CHAPTER 2
JO
Jo was elbow-deep in Linda Marsden's computer when her phone buzzed.
"One second," she said, not looking up from the tangle of cables she was reorganizing. "I think I found the problem."
"Is it that I'm old?" Linda asked dryly. "Because that's what my grandson says."
"Your grandson is twelve. He thinks everyone over thirty is ancient." Jo found the loose connection and clicked it back into place. "Try now."
Linda typed, and her screen blinked to life. "Oh thank god. I thought I lost the Lattimer brief."
"You didn't. Everything's backed up. I keep telling people." Jo crawled out from under the desk, knees protesting. At twenty-nine, she was starting to feel those protest knees more often. "I sent an email last month about the backup system."
"I don't read emails from IT, sweetheart. No offense."
"Some taken."
Linda patted her shoulder. "You're a treasure. I don't know what we'd do without you."
"Suffer," Jo said cheerfully. "Terribly. You'd have to use your phones for everything, and everyone here hates their phones."
"They're too small."
"They're the same size they've always been."
"My eyes are worse."
Jo laughed and finished packing up her toolkit.
The law firm of Wellington & Associates occupied three floors of a building in Midtown, and Jo knew every inch of it.
Every finicky router, every ancient desktop someone refused to upgrade, every partner who called IT for things that could be solved by turning it off and on again.
She'd worked here for five years. It wasn't glamorous, but she liked it. Liked the people, liked the puzzles, liked being the one everyone called when things went wrong.
Her phone buzzed again.
Charlotte: Date tonight. Wish me luck.
Jo stared at the message. Her stomach tightened, quick and sour, before she had any idea what emotion belonged to it.
Right. Charlotte had mentioned this at Sunday dinner. Not the date itself, but the app. The swiping. The fact that she was "trying to get back out there." Jo had made an encouraging noise and then Lucy had demanded her attention, and she'd sort of... forgotten.
The tightness was still there. Jo chalked it up to protective best friend energy and moved on.
Jo: luck! where's she taking you?
Charlotte: That wine bar on Court Street. The one with the exposed brick.
Jo: ooh fancy
Charlotte: She seems nice. Firefighter.
Jo: FIREFIGHTER? charlotte are you kidding. that's like peak hot.
Charlotte: I'll reserve judgment.
Jo: send me a picture if she's actually hot
Charlotte: Absolutely not.
Jo: rude
She was grinning at her phone when someone cleared their throat behind her.
"Josephina."
Jo turned. Margot Langley stood in the doorway of Linda's office, impeccable as always in a gray suit that put Jo's entire wardrobe to shame.
Her expression was its usual cool neutrality, but Jo had learned to read the microexpressions over five years.
The slight lift of one eyebrow. Her lips pressing together, almost imperceptibly.
Margot Langley was what Jo's grandmother would call "a tough nut." Cold, exacting, terrifying to the junior associates. Secretly a marshmallow underneath all the armor, but Jo would never say so out loud.
"Ms. Langley," Jo said. "What can I do for you?"
"My laptop is doing that thing again."
"The thing where it takes four minutes to open Outlook?"
"Yes."
"Did you try clearing your cache like I showed you?"
Margot's expression didn't change, but somehow conveyed profound disdain for the concept of clearing caches.
"I'll come take a look," Jo said. "Give me ten minutes?"
Margot nodded once and swept off down the hall.
"She likes you," Linda said, sounding impressed. "She doesn't like anyone."
"She tolerates me. Big difference."
"In Margot Langley's world, that's practically a marriage proposal."
Jo laughed and headed for the elevator. Her phone buzzed again on the way.
Charlotte: Don't wait up.
A knot pulled tight behind Jo's ribs. She stood in the hallway, thumb hovering over the keyboard, and for a second she forgot what she'd been walking toward. The elevator. Right. Margot's laptop.
She typed back before the feeling could become anything she'd have to look at.
Jo: never do. have fun!
Margot's laptop was an easy fix. It always was. The woman had approximately seventeen thousand tabs open at any given time and refused to close any of them, which was deeply relatable but also the source of ninety percent of her tech problems.
"You can just bookmark these," Jo said, gesturing at the screen. "Then close them. Your computer will thank you."
"They're open for a reason."
"What reason?"
Margot looked at her like she was being deliberately obtuse. "In case I need them."
"That's what bookmarks are for."
"This is faster."
It was not faster. Jo didn't argue. She'd learned that arguing with Margot Langley was a losing proposition. Instead she cleared the cache, defragmented a few things, and made Outlook work again through what she privately called "aggressive optimism and percussive maintenance."
"There," she said. "Try now."
Margot typed. Her lips twitched, not quite a smile, but close enough.
"Thank you, Josephina."
"Jo is fine."
"Jo, then." Margot tilted her head, studying Jo a half-second longer than was comfortable. "You seem cheerful today."
"Do I?" Jo was packing up her toolkit. "I'm always cheerful."
"You're always competent. There's a difference." Margot turned back to her screen. "Let me know if you need anything for the last phase of the server migration."
"I will. And close some tabs."
"I'll consider it."
She wouldn't. Jo left anyway, smiling to herself. Margot Langley was weird, but she was Jo's kind of weird.
