Ten after five, Joel slaps the back of my head as he passes my cubicle. “Break time.”
Sometimes I hate that he has to sit behind me. I remove my headset and log off the phone before following him out of the office. In the elevator, he shakes a cigarette out of his battered pack, a lighter already in hand. “Did Cecile give you s**t for being late?”
I shrug. “She’s just being a bitch.”
We’re always late for work when Joel drives—Cecile should know this by now. Most days he isn’t even out of bed until two, and he rushes around our apartment cussing because he overslept. Then he has to finish his smoke before he comes into the building, so he’s always a minute or two behind me.
But we’ve been working in support for over a year now, we’re two of the best techs they have, we know the soft
