“That’s fine.” She kissed my chest again. “But the longer you put it off, the harder it’s going to be. You’ve already broken the seal. We were just there. If you let it go months or even years—which would be dumb because even if it’s paid off, you’ll still be paying taxes on a house you’re not living in—it’s going to be even harder to go back.”
“I hear you. Can we talk about something else?”
“Sure.” She paused. “I think you should reach out to your foster brothers.”
“Fuck’s sake,” I groaned, rolling on top of her as she shrieked in surprise.
Needless to say, the conversation ended there. At least for a while.
Three weeks later, Harper’s suitcases were unpacked and stored in the back of my closet, and we were sitting on the couch talking about the car I’d been working on for days and still couldn’t figure out what the hell was wrong with it when her phone began to ring and her face lit up.
“It’s Bird,” she said incredulously. “Hello?”
She paused for a few moments, listening.
“Oh, my god, that’s genius,” she said with a little laugh. “Hold on, I’m going to put you on speaker so Bas can hear this.”
“Hey, Bird,” I said as she sat the phone between us.
“What’s up, Bas?” he replied. “How you been, man?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Tell him about the app,” Harper ordered.
“I developed an app that connects seniors to other seniors in their area—”
“Like a dating app?” I asked, grimacing.
“Works like that, yeah,” Bird replied. “But it’s not for dating. I noticed that my grandma didn’t have a good way to meet other people. Older folks are just sitting at home waiting for their kids to visit, especially if they’re not hooked up with the community for whatever reason and aren’t taking advantage of community centers and shit. They’re lonely, man.”
“So, he made a friend app for old people!” Harper said excitedly.
“Basically, yeah.” Bird chuckled. “They enter their personal information, which the company then does a free background check on, and they have to be older than sixty-five, much like a retirement community, and once it all checks out, they’re on the app. It’s got location tracking and it’s insanely easy to navigate. Plus, authorized users can also sign in to keep track of their elderly user whenever they want, see the messages sent, look at who they’ve met up with, that kind of thing—just in case they think that’s necessary.”
“Fucking brilliant,” Harper said.
“You’re good for my ego, Harp.”
“It’s a good idea!”
“Thanks.” Bird paused. “I called you because I’ve gotten the financing, and the app is going to launch soon, and I think it’s going to be big. We’ve used a beta version here in the Seattle area, and it’s going really well. Nova mentioned that you’re between jobs right now.”
“I don’t know anything about apps,” Harper said quickly.
“I can teach you anything you need to know about this one,” he replied calmly. “I want you to be my CFO.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I’m not.”
“Fuck yeah.”
“Excellent.”
I watched as emotions raced across Harper’s face. Excitement, joy, nervousness, and eventually disappointment.
“Bird, I can’t move to Seattle,” she said apologetically. “Bas and I just moved in together, and I want to stick around Eugene.”
