CHAPTER 10
Eline parked on the street instead of pulling her car in behind Arlowe’s in the driveway.
The house she then walked toward seemed relatively small – one-story, postage-stamp-size front lawn, two-car garage, and a blue front door – and Arlowe waited for her there and smiled when Eline arrived on the square piece of concrete acting as the front stoop.
“Shit. One second,” Arlowe told her.
“What?”
Arlowe unlocked the door and pushed it open.
“Enya, I forgot to text you, but if you are in the living room or kitchen, hanging out naked, run to your bedroom right now,” Arlowe said into the house.
“What?” Eline asked again, laughing this time.
“It’s a thing. Totally normal. Not at all weird, I promise.”
“I’m not naked. Why are you so weird?” someone said from inside, and it only took a moment for Eline to recognize the voice as one of Arlowe’s friends.
Arlowe pushed open the door and walked in, motioning for Eline to go in after her.
“Oh,” Enya said, sitting up on the sofa where she had obviously been relaxing with her computer in her lap. “Wow. Hi. It’s been forever.”
“Enya, hi,” Eline greeted with a smile.
“I didn’t know you were coming over. I can make myself scarce,” Enya said as she quickly closed her computer.
“No, it’s okay. How have you been?” Eline asked and walked over to sit down next to Enya while Arlowe closed and locked the front door.
“Good. You?”
“Good.”
“Arlowe said you got a job nearby, selling gold?”
Eline looked over at Arlowe and shook her head.
“Not exactly. I work for a company that helps people sell their gold. I run the QE department over there.”
“So, you did become a software engineer? We were never sure because you mentioned wanting to be a lawyer, I think. Do I remember that right?”
Eline chuckled and said, “I forgot all about that. Yeah, I did think about law back then, but I didn’t want to go to law school, and I liked coding too much.”
“I’m sure Arlowe can understand that,” Enya said.
“I bet she can.”
Eline smiled over at Arlowe, who had taken her blazer off but was still standing in her tucked-in button-down and looking unbelievably good in it.
“So, you two were supposed to have a drink. Was it, like, one shot or something? Arlowe left less than an hour ago.”
“We decided to have drinks here instead,” Arlowe answered for them.
“Oh, got it,” Enya said. “Well, I know roommates are annoying when you want alone time, so I’m going to my room, and I’ll stay in there the rest of the night.”
“Enya, it’s fine. Stay out here. We’re not going to be out here anyway.”
“Oh, really?” Enya asked, giving Arlowe an interesting look.
“Not that. We have a little wager going,” Arlowe replied, walking over to sit down next to Eline.
Arlowe’s arm went over the back of the sofa, and they weren’t touching, but this was the closest they’d been to each other in years, and Eline couldn’t help but breathe Arlowe in.
Back in the day, Arlowe hadn’t worn any kind of perfume or cologne, and her body wash and soaps had been in the strawberry family, but now, she didn’t smell like strawberries.
She smelled like something with orange and cinnamon and maybe something woodsy.
It suited her, who she was now, and Eline wanted to lean back against her, let Arlowe’s arms wrap around her, and hold on to her tightly.
“You have a wager?” Enya asked.
“Yeah. We’re going to the garage after I get my laptop. Eline is going to try to find fuckups in my code. She won’t, so I’ll win.”
“Huh?” Enya asked. “What happened to the two of you getting a drink?”
“We’re going to have those here. I’ll make a batch of margaritas before we get started.”
“I thought I only got one of those if I won,” Eline said, turning her head just slightly in Arlowe’s direction to give her a teasing smile.
“I’ll make them now. You can have another prize if you win, but since you won’t, I’m not too worried about it.”
“You’re very confident for someone whose bug I found and got a free month’s subscription for reporting.”
“That wasn’t my bug. I didn’t write that code.”
“Well, I have no idea what’s going on, but I’m grabbing a snack and eating it in my room,” Enya said and stood up. “Also, Arlowe, you have an office now. You don’t have to go to the garage anymore, in case you forgot. You two have fun with whatever weird thing you’ve got going on. And, Eline?”
“Yes?”
“It was really great to see you again.” Enya smiled soft-ly at her and then looked over at Arlowe for a moment. “Really great.”
“Thank you. You too.”
“So, I’m thinking that I should change into something you’re more used to seeing me in. Want a quick tour before I do that and grab my stuff so that we can get started?”
“Sure,” she replied, trying not to picture Arlowe taking off her clothes.
