His eyes widened in understanding, and he chuckled.
“Well, we wouldn’t want to exacerbate yourpredicament,would we?” Though he was looking at me like he wanted nothing more than to exacerbate the shit out of it.
“No. No we do not. We want to befriendswho work really hard on memory manipulation and play cozy games together.”
He nodded, his eyes shining.
“Okay, Milo,” he hummed softly. “We can do that.”
The rest of the week went by smoothly. No more embarrassing mix-ups with Jay, and we made quite a bit of progress on the NeuroManipulator, which both Jay and I were really excited about.
By Friday, Jay was talking about organizing a demonstration of our recent optimization in the Cortex when Sebastian strolled into the lab.
“How are my two favorite memory therapy researchers doing?” he asked, giving us a stunning smile and running his hand through his golden waves.
“Great!” I chirped as Jay unplugged the device from the computer and locked it safely away in one of the desk drawers.
We were done for the day, and I was excited to get back to Amygdala to play some Stardew with my new ‘bestie.’ It had become our nightly tradition, and Jay had been right. It was a great way to unplug and slow our minds down after working on such complex problems all day.
Sebastian’s eyes lingered on the locked drawer for a moment before darting back up to meet Jay’s.
“A bunch of people are going to the Memory Tap tonight. You two want to come?”
Jay glanced at me, raising an eyebrow.
“I don’t know. Up to you, Milo. Do you want to go out tonight?”
The way he said it made my cheeks flush.
Why did it feel like he was asking me on a date?
It wasn’t. It was a group gathering with multiple other employees.
My silly brain was getting carried away again.
“Come on, Milo. From what Jay tells me, you’ve made a lot of progress this week. It would be good to blow off some steam.”
The truth was, my definition ofblowing off steamdidn’t involve large groups of people that I could easily make a fool of myself in front of.
I would much rather go back to Jay’s cube and play Stardew. Especially since we didn’t have curfew on Fridays, and we could definitely finish off Shane’s life events.
However, I had two C-level executives staring at me expectantly, and I didn’t feel like it would be right to say no. So instead, I smiled and nodded, pushing my glasses up my nose.
“Sure. Sounds like it could be fun.”
Jay beamed at me and nodded.
“Great. Let’s head home and get changed. Meet you there, Seb?”
Sebastian nodded, grinning wryly.
“Sounds good. Looking forward to seeing what tipsy Milo’s like.” He winked, and I blushed, which seemed to dampen Jay’s mood.
“O-okay. I’m not a big drinker, but I don’t see the harm in just having one.”
NOVA play: An Honest Mistake by The Bravery
Icouldn’t remember why I didn’t like drinking.
