“No, really. I do. I think it makes people sound . . . unpretentious.”

“That’s one way to put it.”

“Oh. Hold on, Vera. Let me concentrate on this error message real quick.”

“Okay.”

Cal

Unfortunately, she’s cute.

When I started this customer service gig I was already nervous about talking to strangers all day. I hadn’t even entertained the idea that one of those strangers might be a cute girl.

Cute girls are not my skill set.

I use the error message excuse as an opportunity to let my thoughts settle.

Customer service is harder than I thought it would be. It’s hard when the customers are angry. It’s hard when they seem to be calling me from the middle of a construction site, or a bowling alley, and I can’t hear a single word they’re saying. It’s hard when they treat me like I am an idiot because I’m a customer service rep and they assume that means I’m not qualified enough to get another job. And yeah, apparently it’s even hard when the customers are kind of flirting with me.

This Vera person is making my palms sweat.

I wouldn’t say that in general I’m, ah, good at talking to women. Actually, I’m not that good at talking to anyone. Which is why my best friend, Eliot, recommended I start in on this job. He thought it would be like a crash course in how to talk to all kinds of people.

So far I’ve been cursed out, cried at, implored, almost swindled, and thanked. But this is my first time being . . . charmed.

I wish I’d gotten dressed for work this morning. I take these calls from my living room, so I didn’t see the point in changing out of my track pants and T-shirt. But now, I’m suddenly very aware of my bare feet up on the coffee table. It’s not like Vera can somehow magically see them, but they look big and stupid and out of place on this phone call. I wish I were wearing slacks and a button down and my nice shoes. The ones I wore to Mom’s wedding. Then, maybe I wouldn’t be making awful jokes to a cute customer.

American in the sheets. Oh, God. What does that even mean? I can only hope she meant it when she claimed to think I was funny.

Her website really is a mess. I have no idea why. I really like that. Problems that are weird and unexpected and seemingly unfixable? Now that is my skill set.

I really wanna figure out what’s going on with her site and fix it. Not only because I want Curio to actually be a successful content management system but also because it would be kind of . . . cool to be able to fix this for Vera. And I rarely look cool in front of women.