Chapter 1 - A chance encounter

Red burst through his front door.. He was dripping with sweat and out of breath from a long evening run through the forest. Without a care, he took of his drenched t shirt and threw it on the ground and wandered into the bathroom. He picked up his dirty gym towel and wiped the sweat from his face and long, lean torso and dropped that on the floor too.

Hungry from the exercise, he opened the fridge and looked through the contents. He took out a couple of eggs and fried them up, served them on an open sandwich with a cut up avocado. Healthy and filling be thought... He also grabbed a beer for a treat, he was allowed one on a week night if he'd been running, it gave him a buzz.

He took his dinner and beer to the living room, switched on the television and settled on the evening news for background noise and ate up, whilst keeping an ear on current events. After dinner, he put his feet on the table, kicked the empty plate away and sipped the beer. He watched increasingly mindless television for the rest of the evening, before going to bed at midnight. He knew he should sleep earlier, but felt restless, still a bit overstimulated from the run.

In bed, he thought about life. It had been six months since he split up with his long term partner. He was starting to feel happy about being on his own in his slightly run down flat and was pleased the exercise regime he took up was starting to give him a toned, attractive figure. Soon he would want to start dating again. He hoped his new co worker would notice him. She was tall, dark skinned and had curves in all the right places. She was also very sweet, he remembered she brought cupcakes for everyone on the first day to break the ice and would always smile when she spoke to someone.

Red woke up the next morning. He'd pressed snooze twice. He knew he was running late, but still jumped in the shower and very quickly rinsed off the stale sweat from last night. He knew he was gross to sleep like that, but didn't care. He dried himself and put on shorts and t shirt. He stuffed his work clothes, a blue polo shirt and polyester pants into his rucksack, jumped on his bicycle and pedalled to work.

He showed up to work just on time. His stomach growled, he was in a rush and forgot breakfast. It would have to be junk from the machine today... And a coffee, he could feel he didn't sleep enough. He chained his bike around the corner from the office , went inside the mens restroom, quickly sprayed himself with deodorant and changed into his uniform. On the way to his desk he stopped at the canteen and ordered himself a cheap black coffee and bar of high glucose chocolate from the vending machine to keep him going until lunchtime and proceeded to his desk.

The office was quiet and everybody else was already busy. He glanced the new girl at the other end of the room, staring at her screen, she didn't look up. He sat down at his desk, turned on the monitor to the spreadsheet he left open the previous evening and continued his data analysis.

An hour later, he stifled a yarn and looked at the clock on his desktop. Only 9. He let out a non verbal sigh. Then he noticed his Outlook icon was orange, he had missed an email. He opened it up. The title was generic "help with software". This was a common, albeit frustrating email since he had the most experience with an obscure but powerful analysis program which the boss decided to roll out through the company.

"Hi this is Carla"... He paused. Was Carla the new girl? He was terrible remembering names. Carla could have been anyone who worked on the other side of the room. "James said you could use OperaTools. Would you be able to show me how to import the custom scripts?". He panicked a little. He didn't want to walk over and get the wrong person and it was way too late to ask someone.

"Hi Carla... Sure thing, pop over whenever you're free and I can point you in the right direction... Red."

He pressed send and prefer over his monitor. Almost instantaneously, he saw the new girl stand up and walk across the room. He noticed her in too much detail. She was nearly six feet tall and had a slightly rounded butt. He felt ashamed to notice that in a colleague. She swept across the floor towards Red.

"Hi, we haven't met yet" she said as she hovered next to him "I heard you're the go to guy for OperaTools. Can you show me?"

"Erm. Yes, sure. Why don't you find a seat."

"Nah, I will be okay." She kneeled down next to red and folded her arms on the desk. "so why do we use this software? It's so confusing compared to OperaSoft."

"well, its got more scope for custom scripts. It uses Python." He felt this was a dull introduction, but strictly professional... So it didn't matter.
After a short while, Carla was smiling and nodding. She understood the fundamentals of the program well, she was probably just being lovely cautious about the unfamiliar interface.
"Thanks! This all does make sense." She said.
"No worries. Give me a shout if you need anything else."

"I will. Nice to meet you". She turned away. Red put his hand on the mouse and started to go back to his work. Then, unexpectedly, his stomach growled out aloud. Carla stopped. She must have heard it, she turned around and saw the empty chocolate wrapper and half drunk plastic cup of coffee. Red felt mortified, but neither said anything as she returned to her desk. When she got to her desk, she bent down into her bag, fumbled and started to come back.
"You guys are useless sometimes" she said to Red, placing a large chocolate muffin on his desk. "You need a proper breakfast. Thanks again for the help." She smiled warmly and walked back to her desk to sit down, this time.
Red was embarrassed. He didn't even have time to acknowledge the gesture. He looked at the muffin. He knew he shouldn't eat it. Too many carbs for his fitness goals, but, it would be rude not to, considering the gesture. It was huge, but he was hungry and managed to finish it reasonably quickly. "Guess ill have a lighter lunch today". He thought to himself. He felt happy about the fact she gave it to him.

The rest of the day went quickly afterwards. At home time, he got up, changed and went to unlock his bike.

As he pushed his bike back around, he nearly bumped into Carla coming out. She waved politely at him. He smiled back.

"is this why you were hungry?" she said, putting her hand on the handlebars.

Red was a little startled. What is the right answer? Admit he probably over exercises and forgets to eat sometimes? "maybe," he replied with a smile "I like to get out a lot in the fresh air"

"Well, you're a better man than I am." She said "still be careful, life's too short to punish yourself. Have a nice night."

"You too." He said and got on his bike and pedalled away. "she's really cute" he thought. "But thinks I'm being silly".