As Talia scrolls, she’s taken right back to last Saturday: to herself and Townsend in a boat on Town Lake, going for the first time since May to see the bats fly.
“Just like our first date,” Townsend told her as he rowed toward Congress Avenue Bridge.
“Our second first date,” corrected Talia. “Our unofficial second first date.”
“Semantics.” Townsend smiled goofily, and Talia just knew. It was happening tonight. It was finally happening.
He waited until they were under the bridge, minutes before the bats would emerge and right as the sun began to dip in the sky. Whenhe tucked his oar under his seat and took her hands, any doubt she had floated away with the breeze. This was it.
“Talia,” he started, a slight quiver in his voice. “I’m the world’s luckiest man to have met you, and I upended the rules of luck when I got a second chance with you. Luckily, I don’t plan on ever losing you again.”
A nervous giggle escaped from her, and she was relieved when he laughed too.
“Sorry. Not my best work. This is my first time, you know.”
Talia squeezed his hands. “I’ll be gentle with you.”
“Do you promise? Because I’m about to ask you something, and it’s kind of scary for me.”
It was happening, it was happening, it was happening. “I do.”
Getting down on one knee proved difficult in a canoe. After nearly tipping the boat twice (which sent them both into a fit of nervous giggles), Townsend said “Fuck it” and cupped her chin in his hand instead. “Talia Danvers, will you marry me?”
The bats burst from under the bridge just as she said yes, swirling dizzily around them in a cloud of beating wings and jubilant squeaks. And when she kissed him, it felt at once like the first time and the thousandth time. Like she was finally home.
“Large iced matcha with oat milk?”
“That’s me.” Talia steps forward to claim her drink and then heads out to her car.
After getting home on Saturday night, Townsend showed her a picture of the diamond: a four-carat marquise cut. It was getting resized, he said. She was going to love it, he said. And she did, just as much as she loved him. In the face of all the drama (the private investigator, the creepy Post-it Note, the dead bat in her desk drawer, the brick thrown through Townsend’s car window, and even the fight with Meera, when she made those insane accusations about Townsend’s company), everything was now falling into place.
Bridal gowns and floral arrangements could replace thoughts of break-ins and threats. She was engaged! She was happy! And she deserved to enjoy it.
Outside Jo’s, the black Ford Taurus isn’t waiting for her, thank God—but still, her body feels stiff with unease. It isn’t until she pulls into the Cuff parking lot that Talia pinpoints the root of her discontent: Meera. She’s missing her friend, and she really wishes she could share the news of her engagement with her.
But she can’t. She has no choice but to swallow her sadness and start her day.
It’s been over a week since she was unceremoniously escorted from the office, but still, it seems all anyone can talk about is Meera and her suspension.
“Hey, Talia,” Meera’s deskmate David calls as soon as she enters the ML-team office. “Is it true that Meera hacked Cuff profiles to send random messages?” Curious, their other coworkers look up from their screens, awaiting Talia’s response.
“No,” she answers before correcting herself. “I don’t know.”
“Sure.” David crunches noisily on a pistachio, adding another shell to the precarious stack on his desk.
“No, really. I don’t know anything. Honest.” This doesn’t feel like a lie, since she doesn’t know what happened, not really. She’s texted and called Meera a dozen times since finding out about her suspension only to hear nothing in return. She’d be happy to set her coworkers straight, but clearly, Meera wants to keep Talia as in the dark as everyone else.
Plus, she doesn’t have the time to defend her former friend. In Meera’s absence, Talia’s workload has nearly doubled. Meera’s weekly performance-optimization audit has now become Talia’s responsibility in addition to her own tasks, and she has to get it all done while her coworkers continue to gossip around her.
“I heard Meera tried to expense an office chair with a built-in massager,” David says at one point. “Apparently, she has the same disease as Gigi Hadid.”
“Lyme disease?” This is asked by Otto, who sits across from Talia and who earned the nickname Mercury for routinely microwaving tuna in the office kitchenette. (In fact, if Talia recalls correctly, it was Meera who gave him this nickname.)
“No, that’s Bella. Gigi has some thyroid disorder. And apparently, Meera thought she needed a two-thousand-dollar chair because of it.”
Galina, whose desk is to the right of Otto’s, also pipes in. “Does this thyroid disorder also make you rude and chronically tardy? Because that would explain a lot.” It’s well known around the office that Galina hasn’t liked Meera ever since she refused to buy Girl Scout cookies from Galina’s niece.
Otto sniffs. “She drank my last Diet Dr Pepper once, even though I’d written my name on every can. She said she didn’t see the label because she didn’t have her glasses on. I don’t think she even wears glasses.”
