Intern

A word of warning. This story has

18 chapters

. Yes, 18. This was intentional; I didn't let it get away from me (much). So if you need to wait for completion, it will be a while. However, I didn't want the story to drag, and I wanted the journey to be enjoyable. So I made a point of making each chapter a complete story, including erotic content.

Of course each chapter builds on earlier ones, and the series as a whole follows earlier stories, especially

"Entanglement"

. See my

about

page for the recommended reading order. If you plan to wait until

Mentor

is complete, you have plenty of time to catch up.

* * * * * * *

Mentor

Chapter 1 - Intern

The small break room was crowded; unusually so for mid-July. With outdoor seating and a small lake on the property, even light rain wasn't usually enough to keep everyone inside. But this morning had been stormy, and the outdoor tables and benches were soaked through, driving the usual lunchtime gathering indoors.

Pushing my glasses back for clarity, I glanced around the room. I didn't see anyone from my dev team, or I would have invited myself to sit with them. Instead, I located a table with a single occupant, and headed in that direction.

The girl at the table looked at her phone in the casual manner of someone with nothing better to do, flicking it while occasionally taking a spoonful of soup. She wore a ruby butterfly-sleeved blouse, with tight dark blue jeans. Her features were Asian, with black hair that vanished behind her shoulders. Her nose was delicate, and her chin rounded. When I approached the table, she lifted her head to regard me with dark chocolate eyes. She seemed slightly familiar. Perhaps she worked in a team close to mine.

"May I sit here?" I asked, quite prepared to leave her alone.

"Be my guest," she said, immediately dropping her phone into a small purse. "It's Kayla, isn't it?"

"Oh, we

have

met?" I asked, setting my purse and lunch bag down. "You do look familiar."

"I interned last year," the girl said. "I think you had just started working here. We didn't interact much. I'm Anita Cho."

She offered her hand. "Kayla Piers," I said, as I took it. Her hand was warm in mine, skin soft, the touch brief and professional. "I remember now. I was a little preoccupied last year."

"Starting a new job is a big deal," the girl offered.

"That wasn't all that was going on," I said. "Excuse me," I added, picking up my lunch bag and threading my way through the tables to the microwave.

The machine wasn't in use, hence my haste to reach it before it was commandeered. I set my dish inside, and dialed a two minute cook time before picking up a can of Coke from the vending machine and returning to the table. Anita had resumed eating her thin soup.

"What else was happening?" Anita asked, looking up as I popped the tab on the can.

"Everything," I said, before taking a sip. Then I chuckled. "Graduation. Independence. My first place that wasn't shared with fellow penniless students. Breaking up with my boyfriend. And yeah, trying to learn how to write professional software rather than experimental programs of dubious value."

"I'm familiar with some of those problems," Anita responded.

The microwave pinged behind me. "Excuse me again," I said. When I returned, I lowered my voice conspiratorially. "And let me tell you, learning how to program is the easy part. Convincing team brogrammers that a woman can code is a constant battle. Do you find that?"

"A little," Anita said. "But they don't give interns crucial tasks. That's less true for me this year than it was last, but I don't get to participate in scrums or reviews. Besides, I probably have it better than you, there. Most Americans seem convinced that Chinese genes teach coding in the womb. It's insulting too, but in a different way. And it makes it hard to find the help I need, since no one takes me seriously when I say I'm out of my depth."

"I hope I don't think that way," I said. "If you have coding questions, let me help. I'm still learning, so If I don't have an answer, we can figure it out together."

"I'll do that," Anita said, with a smile that surely would have turned the heads of her male colleagues.

"You're still interning, then?" I asked. "Interning again, I should say?"

"Yeah," Anita confirmed. "It doesn't pay as well as a fulltime employee, but it gets me out of the 'penniless student' realm, if I'm careful. And an opportunity to learn that doesn't have a negative cash flow has to be worthwhile, right? This seems like a pretty good place to work. I don't know what I'll be doing next year, but I hear that interns have to screw up pretty badly not to be offered a job."

"Then maybe we'll work more closely next year," I said.

