Page 2 of Free Agent
“Does that bother you?” I laughed, taking another bite and continuing with my mouth full. “Actually, better question, if it bothers you, why would you feed it to me?”
“I didn’t. Monty sent it.”
Oh.
Despite myself, a brief grin bloomed on my face, and Shan rolled her eyes before stepping past the desk to look at my screen, a no-no for nearly everybody else around here, but she wasn’t “everybody”.
“Really, Rori? You’re serious about getting this update pushed out today?” she asked.
My eyes went wide and I stopped chewing. “Are the rest of you… not serious about getting it out?” I countered, alarmed.
“No, we are,” she quickly assured. “And now that I see where you are, we’re basically ready to deploy, but still. Today? Shouldn’t you be at home?—”
I held up a free hand. “There is nowhere I would rather be than here. And I will be here until I have to get ready to go to this game with Sierra.”
“Oh thank goodness! So you’re going to a game tonight at least,” Shan remarked with a little sigh.
Of relief.
Damn.
Was I that bad that hearing I had plans was a relief?
“It being today is purely coincidental,” I chirped, bursting her bubble and earning myself another eye roll as I shoved the last bite of my first taco in my mouth.
Shan immediately twisted her lips, the “yeah, right!” looming right at the edge.
“Noope!” I said, before she could get it, or anything else, out. “I don’t want to hear a single thing about today being special unless that update is deployed, I told y’all that already. I’m going to go look around,” I declared, grabbing a napkin to wipe my hands. “I need to stretch my legs a bit, keep the circulation going.”
Before Shannon could respond, I was already out the door, stepping into what I lovingly referred to as the Hive. Our tiny office was small but packed a punch, all working to support BabyBee, an app I made for parents worldwide. Despite not being a parent myself, I was passionate about pregnancy, postpartum, and early childhood, and had managed to cultivate a hybrid that serviced all three timeframes.
My enthusiasm for assisting people through pregnancy and the early years after childbirth, combined with my software development skills, resulted in a user-friendly experience for parents and caregivers using our app. The app aimed to minimize stress and address various parental concerns -- feeding, sleeping, developing motor and language skills, mental health, the whole shebang.
For nine hundred thirty-two thousand, three hundred eighteen subscribers and counting.
I was quite proud.
A project of the scope and magnitude we covered required a team—developers, cyber security, designers, researchers, and customer service to name a few. There were only sixteen of us—not counting the consultants, dieticians, therapists, pediatricians, and countless others we contracted with—so it was workable at this level for everybody to have their own office. Often though, people worked at the large, hexagon-shaped conference table set up in the landing spot that all the offices opened to.
Even with the partitions up, it was abuzz, heh, with activity, energy that instantly got me excited. I moved around the room, stopping to speak to people, letting them show me what they were working on, and honestly, simply showing my face.
It was good for morale.
I usually made a point of being present and accessible here at the BabyBee office, but sometimes—like today—I needed to get locked in to get things done. Still, I wanted my team to feel like I was right in there with them, rather than dropping my concept into their laps for them to do all the work.
The corporate bullshit of it all was very easy to get lost in, and I never wanted to lose the actual heart of my company, or my connection to the part of it I really loved.
“Ah, are those the new milestone icons?” I gushed as I stepped behind Tionne, one of our graphic designers. The cutesy, bee-forward theme was in full effect in the illustrations she was clearly still working on, but I loved seeing them in the early parts of the process.
Which was why I stepped forward to see her line drawings better. She wasn’t working on them from her monitor, just had them up, with notes from our creative director, while she worked from the tablet on the desktop in front of her. Being nosy, I leaned in to see the scribbled notes.
And then immediately wished I hadn’t.
I must’ve let out a gasp or something, because Tionne startled like she hadn’t realized I was there. I noticed now that she had earbuds tucked in, and that plus the deep focus… of course she hadn’t.
She tried to click away from the browser window that made me take a step back once I noticed it, half tucked behind the window with the illustrations.
But I’d already seen it.