack fully annihilated the guy and then he followed her home and you punched him in the face."

"It says I followed Jack home?"

"No, Luther followed her home."

"Right after the restaurant?"

"Yeah, bro. And then when you saw him bugging her you decked him good."

"I didn't punch anyone. And..." I trail off, not sure how much I should share with Ernesto. He's my best friend, but I don't want Jack to get in trouble.

"So you weren't at Jack's house last night?"

"Nope," I answer honestly. "Nowhere near it, so far as I know. I don't actually know where she lives."

"Sure, Man. Your secret's safe with me."

"There's no secret!" I practically yell, but he just shrugs it off.

"Yeah, okay."

Of course, there is a secret and if this traffic doesn't stop us, we'll all get to see it in about forty-five minutes.

~ * ~

The office is full of life by the time we walk through the door. The secretaries are chatting about the 'delightful decorations' that now adorn the break room, but absolutely no one else is surprised, thinking those lovely caring women put them up to increase office morale. Like they do with every change of the season.

No one will thank them, though. So no one will ever find out it wasn't them.

Well, I might, but I already know.

Despite what I said to Jack, I don't have a hidden camera and with only twelve minutes until my first meeting, hacking the security cams is going to be a pretty big challenge.

But there's no one I trust enough to ask for help. Getting security footage of the big guy's office the day he finds it completely covered in Halloween decor is probably a one-way-ticket to unemployment.

"How are you this morning?" Gladys asks me as I pass. She's older than my grandma and refuses to retire because, 'the young people don't know how to work my system. They'd be lost without me.'

"I'm doing well, Gladys. And yourself?"

She smiles that megawatt smile and waves her hand at me. "Oh, dear, you know I'm always doing fine, Sweetheart. We may have old joints but we have a young heart."

Her favourite joke, as she's the proud recipient of a heart transplant more than two decades ago now. Her heart is literally younger than she is.

"See you later, Gladys," Ernesto says, setting her coffee down in front of her with a wink. "We love what you've done with the place."

"Oh, I didn't..."

"Right," I whisper conspiratorially, "you didn't do anything."

"Your secret's safe with us, Gladys," Ernesto agrees, tapping his finger twice on the faux marble countertop that makes up the welcome desk. "We have to be off to work before the boss man finds us slacking. I hear he's not in a very good mood."

He leads me away by the elbow through the maze of desks until we find our own.

"I didn't punch him," I whisper once we're safely tucked into the IT office. "And you know that."

"If you did, I doubt he'd be in to work today to show off the shiner you gave him."

"I doubt I'd still have a job today if I gave him a shiner," I reply with a shrug. "I'm surprised I still have one after looking at him funny yesterday."

"You do good work, man. I think it'll take more than looking at him funny to cause you any difficulty."

"Yeah," I answer, pulling up the security program and logging into the system. "I hope you're right."

"I'm always right," he says with a smile. "Always."

"You are never right when it comes to girls," I hit back. "Or anything to do with my interpersonal skills."

"A man can't be good at everything," he answers simply. "I had to leave some things for other people to be good at."

The computer is playing games with me, showing nothing but a buffering circle and the picture of a lake we have set as our lock screen background. According to Luther it is calming.

I'm not calm.

I'm anything but calm.

I'm certain that I'm about to get caught and all I can think about is Jack, Melanie, and the girls. I can't get fired, and I can't get them in trouble.

Deep breath, Alex. Don't give yourself away. If he's going to fire you, at least make him do the work.

Plus, you took the security cameras out. There's no proof. He can't fire you.

"What's this?" Ernesto points at the computer screen and squints, still not having pulled his glasses down off his head and onto his face.

"What's what?" I lean around the screens to look at his, also buffering against the picture of a lake.

"It's been a while since this happened," he says, sipping his coffee. "And when that happened we were down for days."

"And working overtime for months afterwards to make sure this didn't happen again," I remind him. "This better just be a slow network. I'm going to troubleshoot."