"I think I'd like that," said Anita. Her eyes met mine, and for a moment I felt a charge deep in my belly. The shock made me look away. I tried to hide the spike in my breathing by taking measured breaths before turning to finish my reheated pasta.

~~~~~

The following day was intermittently cloudy, but dry, so the break room was half empty. I was sitting at a table with a few members of the dev team when I saw Anita enter. I waved her across, and after she'd microwaved her soup, I introduced her to them. My teammates had already finished their lunches, but they hung back to talk.

When they'd left, Anita asked if I had to hurry back.

"I have a few minutes," I said.

"Would you like to take a walk around the lake?" she asked. "I usually do, if the weather's good."

"Sure," I agreed. We rinsed out our bowls and left our lunch bags on the counter. I carried my half-finished coke through the door to the outdoor paths and picnic tables, several of which were in use. Anita waved to someone she knew, but kept moving down toward the lake.

Though the sky was cloudy and the air humid, it was warmer outside than in the air-conditioned office. There was a scent of freshly-mown grass on the breeze. Anita slipped off her pale blue cardigan, looping it over her arm. Beneath it was a white, high-necked sleeveless tee, that fitted snugly over small breasts and a narrow waist. It was tucked into dark blue jeans. When she walked beside me, the top of her head was at my eye level.

Her hair was very fine, pure black, and hung down to her trim backside. Not that I'd noticed how trim her backside was, of course, or how tightly her jeans hugged her ass and thighs, or how they moved as she walked, because I totally wasn't checking her out.

When the breeze freshened, her fine hair flew in circles around her head, often dancing over her face. When that happened, the girl brushed it back behind her ear. It was an automatic gesture that I found endearing.

Taking a sip of my coke, I closed the distance between us, walking beside her to the lake's edge.

The water was only clear for a few inches of depth, but that was enough to watch a circling school of goldfish, or possibly koi. I bent down to pick up a small twig and tossed it out on the water. The shape of the school changed as curious fish examined the object.

"You said you were going through a breakup last year," said Anita. "Are you recovered now?"

"Oh, yeah, completely," I said. "I met Jason as a freshman, so we were together for almost four years. I guess I'd always known it was a college romance, but he didn't. He moved to the far end of the state, while I stayed here. We should probably have ended it at least a year earlier."

"It doesn't sound like the incandescent passion of the age," Anita commented.

"He might have thought it was," I admitted. "And I'm sorry I treated him so casually, but we weren't on the same page. He seems to have recovered, though. He's doing well. Dating again."

"Are you?" Anita asked.

I shook my head. "Once or twice. Not currently." I turned back to the path and we resumed our stroll. "What about you?"

Anita shrugged. "Had a pretty hard breakup in sophomore year," she said. "I'm just keeping things casual. Besides, at the risk of sounding smug, college is the worst time to be exclusive." She gave me an ironic grin.

"Don't I know it,." I sighed. "I'd seriously consider returning for a postgrad to get back into college life. But I had too many years of being broke to face that again."

"I hear you," Anita agreed.

~~~~~

The spark of excitement I'd felt in Anita's presence on the first day recurred from time to time. Usually it would happen if we were sitting together in the break room, when I'd look up and catch her intense dark gaze on me.

It wasn't entirely a surprise. I'd found myself attracted to girls as well as guys at college, but being in a relationship had limited my options. Which was another reason I should have ended things with Jason earlier than I did. Not that I'd know how to approach a girl - and perhaps being with Jason had helped me to avoid uncomfortable situations.

But Anita... triggered something within me. It was hard to say exactly what. There was something in her calm demeanor but devastating smile that spoke to me of passion. And I had an inkling that maybe some of that passion came from her reaction to me. It was probably dumb. She was probably straight. But sometimes when she looked into my eyes, hers seemed to darken slightly, as though something in mine had generated a spark within her.

Over the next few weeks I looked forward each day to meeting Anita at lunch time, and walking with her around the pond. I was disappointed on days when we missed each other.

I considered myself an average kind of girl - dark brown hair, five six, one thirty-two pounds, thirty-four D bra. My eyes were a cornflower blue. They were my best feature, and emphasized them with round silver glasses, usually with silver and glass earrings.

