“Please pick another word next year,” someone else groaned.
“Not just another word—a better word,” Miles begged.
“Like I haven’t heard that request a million times already.” I cracked my knuckles and started typing.
The next few hours were a blur of code, caffeine, and a chat box full of sarcastic memes. By the time I patched the handshake error and tested a stable recovery loop, I’d forgotten to blink.
I pushed back from the desk and rubbed my eyes, realizing it was past lunchtime. My gaze landed on the photo of Janine I kept on my desk. We shared the same dark brown hair and brown eyes, but my sister’s skin was paler than mine. She looked so much like our mother that my heart twisted sometimes with the pain of remembrance. She was the only family I had left. I owed her everything I was.
Outside, the sun had clawed its way through Manhattan’s smoggy ceiling. I walked two blocks to a quiet spot in Riverside Park, and found my usual bench beneath a chestnut tree—a rare pocket of stillness amidst the city chaos.
Overhead, the leaves trembled in a breeze that smelled faintly of cut grass, distant hot dog carts, and the brackish hint of the Hudson. Somewhere to my left, a dog barked half-heartedly.
I sat down, unwrapped my sandwich, and took a bite. The sandwich was top notch—sourdough bread, thick-cut turkey that I’d roasted myself over the weekend, sliced avocado, and Dijon mustard. It tasted amazing, reaching the perfect balance between protein and carbs.
For ten minutes, it was just me, my sandwich, and the rare illusion that maybe the world wasn’t as screwed up as I heard every day in the news.
And then the squirrel arrived. Not just any squirrel, but the same bold little bastard who’d been tailing me all summer as though I owed him child support and he had the receipts to prove it. He strutted across the grass with the menace of a mob enforcer and the fluffiest tail this side of Pixar.
I locked eyes with him.
He paused, tilting his head.
I took another bite of my sandwich—slowly, deliberately.
He inched closer.
I arched a brow. “Don’t even think about it.”
He sat up on his haunches, tiny paws pressed together in the universal rodent gesture of mock-innocence. His beady little eyes flicked from my sandwich to my face and back again, as if trying to calculate how fast he’d have to be to snatch it and live.
“Don’t try me today, buddy,” I muttered. “I’m tired and hangry.”
Unfazed, he crept closer.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a single unsalted cashew from a stash I kept precisely for this unholy alliance. I tossed it gently onto the grass.
He froze, only his nostrils moving. He looked at me one last time—no doubt to assure me this wasn’t over—then scooped it up and darted off behind a tree, victorious.
I let out a sigh and shook my head. “Jesse would’ve rooted for you.”
My thoughts circled back to her. They did that a lot lately. I’d handled things like an idiot the other day. I just couldn’t say no to a woman—well, not unless we were talking serious commitment. But it was good that I’d let Candi come over and fixed that situation. Now I was officially unattached, and maybe one day I would reverse Jesse’s bad opinion of me.
I took my phone out of my pocket and stared down at it. For a moment, I wondered if I should text Jesse. I had her phone number from her website, but had never called her or texted her before. I hadn’t felt welcome. I still didn’t. What would I say? If I’d been quick enough to snatch a photo of the squirrel, maybe it would have been a good ice breaker, but the little bastard was long gone.
I thought about yesterday, replayed our conversation in my head, and an idea flickered in my mind. I knew a guy who worked at a gallery. Maybe I could help Jesse out and earn some points with her.
Excited, I opened Facebook and looked up Malcom Heffner. I knew Malcom from the chess team back in high school. He was an exceptional player, but I knew back then he didn’t belong in Stuyvesant. Math and science were not his gig, yet his parents had forced him into both. I was happy to see he’d made his life his own eventually.
I scrolled a bit through his profile, smiling at dozens of pics of his adoptive daughter and her new puppy. A recent post stopped me in my tracks. It was a post from Narcissus Gallery, the place where Malcom worked as a curator. The gallery was searching for new and upcoming artists to showcase for a six-month long art event.
How lucky was that?
I immediately started typing a message to Malcom, but after a couple sentences I stopped. Instead of asking him to do me afavor and contact Jesse, I reconsidered. I genuinely believed in Jesse’s art. I knew she would make it on her own.
Was I trying to help her just to get into her pants?
The firm answer was no.
