30. Josh
THIRTY
JOSH
“ T his show gets me all stressed out,” Zoe said, shuddering as she tucked her feet beneath her on the couch. “Too much violence.”
I leaned toward her and held out the remote. “Here. We can watch whatever you want. I’m not into these motorcycle gangsters either.”
She smiled at me as she took the remote. “I can watch anything?”
I made prayer hands and gave her a pleading look. “No housewives, please. Anything but them.”
Zoe laughed and started flipping channels.
“Or teen moms.”
“Getting mighty picky over there for someone who just handed over the remote,” Zoe said, arching her eyebrow at me.
I watched her scroll through the channels and felt the airy feelings start bubbling inside of me. She was just so adorable , especially with messy hair and wearing old pajamas. I refused to admit that her face and hair did look better after all that yogurt. Shannon’s, too .
“Ooh,” she exclaimed as she landed on a channel that was just displaying a title. “I’ve wanted to watch this documentary! It’s about software manufacturers, it’s supposed to be scandalous.”
“Well, that’s doubtful.” I laughed. “Maybe I want to watch the housewives after all.”
“Stop,” she scolded. “There’s so much that goes into the creation of this stuff that you don’t even know about. Even the simplest app on your phone is a piece of sophisticated back-end design. I love studying it.”
I saw an opportunity. “Speaking of studying…have you heard back from the grad school program yet?”
I felt as though I should cross my fingers as I asked the loaded question.
A tiny part of me hoped that she’d lost interest in it, given how great everything had been going at the ranch and with her side photography projects around town.
Sure, I wanted her to chase her dreams, but maybe some of those dreams had room for me and Lost Valley.
I couldn’t deny that I also wanted her to stay.
Maybe she could see how building a life in Poplar Springs was a solid choice?
A life with me .
“Not yet,” she answered, still staring at the TV screen. “But I keep checking my emails and refreshing the school’s website for updates. They just added some new guest lecturers that I’m dying to hear. Like Raj Gupta, the guy who designed Scenic Route, if you can believe it.”
I furrowed my brows. “Who and what?”
Zoe sighed. “It’s only the world’s biggest project management program.
Raj is a genius . And Kelly Rafferty too, that nerdy model.
She started a coding program for middle school girls, and it’s the coolest thing ever.
She’s like a personal hero to me, since everyone thought I was a big weirdo for doing it back in the day.
What I wouldn’t have given for validation from someone like her when I was a kid. ” She shook her head sadly.
“Yeah, but look at you now,” I said, hoping to keep her from sliding into a funk about the teasing she’d endured. “Badass coder extraordinaire.”
“Getting there,” she said, focused on the TV. “This grad school program will jump me to the next level for sure and open more doors in terms of career options with organizations working on projects I want to be a part of.”
We watched the documentary in silence for a few minutes as I processed what Zoe had just told me without actually saying the words.
She was excited to leave. She hadn’t even considered staying put; her focus was firmly on her future.
Where it should be.
How could I ask her to stay and give up everything she’d been working toward and wanted so badly?
“See her?” Zoe asked excitedly, pointing at the screen. “That’s who I want to be when I grow up.”
It was a clip of a well-dressed middle-aged woman being interviewed by someone off screen.
“That’s Amanda Abromovich. She revolutionized web design. Have you heard of Yoshka?”
I rolled my eyes. “No, I’m just a cowboy living in a tiny town in Colorado. I haven’t heard of any of these people or tech companies.”
“Stop, it’s not your world. You have no need for any of it, just like I have no need for the saddlery shop.
Anyway, her company is an out-of-the-box web design company for the masses.
Like, if you didn’t have me and you wanted to update the ranch website, you could’ve gone to Yoshka dot com and done it yourself.
Obviously, it wouldn’t be as good as what I made for you, but it would be worlds better than what you had, not to mention easy to update and maintain yourself.
She wrote all the code for the site and launched it on her own, totally bootstrapped. ”
“What’s with all of these weird company names? What’s a ‘Yoshka’?” I scowled, hating that I was so out of the loop on things that were important to her.
“She’s Russian and it’s a play on ‘Matryoshka,’ those cute nesting dolls. It’s a reference to the code.”
