Chapter 19 Lexi
LEXI
The next morning I woke up with a smile, thanks to my sex-tinged conversation with Jonah the night before. But it faded quickly when I reached for my phone to check my work email.
The code changes I’d made yesterday had broken the system. I needed to get to work right away and fix it before Rafael realized and started breathing fire about my inadequacies.
I hurried to get Evie ready for her day, but she was in a bad mood, refusing to go to her preschool.
“I want to stay at home,” she repeated while I walked her to the bathroom to brush her teeth.
I was already frazzled when my phone lit up with another notification.
Oh God. Please let it not be Stacey.
It was.
STACEY
Someone’s broken the codebase.
Shit. That someone was me.
And just as Evie opened her mouth for what I was sure was going to be another protest, we both froze at the sound of a knock on the door. Going by the lack of sounds in her room, Sasha was still asleep, so I walked down the stairs to the door.
When I opened the door, I found a package on our doorstep. It was big, bright, and from Disney. I opened it to find a life-size Olaf plush toy, wrapped up in glittery pink paper.
Tucked beside it was a note: For Evie. From Jonah.
How the hell …
Had he heard the Frozen 2 songs playing in the background during our call last night?
My heart softened as Evie came bounding over, squealed, and threw her arms around me in a big hug.
“Thank you!” she cried, spinning us both around.
“I’m going to sleep with it,” Evie announced, clutching Olaf tight. “Oh, I don’t mind going to my preschool now … if I can remember this is waiting for me when I get home.”
Just like that, I’d landed in her good books unexpectedly.
I begrudgingly had to agree that there was something right with Jonah after all.
On the subway ride, Evie finally told me why she hated her new preschool. A toddler there had been hitting her, and she’d been too scared to tell anyone.
My heart broke. I pulled her close, inhaling the scent of her baby wash, and promised I’d take care of it.
When we got to her preschool, I spoke to her teachers. They listened, nodded, and assured me they’d keep the two kids apart in the room as much as possible. But there wasn’t much more they could promise.
Even after I kissed her goodbye, Evie’s fear stayed with me.
As I tried to focus at work and repair the mess I’d made of our codebase, I felt that maybe I’d never quite be enough at being a parent or a reliable coder.
When I finally fixed the problem, a simple typo in my code that had taken two hours to debug, I took a breath and sat back. Stacey had made a comment about costing them valuable hours, but then she let it go.
I looked at my phone, which had been quiet all morning, and I texted Jonah at the number he’d called me from last night.
LEXI
Thank you for the toy. Evie absolutely loves it.
I stared at the screen for a second, and then added another line.
LEXI
You didn’t have to do that.
His reply came quicker than I’d expected.
JONAH
I excel at doing things I’m not supposed to do, Lexi.
I let out a short breath and gave a small laugh. Of course he did.
For the next hour, I couldn’t stop thinking about what else he was good at doing that he wasn’t supposed to.