I blinked. She was the closest thing I had to a work best friend—which meant any best friend at all—and I had even geeked out to her a couple of times aboutLandsome Roads, trying to convince her to read it. When she didn’t show interest, I’d dropped it, and that was when I had decided to be more careful telling people about what I read.
“Fantasy’s not for everyone,” I said lightly. I spun the silver ring on my finger, wishing we could change the subject.
Sara turned her hazel eyes on Ahmad and Gemma. “If they set those kinds of stories in the real world, it would at least make sense. All those names. Elzajabah of the Northwinds. Smarmite of the South!” she said dramatically. A little pink came into her pale cheeks.
Ahmad and Gemma smiled, but Gemma’s dimple didn’t appear. It wasn’t really that funny.
“It can take some getting used to.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“I like nonfiction,” Ahmad said. I nodded along—anything to get the conversation moving. “I’d rather learn something while I read.”
“Most fantasy is smut these days anyway,” Sara said, pulling the conversation back.
Gemma’s mouth formed an O, as if she had just remembered something. “I couldn’t believe my cousin putLandsome Roadson with all our parents upstairs. I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, turn the volume down.’ I always forget we’re the adults now.” She laughed.
I licked peanut butter from the corner of my mouth. “The book is really different. The show exaggerates a lot.” In truth, the TV show was quite a bit tamer than the book. Still, there was a difference between seeing violence and sex played out with real actors than it was imagining it only as much as you liked—or more, as the case may be.
Lisbeth, someone I knew vaguely from Gemma’s department approached our table. “Gemma, sorry to interrupt, but the 3-D printer—”
That was all Gemma needed to hear about her baby. She was already moving toward the lunchroom exit, her berries and yogurt forgotten.
Ahmad wiped his mouth with a napkin. “She’s making more monitor mounts, and I want to see how she fixed the issue with the separated layers,” Ahmad said. He touched his styled hair to make sure it was still in place. “Be right back.”
Once the others were gone, the air staled. I didn’t understand the odd animosity from Sara unless she was worried about being lumped in with me, the nerd. The thought stung, but I tried to keep my face neutral so she didn’t see I was upset with her.
Sara pushed her light brown hair over her shoulder and picked up the conversation. “I’ve been trying to find some good, you know, literary books, but fantasy’s saturated everything.”
“You might like it if you gave it a chance,” I ventured casually. Fantasy could be literary. Really! People criticized the romance, but never talked about the decadent world-building or masterful plot twists.
Sara shrugged. “It’s just kind of silly to me.” She had the grace to sound apologetic. “Online you see all those people dressing up, pretending to be princesses and stuff, and it’s like,hello, you have two kids and a Roth IRA?”
I downed some of my water.
“They spend all this money on corsets and flower crowns. Seems like a racket to me.”
Iknewthere was a reason I never mentioned my knife collection to Sara.
“People just want to have fun,” I reasoned. “Escape a bit into a book or a show, that’s not so bad—”
Sara rolled her eyes. “It’s all people who can’t handle the real world. Never want to grow up. Just spend all their money on toys.” She watched as I tucked the book away for the second time and said quickly, “Not like you and me,” as if she only just realized I might not agree with her for once.
I wiped my fingers on a tiny cloth napkin and rolled it up with my sandwich wrappers. I should have smiled and shut up to not risk our friendship. Instead I said, “Well, maybe that is me. I want to have fun, not just run spreadsheets all day, waiting to be replaced by AI.”
In a software company like ours, AI was huge—more lore at this point than highly useful—but either way, what I’d said was a betrayal. We were supposed to enthusiastically celebrate the coming onslaught of AI, regardless of how it would impact our jobs. With only two hundred people at the company, we were spoken of like a family with the mission to knit together communities of people, but I knew if Tempo could replace me with AI, they would. At the end of the day, every company wanted to save money and I had the least seniority of the four accountants at Tempo. Worse, I didn’t have any other marketable skill. I couldn’t make a living as a book blogger—believe me, I’d tried. It was what landed me back in my parents’ house.
“You’re not going to be replaced by AI,” Sara said in a soothing tone.
“That’s easy for you to say.”
Her usually playful hazel eyes darkened. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Not like that—”
“You think I only got the job because Ed is my uncle?” She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear and frowned, waiting for my answer.
“No, I meant because you’re in marketing. Marketers are much savvier at incorporating AI while still setting the vision. Even if online ads are augmenting, someone needs to plan the strategy.” It was a winning argument because I’d heard her say it herself.
“It’s a tense time,” she finally said. “But lots of great things on the horizon.”