But for the first time since starting work, I found myself paying a little more attention to my appearance. I still wore my hair in a tight bun for work, but spent longer teasing it out to soften it and let a few strands dangle. I began wearing a silver pendant, opening another button of my blouse, and usually used lip gloss. I don't know that anyone, Anita or my co-workers, noticed the changes, but I felt good about them when I checked the mirror.

~~~~~

It was Monday, and I was tightly focused on the program I was working on when I heard a soft rapping on the cubicle edge. I twisted around to find Anita looking down at me.

"Hey, is this an okay time?" she asked. "I have a question."

"Sure," I said. "Grab a chair."

Anita wheeled over a chair from a nearby unoccupied cube and moved in beside me. "There's a function that isn't doing what it should, and I've been staring at it for over half an hour. Would you take a look and tell me what I'm missing?"

"Sure," I said.

There was a light floral scent as she leaned over me, using my keyboard and mouse to locate the errant file and bring it into the editor. I recognized the perfume, having caught hints of it in the break room or on one of our walks around the lake. It was stronger as she leaned forward, her right arm brushing mine as she dragged the mouse around the desktop. There was another fragrance, too, even fainter, but present beneath the perfume. Anita's unique girl scent. I found myself squeezing my thighs together and gripping the edge of my desk to avoid betraying my reaction to her closeness.

Skimming my eyes over the text, I asked Anita to describe the problem. As she did, I felt a sense of deja vu. Comp Sci teaches you to be a competent programmer, but a functional one, rather than an elegant one. That's good; the focus is on understanding the logic behind programming. Style is something you acquire with experience. This was a program I could have written a year ago.

Anita was so close to me, and apparently so engrossed in watching how I handled the problem, that I had to lean forward to put some distance between us. I took my glasses off to be able to see the screen at close range, tapping my lower lip with one of the arms. I didn't attempt to run the debugger - sometimes coding problems are obvious to a fresh pair of eyes, and

maybe

I wanted to impress the girl that I was crushing on with my mad coding skills.

It didn't take long to see what was happening. "There!" I stabbed at the screen with the arm of my glasses before putting them on and leaning back in my chair, right into Anita's space and her perfume.

Since Anita still seemed perplexed, I copied a similar line from lower in the file, pasted it under the problem line, then leaned back to let her see the screen. Anita bent her body forward again, so close to mine, that faint fragrance intoxicating as she frowned for several moments. Long dormant emotions - and long unused body parts - began to come alive, and I found myself clamping my hands tightly on the chair.

She saw the issue. "Oh, God," she said. "I can't believe I did that. I can't believe I didn't

see

that."

She leaned back, and I released my death grip on the chair. "Easy to do," I said. "Would you mind if I showed you a few other things I can see? Not problems, just... conceptual differences I've learned over the past year, mostly from my teammates. Code reviews and seeing how the guys think have been educational. It wouldn't have fixed the bug, but might have made it easier to see it."

Anita said, "I'm here to learn, Piers-" followed by a word that must have been Chinese, which I didn't recognize. She grinned when I frowned at her. "Sensei?" she suggested. "Same word." This time I smiled at the term.

For the next hour, I took apart her code and put it back together in a clearer form. She argued with me at several points, but not defensively, just not seeing the equivalence until I explained it, becoming enthusiastic whenever enlightenment dawned.

"But if I'd combined those two into a single statement, it would fail twice as often," Anita said.

"Every time," I agreed. "But that's

good

, because you'd have found the problem faster. A reliable failure is much easier to locate than an intermittent one."

It made me feel good to bring the glow of enlightenment to Anita, even over such a mundane exercise. I pointed out again that most of my insights came from what I'd learned from the team, though some were my own after I'd absorbed their input.

"Maybe so," Anita said, "but you make it easy to understand. Do you mind if I send you my program for review after I've made changes?"

"Of course," I said, feeling my heart skip as she smiled in response.

"Listen," I said, as she stood to leave. "Are you doing anything after work on Friday? The guys are going to O'Neill's for Happy Hour. I don't think you're on the mailing list, but I know they'd like to see you there."

Anita raised an eyebrow. "I'd like that. Friday would be great. If you're going, that is."

"Only if you are," I replied, with a chuckle. "I hate being the only woman there. No pressure, though, I'm fine with heading straight home."

"Sure, then," she said. "That sounds good."

