“If we have time at the end of this phone call I’ll teach you about bookmarks. It’s going to rock your world. In the meantime, don’t worry, your computer will give you an option to reopen all your tabs and word processing docs when your computer restarts. See? Right there. Click that button.”

“Okay. Wow. There goes my computer. Shutting down for the first time in years. Oh, it’s sending a chill down my back! I hate seeing it go to sleep! Goodnight, sweet prince.”

“It’ll come back on in just a minute. Better than new. Let me know when it does because restarting will have severed the mirror-sharing connection.”

“It’s back on already! But there’s a spinny loading bar and it says estimated time of update thirty-eight minutes?!”

“Oy.”

“Cal, you traitor. I really am gonna get axe murdered if I’m sitting around here for another thirty-eight minutes.”

“If you’re not in a safe place then you should really drive somewhere else, seriously, I won’t abandon you if you have to hang up.”

“No way. I’m not falling for that. It’s the oldest trick in the book. I’m sure you’re dying to get off the line with the cojones lady, but I’m not going to make that easy for you. MANAGER, IF YOU’RE LISTENING, I DON’T CONSENT TO GETTING HUNG UP ON.”

“I won’t hang up on you, cojones lady. We can just wait on the line until your computer comes back on.”

“Okay.”

“Vera? Will you be drumming your fingers the entire time?”

“Oh! Sorry! I’ll mute myself. Just give me a shout if you need me!”

“You got it.”

Vera

Dang. I tried really, really hard to stay angry. That’s what my brother always says my problem is. That I can’t stay angry. He says I lack the killer instinct. And if I really want to make my business thrive, I have to be able to make people fear disappointing me.

I can’t even stay mad with a customer service representative.

But you know what? Maybe that’s not my fault. Let’s blame it on this Cal guy. Because who could stay mad at someone who thinks learning about the bookmarks bar is going to rock my world?

He seems sweet. And a little . . . new. Whatever the opposite of an old soul is.

Which is probably why this trash-ass company hired him to do customer service in the first place. Because they knew that their customers were going to be calling en masse, complaining that their websites were completely glitching and subsequently ruining their lives. But if those customers encountered someone like Cal the baby bird on the other end of the line then they wouldn’t immediately demand a refund.

But never fear because Cal is here! He’s single-handedly fixing websites and saving Curio from being bombed with one-star reviews.