“So, this is the living room, obviously. We used to have four people living here, so we have two couches, but I think we’ll just keep both of them because Enya can lie on one, and I can take the other.” Arlowe stood. “The kitchen is in here.”
Eline followed her through an open doorway and into a modest kitchen with old brown cabinets mixed with some new stainless-steel appliances, including a standing mixer.
“Who’s the baker?” she asked.
“Oh, Enya. I can’t bake anything, but whenever she’s a bit of a mess, she tends to bake.
The garage is through there.” Arlowe pointed to the closed door over by the refrigerator.
“It’s mostly just our old desks and stuff now.
Enya and I have been meaning to move everything out of there so that we can actually park our cars inside, but we haven’t gotten around to it yet.
” Arlowe walked back to the living room and headed to the right.
“And here is the main hallway. Enya’s room.
” She pointed. “Enya’s office.” She pointed to another door.
“And Enya’s bathroom that three of us used to share.
” She pointed to a third door. “Then, there’s my office, where we’ll be because I still forget I have an office at home, and my room. ”
Arlowe pointed to the last door before she walked into it.
Eline followed her but stopped just inside that door, unsure if she should walk all the way inside Arlowe’s bedroom.
The room itself screamed Arlowe. She had a framed poster on one wall of binary code that probably said something meaningful to her if translated, a giant TV on another, the third wall had two doors on it and no artwork, so probably the closet and the bathroom, and the wall behind Arlowe’s bed had an old yellow street sign that said, ‘Merge,’ on it.
“You actually did it,” Eline said with a headshake.
“Did what?” Arlowe asked as she walked to the dresser to pull out some clothes.
“The street sign.”
Eline pointed.
“Oh.” Arlowe laughed. “Yeah, I found it on some auction site and decided to just go for it. I figured, when I finally find a woman who’d actually tolerate being in a relationship with me, she probably wouldn’t like it, so if I wanted to do it, I had to do it now. I picked it up about a year ago.”
When Arlowe had been in Amsterdam, they’d binged-watched Friends together because neither of them had ever seen the show before, and there had been an episode where Chandler had suggested that he and Monica get a street sign for above their bed when they moved in together that would say, ‘Merge,’ because they would be merging.
They had both laughed, but Arlowe had been the one to suggest that they actually do it.
Of course, in Amsterdam, there were no street signs that said, ‘Merge,’ so she’d put a piece of paper where she’d written the word above her own bed, and they’d made love under it.
“Want some clothes to change into?” Arlowe asked. “I don’t usually code in slacks and a button-down, but maybe you do in a sweater and jeans.”
“I’m okay,” she replied, trying to push the memory of Arlowe being on top of her and inside her out of her mind.
“Okay. Well, I’m going to change.”
Arlowe looked at her, and there was an unreadable expression on her face.
“Oh, right. Sorry,” she said and turned around.
“I know it’s stupid – you’ve seen me naked. But–”
“No, I get it. I wasn’t thinking. I can wait for you out there.”
She walked out the door and stood in the hallway, taking a deep breath, and Enya walked out of her bedroom and turned just in time to see her take that breath.
“I was putting my computer in my room. Grabbing that snack now,” she told Eline.
“I’m just waiting on Arlowe to change,” she explained.
Enya gave her a nod and said, “It’s going to be okay.”
And for some reason, Eline believed her.
Enya had always had that way about her. Eline had noticed it even back when they’d been in school.
She just was believable, and her kind eyes didn’t hurt, either.
She watched Enya walk toward the kitchen and turned back around just in time to see Arlowe emerge from her bedroom, wearing a T?shirt and a pair of blue sweats.
“Just how many of my shirts did you steal?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest when she saw the old dark-green Adidas shirt she’d lost and had forgotten about right around the time Arlowe had moved back home.
“Oh, at least five,” Arlowe replied with a little smirk.
“You said you had no room in your luggage for more souvenirs, and you had space for my shirts?”
“I wore one of them on the plane,” Arlowe said. “The other four were wrapped around stuff to keep things from breaking. I had my priorities in order, thank you very much. Now, come on.”
Arlowe nodded toward the door that she’d referred to as her office before. Eline followed her inside, and this room also looked exactly like a room that Arlowe would decorate.
“Oh, be careful,” Arlowe told her. “I haven’t picked that stuff up yet. I was looking at it last night.”
“What is it?”
“Hardware.”
