Page 8 of Vegas with my Ex’s Best Friends

A few minutes later she makes a small, satisfied sound under her breath and sits back from the screen.

I look up at the same moment she does. Our eyes meet.

“One earbud in the kitchen. Two everywhere else,” I say.

She tilts her head, a slow smile spreading. “You've noticed that?”

“I notice patterns.”

“Yeah?” Her mouth curves. “Well, I do too.” She tilts her head, focusing her expression. “You haven't moved in two hours,” she says, a faint challenge in her voice.

“Neither have you.”

She leans forward a little. “Same mug. Same amount every time you refill it.” Her eyes narrow slightly, playful but sharp. “And you keep adjusting your chair like you're pretending not to look at me.”

“Guilty,” I say, keeping my voice level.

She studies me for a second too long, then adds, “You do that thing where your shoulders stay perfectly still even when you're reacting—like you're running a mental diagnostic on yourself before you allow any expression through. Doctors are terrible at hiding it once someone knows what to look for.”

The observation lands cleanly. I'm genuinely caught off guard; most people see the steady hands, not the machinery behind them. A flicker of real surprise breaks through before I can lock it down.

“At least we're both honest about it,” I say.

She holds my gaze one beat more, then returns to her screen. The corner of her mouth stays lifted.

An hour later she stretches her arms overhead. The oversized hoodie rides up, showing a brief strip of skin at her waist. My gaze catches there before I force it back down.

“You were right, by the way,” she says without looking over. “About the gap between what people expect users to do and what they actually do.”

I set down my cup.

She glances at me. “I've been redesigning this checkout flow for six weeks because the client swears the conversion rate is wrong. Users are dropping at the confirmation step, not payment. No one asked them. Everyone just assumed.”

“What did the client think the problem was?”

“Friction at checkout.” She rolls her eyes lightly. “So they simplified the payment form. Thirty-six percent completion. Confirmation step sat at eleven percent. Three meetings and nobody checked where people were actually leaving.”

I nod.

She angles her screen toward me slightly. “I'm adding a progress indicator, cutting the form fields in half, and moving the security badges higher. People abandon when they're unsure the transaction actually went through.”

I lean in. The fixes are clean. Logical.

“That will work,” I say.

“I know.” A small, satisfied smile touches her lips.

I shift slightly in my chair, then catch myself.

“Humans don't read the manual. They feel their way through fear and uncertainty. The ones who make it are usually the ones who felt seen along the way.”

She holds my gaze a moment. I stop tracking the spreadsheet entirely.

The smile lingers in my peripheral vision longer than it should.

“What's the timeline?” I ask, even though I know I shouldn't keep the conversation going.

“Client wants it Friday. I told them Thursday.” She pulls one leg up onto the chair, elbow on her knee, completely comfortable in the space. “I build in a buffer day. They feel like they got an early win. I don't spend Friday panicking.”