~~~~~

Friday afternoon hadn't shown much sign of cooling off, and O'Neill's was crowded, so Denny, who was the first to arrive, opted to sit outdoors. Anita and I showed up just as he and David finished dragging three of the small round tables into a triangle.

"Hope y'all are okay being outside," he said to us.

"Fine with me," I said, glancing at Anita, who nodded. The temperature was a little too high and the breeze too light to be completely comfortable outside, but compared to the crowding and darkness indoors I was okay with it. Besides, the sun was getting low enough that the evening would cool soon. "I like to see my drink, anyway."

Everyone was arriving, the other chairs being claimed at random. Denny didn't ask anyone else if they cared about being outside.

As it was casual Friday, the rest of the team was even more informal than usual, in combinations of jeans, shorts, tanks and tee shirts. I never felt quite as able to dress down as the men. "Business casual" was a long-sleeved tee and jeans for them, but a blouse and skirt for me, while Friday casual this week was an open shoulder ivory top, dark midi skirt and cowboy boots.

I'd opted to wear my hair down, having wrapped it on Thursday to create heatless curls overnight. I didn't often do that, and I suspected that I was again trying to impress Anita. Seeing her this evening had been on my mind since my offhand invitation.

Anita's outfit was less conservative than mine. She wore a black scoop tee and her signature tight blue jeans. But she seemed able to look elegant in anything. Her fine hair was unadorned, brushed back from her shoulders, flowing down her back, stirring in the light breeze.

When I was with the group there was always some playful bragging from the team that I felt was intended for my ears. That seemed even more clear when their boasts and jockeying for position treated Anita and me as equal targets.

We had both ordered red wine, which seemed refreshingly cool in the heat. There was a lull in the conversation when we were about halfway done with our drinks, and I mentioned to Dave that I'd introduced Anita to some of the coding techniques he'd been showing me. The two of them talked for a while about the importance of minimalism and elegance, some of which she'd picked up from me, and I was proud to see that Dave seemed impressed with her.

When I took the last sip of my wine, Anita leaned close and spoke

sotto voce

to me. "I should be heading home."

"I understand," I said, as she took another sip, leaving about a half inch of wine in her glass. Then, surprising myself, I said, "Hey, if you're only heading home to eat, why don't you come back with me? I'll make us dinner and we can have another glass of wine."

The dark-haired girl turned her face toward me, and the look that she gave me was direct and curious, but I couldn't read more into it. I returned her gaze, feeling very self-conscious, and wondering if I'd stepped on a landmine somehow. Then she nodded sharply. "Sure. It isn't my turn to cook. My roomies will be fine. Let me text them, and then we can go."

Mark caught part of the exchange. "You're not leaving already?" he said. "Stay for one more?"

His suggestion was echoed around the table, but I shook my head. "I need to get dinner started," I said, as I stood to leave.

Anita was texting rapidly. She drained the last of her wine, then stood, waving goodbye to the group.

We walked through the dark bar to the front entrance. Anita's phone pinged, and she laughed as she read the text. "Yes, it seems that they'll be fine without me."

"I'll send you my address," I said, "and then you'll have my number too if you need to contact me."

Anita nodded, told me her phone number, and I texted her my address, then clicked on the message and added her to contacts before I lost the text in my SMS conversation history.

~~~~~

Taking my usual space before my apartment, I glanced around to see Anita pulling in a half dozen spaces away. I felt a small thrill, knowing she was here to visit with me. I think I had been as surprised to make the offer as Anita had been to receive it. But I had, and now she was here. I gave a quick thought to what state I'd left the apartment in that morning, but I was fairly sure I'd put clothes and cosmetics away. I'd even moved this morning's coffee cup into the dishwasher.

"Do you want to bring in your notebook?" I called out to Anita, as she locked her gold Toyota.