“Yes, I can see that, Arlowe.”
“No, I mean that it’s our possible hardware for the company.
Gabi, Sarai’s girlfriend, who also works for us, is heading up a wearable concept.
Those are three different prototypes. They don’t work yet.
They’re mostly just a 3D-printed shell. We’re trying to figure out how big they would need to be to have all the internal components necessary to run the software. ”
“You’re making smart glasses, too? This is amazing, Arlowe.”
Eline sat down on the floor where three different pairs of glasses rested on pieces of paper, along with several component parts that they were likely toying around with going inside the glasses.
Arlowe sat down next to her and said, “It’s mostly Gabi.
She’s a genius with this stuff. We have, like, five other prototypes that we’re messing around with.
The hard part is figuring out how to make them something people would actually wear.
They can’t be too heavy or large. You’ve seen the other smart goggles and glasses.
People don’t like wearing them if they’re bulky or look funny. ”
“These look great, though,” Eline said as she put on a pair of dark-rimmed, normal-looking glasses.
“Yeah, they do.” Arlowe chuckled.
“And they weigh next to nothing.”
“Because right now, they’re hollowed-out, 3D-printed glasses. We’d have to put all those parts inside them.”
“Want to do that instead of letting me find all the issues in your code?”
“What do you mean, all? I think you meant to say none. You might as well admit defeat now.”
Eline laughed, took off the glasses, and set them back down on the paper.
“You’re so overly confident right now; I bet I’ll find an issue in the first line.”
Arlowe laughed this time and replied, “You’re on.”
Then, Arlowe stood and held out her hands, and before Eline could stop herself, her hands were in Arlowe’s for the first time in twelve years.
They stared at one another for a long moment before Eline looked away from Arlowe’s intense eyes and stood up, dropping Arlowe’s hands when she did.
Arlowe cleared her throat, and Eline looked around the room, taking in the desk with four monitors, two of them vertical and two horizontal, attached to a clearly enhanced setup underneath.
The rest of the room was filled with all sorts of boxes from electronic equipment lying around.
“I’m going to get you in and let you take a look around while I make us drinks, but if I get back with a margarita on the rocks for you and you still haven’t found any errors, I get to steal the salt from the rim after all.”
Eline laughed a little and said, “Deal.”
Then, she watched Arlowe sit down at her desk and get to work, and in a way, it was just like old times when they’d used to work together side by side, mostly in silence, checking each other’s work for their shared class and taking breaks to hold one another in bed or go for walks around the city.
It also wasn’t like old times, though, because they weren’t college students any longer.
Arlowe was very much an adult who probably wore business suits to certain work meetings, had the power to fire someone for showing up drunk to work, and had her own at-home office with a pretty expensive setup.
It made Eline feel like they’d been such kids back then, but they’d also been kids in love.
“Okay. Here you go. Obviously, don’t mess with anything. I don’t want you to accidentally push something into production.”
“I won’t,” she replied.
“I’ll be right back.”
Arlowe stood and walked out of the room, still smelling like orange and cinnamon mixed with the woods.
Eline sat down in her chair, looked up at the left vertical monitor where Arlowe had left her the code she had worked on for some level of the game, and very quickly, she began laughing.
In fact, when Arlowe returned from making them margaritas, she was still laughing.
“What?”
Arlowe handed her her drink and stared at the screen.
“The salt is all mine,” she replied, pointing with her free hand to the line of code where the issue started.
“What?” Arlowe asked.
“You don’t see it?”
“Oh, shit…” Arlowe said. “Can you–”
Eline stood up because she knew Arlowe would want to fix the error right away.
“If you had pushed that to the app, you would’ve had some pretty angry customers.”
“I can’t believe I missed that. The game would’ve timed out over and over again, and their scores wouldn’t have been saved.”
“Told you I’d find something,” she stated confidently before she took a sip of her drink.
“Yeah, you did. Except now this is a problem because I’ve got to fix it. This pushes in three days. QE was going to take a look at it tomorrow, but I’d rather fix it before that.”
“Want some help?” she asked.
“You want to help me fix it?”
“Why not? Got another computer I could use?”
“Do I have another computer? It’s like you don’t even know me anymore.” Arlowe chuckled before she stood up, found another laptop in the closet of the office, and handed it to her. “I’ll grab you a chair to sit on, too.”
“No need. I’m good here.” Eline sat down on the floor, opened the laptop, and added, “Where would you like me to start?”