My chair squeaks against the weight of being pushed back on the worn carpet and the elevator dings, bringing the arrival of one Luther Bellsworth, exactly fourteen minutes ahead of schedule.

"Good thing we were here early," I whisper under my breath.

"Yeah, no kidding," one of the trainees agrees with me as he passes by. I think his name is Jordan or Jaden or Jaxon.

"Coffee," Bellsworth barks when he passes us. "Now."

The trainee jumps and races off to the break room to fill one of the many travel mugs Luther keeps at the ready. Well, the rest of us keep at the ready on his behalf. Man, he really is a jerk.

I'm so focused on that interaction that I almost forget to follow Luther. It's fate that the server room is just past Luther's office, so I have an actual legitimate reason to be chasing after him. It'll look less suspicious when he opens his door.

Slowly making my way down the hallway, I try to pace it out to make sure I reach the door at the right time. Having to double back will be even more obvious than just following him down the hallway for no reason would have been.

But I miscalculate. I only arrive after the doors is opened, balloons already spilling out into the common space.

"Shit!" Luther shouts, along with a few even less appropriate expletives. "What the fuck is this?"

Rage shoots out of his eyes like lasers, head on a swivel searching for the responsible party. I'm pretty sure all of us are stunned into silence, until someone gets hit by a rogue balloon and it's like a cascade of laughter rolls through the office. The trainee picks up a black, cobweb covered balloon and gently tosses it at his direct supervisor's desk.

She looks up and sees us all and lets out a low chuckle, tossing the balloon back at the trainee with a light, "Back to work, James."

James! I had the 'J' right.

"What is the meaning of this?" Luther seethes, pulling the attention of the whole office, heads popping out of offices and over the top of cubicle dividers. "Who did this?"

"I don't know, sir," a young woman holding a clipboard answers, sky high heels bringing the top of her head almost level with Luther's eyes.

"Well then, figure it out," he shouts. "And someone clean up this mess."

He rages away, stomping down the hallway toward the empty office we keep for guests and contractors. I should have thought to fill that one up, too, but alas time was not on my side.

At least the look on Luther's face was worth the dangers of being an accomplice. I think I'll savour the memory until the day I die. Both of how his office got that way and how he got when he saw it.

I race down the hallway and into the service room where we house our network equipment. When I'm sure there's no one else inside, I close the door firmly behind me and pull out my phone. My fingers shake a little as I shoot off a text to Jack letting her know what happened and promising to try to get a picture.

I don't tell her about the network issues, because I'm scared I might have done something to mess them up. And also because I don't want to make her sad, and not being able to see a picture of Luther's eyes about to pop out of his head will make her sad.

You will have to recreate the experience for me later, she texts back with a wink emoji.

My heart is in my throat. What does that emoji mean? I'm sure Enrique can help me figure this out.

Except he can't, because I'd have to tell him what happened.

I guess I'll figure it out on my own. I take a deep breath and tap out a message to Jack. Hopefully, it's okay. I'm not very good with emojis. And apparently punctuation is offensive now. I need a guidebook for texting.

No sooner have I pressed send than Enrique rams his fist into the door. Through the narrow window beside the door, I can see him looking down at his watch and then back down the hallway and hear him laughing with some of the other employees.

When I swing the door open, he pops his head inside before his body. "Have you seen Luther's office?" he asks. "It's hilarious. Don't tell him I said that, though."

"Right, I won't. I haven't really seen it. Just saw some balloons fall out."

"It's so much better. Should have seen his face when Emmet, the maintenance guy, asked him what they should do with the spiders." Enrique almost stops breathing, he is laughing so hard. "Man, I wish you'd seen it."

"Maybe there's still some spiders there," I offer, pocketing my phone and turning off the lights. "I've done all I can in here, let's hope it fixed our issues."

I'm barely through the door into the hallway when my phone buzzes with a new message.

I'll hold you to that, is all Jack replies. No emoji this time.

Is that a bad thing? I'll need to sit down and run the numbers.