3. Chapter Three
Ruby Ramos stands in my doorway, looking pleased with herself. My across-the-hall neighbor, Charlie, leans against the doorframe behind her.
“Your solution to my crowded and noisy office space problem is to work at Gatsby’s?” I ask. “Isn’t that one of the biggest nightclubs in town?”
“Not during the day. My roommate works there and she’s tight with the owner, so she kind of has the run of the place. It’s only open on the weekends, and even then, staff don’t start coming in until around 5:00. Until then, you’ll have about a million tables or booths or bars to work at plus Wi-Fi.”
“Who is this roommate?”
“It’s Madison,” Ruby says. “She’s cool.”
Charlie mouths, Hot.
It’s not a selling point, but it doesn’t hurt. So a feature, not a bug. “Where is it? I can’t be too far from the actual office.”
She names a street that’s a few minutes from our building and strolls into my apartment, plopping herself on my sofa. Charlie drops beside her. “There’s only one catch,” she says.
“Let me guess. I have to take her on a couple of dates to help you win another bet?” Not that taking out Ava had been a hardship. If I had any free time at all, I might have tried to win her over for real. She’s gorgeous and fascinating. Easy to be around too, but that was almost the problem. Our chemistry was mid, at best. And my job pretty much rules out a social life.
“You and Madison aren’t compatible. Well, maybe your senses of humor are?” She looks at Charlie, who nods. “So senses of humor. But literally nothing else.”
“You don’t have any other roommates you’re going to throw at me, are you? Because Ruby, my beloved, you and Charlie are my social life.”
She looks from Charlie to me. “We only see you when we barge in to watch movies because your screen is bigger.”
“Now you understand my schedule. That’s the most action I get all week.”
“Disturbing,” Charlie says mildly.
Ruby rolls her eyes. “I get it, Oliver. Can you stop sucking the joy out of my amazing problem-solving powers?”
“So you’re not throwing this nightclub roommate at me or any other roommates I don’t know about yet?”
“No other roommates, and you and Madison aren’t happening. But you can help each other out, and you’ll get the biggest office in Austin out of it. And the quietest.”
I’d settle for a quiet closet if the Wi-Fi is fast. “What’s the catch?”
“Rent,” she says. “You’ll need to pay a couple hundred bucks to cover utilities or whatever. Are you okay with that?”
“If the space is right, sure,” I say. “Cheaper than leasing another office.”
Ruby gets a small smile. “I was thinking the same thing. You want to check it out?”
“Yeah.”
She pulls her phone out and texts me. “That’s the information. Address and time tomorrow. But I’m pretty sure I’m right about this.”
“Cool,” I say. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” She pops up from the sofa. “Bye, boys. Niles and I are going out.”
I shoot a look at Charlie, but his expression hasn’t changed. “Doing anything fun?”
“Going to a craft brewery,” Ruby says.
Charlie’s lips thin but barely. I only notice because I’m watching him.
“I thought you didn’t like beer,” I say.
“I don’t,” she says. “I’m counting on them having a hard cider to get me through. And I hear they have killer tacos.” She heads for the door. “See you at work, Charlie.”
“See you,” he says.
The door closes behind her, leaving us in silence. Charlie won’t meet my eyes, but it’s not going to stop me from doing my job here. “You need to tell her, Charlie.”
He shakes his head. “Nothing to tell.”
Right. Only that he’s madly in love with her. “Niles is not the guy.”
“According to her, he is.”
I want to press it. As perceptive as Ruby often is—scarily so, sometimes—she’s got a Niles-shaped blind spot between her and Charlie. Charlie, the guy who actually deserves her. But I’ve been telling him this for six months, and I know there’s no point to pushing it when his jaw has that stubborn set to it.
Fine. On to other things. “Thanks for putting the word out on a space.” There are a ton of office vacancies in Austin, but the rents are way too high. It feels completely self-indulgent to even look for somewhere else to work when I technically have my own office at Azora. But I get interrupted too much.
“You sure you’re fine with checking out Gatsby’s?” Charlie asks. “You know how Ruby is. She loves solving a problem, but if you hate the idea, I can call her off.”
“If it’s empty and quiet all day, it’ll work. I could probably work thirty percent faster if I didn’t have to talk to people in the office, and I need to work faster.” The weight of our next investor meeting is all on my shoulders. I have to present them with a minimum viable product. “But tell me the truth: she’s not trying to hook me up with this other roommate, is she?”
Charlie snorted. “You wish.”
“That hot?”
“That hot.”
“And she’s funny?”
“Hilarious,” Charlie confirms. “But Madison’s not your type. Trust me. Social butterfly. Smart but no ambition. Happy being a bottle girl and partying. New guy every week until she bounces him for the next one.”
“So, kind of shallow. Got it.”
“I didn’t say that.” Charlie’s face screws up like it does when he’s thinking hard, something he does a lot, and not always on the right things. As in I once watched this expression on his face for almost a half hour after he tried to work through the plot holes in Men in Black 3. “She’s always trendy, high-maintenance beauty routine, dates pretty boys, as best I can tell. But when she’s hanging out with the girls, she’s none of that.”
“It doesn’t matter. No time.”
“No time,” Charlie says. “How’s the software coming?”
“You asking for real or you want the bullet points?”
“Bullet points.”
I sum it up for him, but every summary is the same: there’s a ton of money on the line and an excellent software product in the works, but I’m its architect and there’s not enough of me to do all the work by the deadline. And yet it has to be done.
“Sounds tough,” Charlie says.
This is one of the things I like best about Charlie. He doesn’t try to one up anyone or convince them that their hard thing isn’t hard.
He gets up from the sofa. “I hope the Gatsby’s thing works out, man. I’m going for a run but come over later for a beer or something.”
“Will do.”
He leaves, and it’s me and my laptop again.
I sigh and force myself to get back to debugging an issue that popped up when I ran the code at the office this afternoon. It’s a good example of why I need a different space to work in. I swear I’m not a delicate flower or whatever, but I can’t think well in loud environments, and music is just as distracting, so earbuds won’t help. I could have fixed this bug much sooner if I didn’t have so many disruptions.
I can work at home, but I hate it. It makes me feel like there is no separation between my home and my job. There barely is, to be honest, but I grew up on a ranch where home and job are the same thing, and it’s hard. I’m clinging to every buffer I can find.
I’m hoping Gatsby’s works. Weird to think a nightclub that probably looks shabby when it can’t hide in low light might end up being my Nirvana, but I’ll take it.