Ash's Marriage Trigger - 7. Chapter 7- Some Assembly Required

Tuesday morning at work, the entire block experienced an outage that ended up setting back everyone's schedules by at least an hour.

"Oh, come on!" Ash huffed. He found it difficult to perform his usual tasks along with the behemoth project of training the five new personnel in a short time. The outage was a bad bonus that left him unprepared.

Ash began by rescheduling his first meeting with the new employees. They all managed to gather by 11 am. Even then, the conference consisted of mere introductions. He had only touched on an overview of the different departments and their role in the company. Ash needed help getting them into the system to begin learning how to use the programs because the outage delayed the IT department in charge of their user profiles.

"Nope. We're recovering from the outage, too," Michael responded when Ash asked him about the status. "If I'm caught up tomorrow, I should have the new users up by Thursday. I hope you have some backup plans in mind for tomorrow."

"Not yet, but I'll get to work on that," Ash admitted. "Thanks, Mike."

"Don't mention it. I know it's been crazy." Michael added.

Ash sacrificed his lunch break to plan alternative methods for training the new group the following day. He had several processes documented with screenshots, so printing five copies wasn't an issue. He worked on the tasks with such focus that he completely forgot to eat a snack in between.

When the work day ended, his stomach felt like it wanted to implode with how hard it kept gripping, as if tugging alone could force him to consume food. Ash refused to be ruled by his stomach or such functional body needs. He was the man in charge, not an organ.

Ash decided that heating a bag of pizza rolls in the microwave was the fastest route to being fed. He didn't even wait for them to cool, burning his tongue as he bit down on them, and the melted cheese gushed out like molten lava. Fine, he grumbled to himself as he glared down at his stomach. You win this round.

When the rolls finally settled his hunger, he drank a bottle of aloe juice in a feeble attempt to soothe his burnt tongue and finally pulled out his phone. He hadn't expected any messages, but there they were. His brother Sage was panicking about his wife entering her third trimester. Ash wondered if Sage was already panicking about being a father for the first time, but he had no doubt his younger brother would do well.

Sage: I've barely learned how to change a diaper in less than a minute, and now they're teaching us the proper way to burp a baby.
Sage: There's a BAD way to burp a baby?
Sage: I mean, I didn't know a PROPER way of burping even existed!

With a snicker of amusement at his brother's antics, Ash texted him a reply. Though he was younger and became equally immature during family gatherings, Ash had to admit that Sage had his shit together. When Ash was twenty-eight, he was a complete git in comparison.

Ash: You'll be fine. Once you get the hang of it, you'll even be able to care for the baby subconsciously.
Sage: Says the Perpetual Uncle.
Ash: Hey! It's Best Uncle Ever, and I shall retain that title forever.
Sage: Keep telling yourself that.
Ash: I don't need to keep telling myself what I already know.
Sage: Lies. I can already see you becoming Ashley's official stepdaddy.

His cheerful mood screeched to a halt at that. Was Sage already envisioning Ash as a stepfather to someone? Unlike his younger brother, Ash had no capacity for natural parenting. Spoiling kids during holidays and texting them from a distance was one thing.

Ash: *sad face* Et tu, Sage? What's with all this family betrayal? Later, slow diaper-changer.
Sage: Aww, Ash, come on, don't be like that!

Ash closed out of Sage's message and checked for any others. Surprisingly, there were no messages from Siena or Cove. Then again, the three of them had spent some time together in person the other day. Ash couldn't possibly expect a single dad to have time enough to-

The ding of an incoming message made Ash look back at his phone again.

Cove: Today felt like a Monday. It was so busy.
Ash: Did you guys have an outage, too?
Cove: Yeah, we were down for about an hour. I had to track everything on paper.
Ash: Same. I even had to make printouts for the newbies to go over.

Ash couldn't help the chuckle that escaped him. He felt less alone in work-related chaos if others in the same area suffered the same. Did the whole block end up having to use paper? Cove seemed to have similar thoughts.

Cove: Did our whole block go back in time somehow?
Ash: Hey, at least our generation knows of a time when we weren't slaves to technology.
Cove: We were always slaves to technology. The difference is only the type of technology.

The more he thought about it, the more he realized Cove was right. Before computers and mobiles, there were typewriters and rotary phones. Before that, it was morse code, telegrams, and quills. Tools were tools.

Ash: Good point. How's Mini-Me? Was her school affected by the outage?
Cove: Yeah. She was unfazed. Most of her classmates wept and clung to the adults, but they found her taking a nap the whole time.
Ash: She has the mindset of a retiree.
Cove: Sometimes it does feel that way.
Ash: I think she handled the situation best of the three of us.

Ash couldn't help but smile as he pictured it, little Ashley dozing away during the outage like it was nothing. If only naps were allowed for adults in the middle of a workday. Cove didn't respond, so Ash assumed his hands were full again.

With a wide yawn, he forced himself to plan his breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the following day. The less time he wasted worrying about what he would eat, the better. A memory drifted to the forefront of his mind of when Cove helped him plan meals up to two weeks in advance during the weekend. That memory opened up the floodgates to many more memories as Ash began to think back to his first encounters with Cove.

The two of them had grown up in the same neighborhood and were little more than classmates throughout elementary, middle, and high school. They became acquaintances in college and eventually developed a friendship. In the months before they graduated, they began to date and shared an apartment when they turned 21. Planning things together had been both hellish and fun, everything from basic furniture to their meals.

Ash recalled when he rushed too far ahead of a furniture manual and…

::

"Are you sure we should attach the back so soon? Should we check the manual first?" Cove questioned. The two had lived with little to no furniture for a year before Ash finally saved enough to buy a shelf. The problem was that it needed to be fully assembled by hand.

"I don't remember where I last left the manual. Besides, It's a large, rectangular slab. There's only one way it could go, right? There. All lined up!" Ash insisted as he began hammering the nails into the pre-created holes. "Just grab that second hammer and work on the bottom half."

"Sure thing, boss," Cove teased as he did as instructed. The first row of nails lined up correctly. But, by the time he got to the third section, he realized something was off. "Hey, wait a minute…."

Ash was already done with his third row and was about to start on the fourth when he felt Cove's hand on his. "Hmm? What is it?"

"First of all, I think I found where you dropped the manual," Cove explained as he motioned with his hammer toward his row of holes. "The bad part is that if the holes were aligned right, I shouldn't be able to see the white pages through them. I should be seeing the brown of the wood instead."

"What?" Ash gasped. "Quick, help me flip this over!"

After the two of them flipped the shelf over, they realized they had lined the back section upside-down. Ash's second and third rows never went through to the wood because the rows missed the wood by a centimeter each time.

"Damn it! I knew the second and third rows were going in too easily." Ash cursed while Cove handed him the manual and began to roar with laughter. "We're going to have to redo that whole part."

"We'll fix it," Cove responded when he finally stopped laughing enough to breathe. His silver eyes held a glint of mischief. He then leaned over to press an encouraging kiss to Ash's lips. "We'll fix it with plenty of time for a little fun."

::

Ash remembered being angry and annoyed at his own mistakes at that moment. Yet, reminiscing brought a smile to his face. Some memories were funnier after enough time passed. Misassembly could have happened to anyone. Other memories, however, were better left in the far recesses of his mind, locked away in a dark corner, never to be brought back to light.

He found no humor in the one where he'd nearly ruined Cove's wedding.