“Ah,” I said glumly.
Zoe was in her own world as she watched the doc, leaving me to ponder everything she’d just told me.
There was no way I could even hint about her staying on in Poplar Springs.
I couldn’t even understand her dreams, much less help her reach them from here.
She had her life mapped out, and this was just a stopping point on her journey.
I started to get depressed about it but gave myself a mental punch in the nose.
No. If I started dwelling on Zoe leaving now, it meant that I’d never be able to enjoy the time I had left with her here.
As I’d said to my sister, Zoe and I were both mature adults.
When we’d broken up the first time, I’d been young and inexperienced in love.
Zoe was my first…well, not my first girlfriend or first lover, but she was the first one who mattered.
The first time it really felt like love.
The last time, too. Since then, I’d sampled other relationships, but I hadn’t experienced anything close with another woman to what Zoe and I had shared all of those years ago. No actual love love since her .
I glanced over at her and saw that her tank top strap had fallen off her shoulder.
Fuck , she was so effortlessly beautiful.
Nothing at all like the women I usually dated.
Those hyper-girly, too-much-makeup women who were nothing like the one who’d stolen my heart.
Maybe I picked those type of women on purpose?
To try to trick my brain and short-circuit the wiring of my past?
It didn’t matter. I needed to stop dwelling on the past and start thinking about the future. The best place for me to hang was in the here and now with the cute little coder sitting on the opposite end of the couch.
I shifted position so I could sprawl across the couch and gave her a “come closer” gesture.
Without taking her eyes off the documentary, Zoe scooted closer and then lay down.
Taking the hint, I spooned her. Wrapping my arm around her waist, I kissed the top of her head and pointed at the television.
“All of this is completely over my head, obviously, so tell me why some of this is so scandalous? Because unless we’re talking horses, I don’t get it. ”
She relaxed, resting her head against my shoulder. “The next segment is supposed to talk about this huge case of stolen code. This guy, Harry Stranger?—”
I coughed out a laugh. “Please tell me that’s not his real name.”
Zoe’s body shook as she giggled. “Nope, it’s real. Anyway, he got catfished by someone who…do you know what catfishing is?”
“Well, I know what catfish are.” She grabbed the remote and hit pause, then shifted to look at me, her mouth open and I grinned. “Yes, I know what catfishing is.”
“That’s a relief.” She shook her head before turning to face the television again.
“Anyway, turned out the guy worked for a competitor, and he managed to gain access to Harry’s server and was bragging about it.
So, rather than risk a lengthy court case, knowing that the other side had an army of lawyers and it might come down to a ‘he said-he said’ scenario, Harry made the code open source and free to everyone. ”
“You can do that?”
“Sure,” she said with a nod. “But that also meant he lost a lot of money in licensing and revenue. Like, potentially millions and millions.”
I frowned. I couldn’t imagine walking away from that much money.
Especially when I thought about all the ways Lost Valley could use those funds: replacing fencing, installing new drain pipes out to the pastures, updating the electrical boxes, buying that stallion Shannon wanted for breeding—the to-do and wish lists were lengthy.
While I still had the money from the bank loan, I’d been reluctant to use it. “That seems?—”
“Like Robin Hood, right?” she said, I could feel her excitement, but I couldn’t agree.
“I was thinking it was a weird choice. Didn’t he need the money? You can’t run a business if you’re constantly in or near a deficit,” I said thinking again about how I would use the money.
I felt her shoulders tense and realized that I’d upset her.
She let out a breath. “Sometimes, the principle is worth more than the money. In this case, a large corporation was looking to steal from him, so rather than let them, he chose to give it away so more people could use his code without having to worry about how to pay for it. In fact, I used some of it on Lost Valley’s website.
So you, and lots of others like you, have access to programs that might be too expensive to use otherwise. Hence?—”
“Why he’s Robin Hood,” I finished for her. I could understand the sentiment but the loss of that much revenue made my head spin .
“Exactly,” she said, relaxing against me again.
She hit play on the remote and we settled back in to watch the documentary and I tried to pay attention, but my mind kept drifting thinking about my dream list. Zoe was on that list but as she chatted about what was happening in the doc, I kept thinking about how that dream list was exactly that: a dream.