She doesn't move. Then she reaches for the legal pad, flips to a clean page, and clicks her pen.
"Okay. Walk me through what you have."
We work side by side for three hours. I pull up the shared folder; she rebuilds the layouts. Click. Export. Drag. Type. She writes a caption; I resize the image.
The rhythm settles. By midnight, we've rebuilt sixty percent.
"Break," Sam says, rolling her shoulders.
I check the clock. "Good idea."
She moves to the couch. I follow with the bag of Thai food and set it on the coffee table. She opens the container of Pad Thai. Her shoulders drop a fraction of an inch, the first real physical release of tension I've seen from her all night.
"You are a lifesaver," she murmurs, handing me a pair of chopsticks.
"Why are you so good at this?" Sam asks softly, staring at her food.
"At what?"
"Solving problems on the fly. Handling things when they fall apart."
I wipe my hands on a napkin. "Practice. When you move around a lot, you learn to adapt. Fix things before anyone notices they're broken."
She watches me, fork halfway to her mouth. "I've spent my whole life trying to control outcomes. Make sure nothing falls apart." She pauses, her voice incredibly quiet. "But you're good at handling things when they do."
"We balance each other out."
She sets her fork down and turns to face me fully. "You don't have to fix everything alone anymore. You know that, right?"
I just spent eight hundred dollars without telling her, because that’s exactly what I do. I fix things alone.
But she isn’t just talking about the laptop or the project. She means I don't have to be alone.
And I like that thought.
"Yeah," I say. "I'm starting to."
We sit like that for a while, eating cold Thai food on her couch at one in the morning. The deadline is still there. We keep working.
Eventually I stand, clear the containers, and move back to the desk. "Let's finish this."
She follows.
***
Wednesday morning I'm at Mags' shop at eight. The laptop is waiting, sticky note on top:ALL RECOVERED.
I text Sam a photo of the folder structure. Every file is there.
Her reply is immediate.
You saved me.
Istare at the screen. I think about the eight hundred dollars, the missed sleep, the sheer panic in her voice when she called me.
Just returning the favor.
I tuck the laptop into my bag, and head back to the train. I find a seat near the window and Brooklyn slides past as we go underground.