Back at her desk, she pulled up her own screen and stared at her emails without reading them. Charlotte's texts kept pulling her back.
Date tonight. Wish me luck.
Charlotte hadn't dated anyone seriously in...
Jo couldn't remember how long. There'd been the landscape architect, which had lasted three dates.
Before that, the accountant, which had been two.
Before that, the marketing executive who Charlotte had described as "aesthetically pleasing but intellectually barren," which was the most Charlotte thing Jo had ever heard.
Charlotte didn't date. Not really. She went through the motions, and then she ended things, and then she came back to Jo's couch on Friday nights and they watched their show and ate popcorn and everything was normal.
This was normal.
The firefighter was probably nice. Charlotte deserved nice.
Jo went back to work.
That evening, Jo stopped by her grandparents' apartment with groceries.
The apartment above the restaurant was small and cramped and full of forty years of accumulated stuff.
The radiator clanked in the hallway, and the whole place smelled the way it always did: garlic and onion from the kitchen below, Murphy Oil Soap on the hardwood, and the dusty warmth that was just them.
Jo had been coming here all her life, and after her parents died five years ago she'd come even more often.
She knew every squeaky floorboard, every framed photo, every tchotchke on the mantelpiece.
"You didn't have to," Grandma Ruth said, already unpacking the bags. "I can still get my own groceries."
"I was in the neighborhood."
"You're never in this neighborhood. You live halfway across Brooklyn."
"I was in a different neighborhood that was near a grocery store." Jo kissed her grandmother's cheek. "Let me help."
They put away the groceries together. It was a well-practiced dance. Milk in the back of the fridge. Bread in the bread box. The good olive oil on the shelf above the stove, where Grandma could reach it if she stood on her toes.
"So," Grandma said, when they were done. "How's work?"
"Fine. Fixed Margot Langley's laptop again."
"The ice queen."
"She's not that bad."
"Valentina says she made a paralegal cry once."
"The paralegal was terrible. I would have made him cry too." Jo leaned against the counter. "Charlotte has a date tonight."
Grandma Ruth went very still.
Jo didn't notice. She was checking her phone, seeing if Charlotte had texted any updates. Nothing yet. The date must be going well.
"A date," Grandma said carefully.
"Yeah. Some firefighter she met on an app. I told her to send me a picture, but she refused."
"Sounds serious."
"It's a first date. Nothing's serious."
Grandma was looking at her with that expression again. The one everyone wore lately, when Jo mentioned Charlotte. Like they were in on a joke she'd missed.
"What?" Jo asked.
"Nothing. Just wondering when you're going to start dating again."
"I date."
"When was the last time?"
Jo thought about it. "There was that guy from the coffee shop. Trevor?"
"That was six months ago."
"Was it? Huh." It hadn't felt like that long. Time did weird things when your social calendar was mostly "hang out with Charlotte" and "work."
"Maybe you should get on the apps." Grandma's voice was too casual. She wasn't looking at the groceries anymore. She was watching Jo. "Like Charlotte."
"Yeah, maybe." Jo's phone buzzed. She grabbed it.
Charlotte: She's nice.
Charlotte: Good stories. Terrible taste in wine.
Jo: dealbreaker?
Charlotte: To be determined.
Jo grinned at the screen. "She says the firefighter is nice but has bad taste in wine."
"And how do you feel about that?"
"I feel like Charlotte's wine standards are unreasonably high." Jo typed back a response. "She once refused to drink something I brought because the label was 'aesthetically offensive.'"
"That's not what I meant."
"What did you mean?"
Grandma Ruth held her gaze. Then she sighed and shook her head, the same sigh she gave when Jo was being obtuse.
"Nothing, bubeleh. Never mind."
Grandpa Isaac came in from the other room, newspapers tucked under his arm. "Is that Jo? Did you bring the pickles?"
"I brought the pickles."
"Good girl." He shuffled to the fridge. "What are we talking about?"
"Charlotte's date," Grandma said.
"The date," Jo said. "Some firefighter she met on an app."
"Ah." Grandpa Isaac found the pickles and made a satisfied noise. "Nice girl, Charlotte. You two have been friends a long time."
"A decade."
"And she's never dated anyone seriously in all that time?"
Jo frowned. "I mean, she's dated. It just never... sticks. I don't think she's met the right person yet."
Her grandparents exchanged a look. One of those married-for-fifty-years looks that contained entire conversations.
"What?" Jo asked.
"Nothing," they said in unison.
"You're both being weird."
"We're old," Grandpa Isaac said. "We're allowed to be weird."
Jo's phone buzzed again.
Charlotte: Second glass. She ordered a Malbec.
Jo: is that good or bad
Charlotte: The wine itself is fine. It's the pairing I'm concerned about.
Jo: you're such a snob
Charlotte: I prefer "discerning."
Jo laughed. Her grandparents were still watching her with those expressions.
"I should go," Jo said. "Early morning tomorrow."
"Server migration?" Grandma asked.
"Last phase of it. You remembered."
"I remember everything about my granddaughter." She pulled Jo into a hug. "Be safe. And think about what I said. About the apps."
"I'll think about it."
She wouldn't. She didn't need the apps. She had her job, her family, her friends.
She had Charlotte.
What else did she need?