She now recognized that she’d only empowered Keighleigh when she didn’t call her out after the Pflugerville Independent School District incident earlier this year. She’d shared her thoughts on the school system’s software issue with a couple of team members at lunch. The next day, Keighleigh presented those same ideas to their supervisor. It was brazen, given that two other team members could vouch for the idea being Samiah’s. And it was the first time she’d had solid proof that Keighleigh had usurped one of her ideas and passed it off as her own.

But she’d kept quiet because she knew how it would go down if she’d caused a fuss. Tears would be shed. Fingers would be pointed. And whispers would start floating around the office about how Samiah attacked a coworker. And if she tried to defend herself, they’d ask why she was so angry. It was the same shit over and over again.

Team player, she reminded herself. She would be a damn team player.

After finishing her ice cream, she joined in a discussion about an upcoming implementation project for one of their long-standing clients, but when they asked for her opinion, Samiah pivoted to another topic. She would test just how well they did without her input.

Her coworkers had come to expect her to run point, even when she wasn’t the official team leader. Of course, she shouldered much of the blame for that. She tended to take over a project, because if her name was on it, she wanted to make sure it was done right.

Not anymore. She would do her part and only her part; the rest of her energy belonged to the creation of her Just Friends app.

When she noticed that they were starting to clear the sundae fixings, she went over to the table and heaped a scoop of both chocolate and vanilla into a bowl. She topped it with chopped walnuts and bite-size chocolate chip cookies, and covered it all in hot fudge sauce, whipped cream, and two maraschino cherries. She thanked the HR team for arranging today’s prize, then carried the sundae down the corridor to Research and Development’s software wing.

She found Daniel hunched over his computer with headphones covering his ears, his fingers flying across the keyboard. She remembered a time when all she did was make cool things happen on her computer. She missed those days. She missed actually creating stuff. Working on her app would bring back some of that excitement.

Samiah tapped Daniel on the shoulder and cleared her throat.

His body jerked as he whirled his chair around and pulled the headphones off. She felt the smile that lit up his face in her very bones.

Seriously? It’s just a smile.

God, but it was such a great smile. He killed her with those dimples.

“Hey. What’s up?” he asked.