Connected To Him (ManxMan)

Part 2: Chapter 44

Chapter 44: Stale Pizza

"Today is the day," Ethan announced to Logan, noisily plopping into his chair. "I am finishing the magazine's system and we will finally be free!"

Logan side-eyed Ethan, taking in the paler man's bright eyes and energetic tone with a grimace. That amount of energy would be met with resistance at any time, especially so early in the morning.

"I don't know why you're getting your hopes up," Logan told him, facing his computer once again. "Their case has stumped half the people on this floor."

"You and Linda don't count as half the floor," Ethan interjected. He felt triumphant in pointing that out before remembering that cases were never given out to multiple people, yet this case had been given to three. "But yes, the case is crazy hard."

At first, Ms. Sanchez didn't let Ethan take any new cases, wanting him to stay focused on their most important client. But as time went on and no results came, she thought it more efficient for him to take on other cases and give Linda and Logan access to the case. Ethan saw it almost as a test: whoever could please their big client got the promotion.

If nothing else motivated Ethan to figure this out, that did. It wasn't his fault that he got assigned such a hard case, but having it shared with others did bruise his ego a little bit. Everything was riding on this. If Ethan could pull it out, the promotion would be his. Over two months of working on the same case could wear on you, but Ethan needed hope. This was his hope.

"I will fix it today, trust me," He assured Logan, his fists clenching in silent determination. "I just have a feeling."

"When your feelings can satisfy million-dollar companies then sure, I'll trust your feelings. Until then, you should probably get back to work."

Ethan rolled his eyes but decided to not argue with Logan. His results would speak louder than any words.

As he'd been doing for the past couple of weeks, Ethan looked into IT techniques from different universities in Canada, then the US, then the world. Contrary to popular western belief, education was very advanced in many countries around the world and Ethan often learned a lot from researching foreign strides in technology. Today, he was still looking into India. Their technological information was bountiful and took some time to sift through.

Ethan had been going through articles for hours when he finally found something interesting. It was written by a professor in Jaipur and Ethan searched him up separately to dive more into his technique. He had a unique method to link websites. Ethan imagined that if he could adjust the code, he could fix the magazine's systems in one fail swoop.

"If I can just put that there . . . " He muttered, typing away furiously.

Ethan didn't notice how the hours passed, Logan's comment about lunch falling on deaf ears. With an hour left in the day, Ethan typed in his last line of code.

"Done."

For a moment, he didn't move. The screen light bore at him, the whites and blacks burned into his irises after hours of work. He barely believed what he was looking at. It was perfect. His experimental method hadn't just worked, it was flawless. He could find all of their orders easily, get the list of customers on the mailing list and assign schedules without a hitch. It was perfect.

"I did it," Ethan repeated, his voice growing louder.

Logan looked up at him, making Ethan realize he'd unconsciously stood up, and smiled.

"Congratulations."

Congratulations didn't cover all of the work it took to get here in the least. Months spent beating a seemingly dead horse over and over again, looking for what everyone thought to be an impossible solution. And here it was, loading up a trendy black and white logo as if it hadn't created Ethan's work hell.