Page 16 of Ideal Life

“Laura Owusu, the San Francisco Chronicle.”

“Ah, good; you didn’t get caught in traffic.”

She squinted at him. “I’m sorry?”

Oh, right. She didn’t know about what had happened in the last iteration of this party. Sam laughed his comment off as if it had been a joke. “You know, 101 is always a gamble. Could be thirty minutes from San Francisco to Palo Alto, could be three hours.”

Laura laughed. “So true. Listen, do you happen to know where Talia Morgan is? We’re supposed to be doing some press stuff.”

Sam pointed to the far side of the restaurant where Talia and Ryan had gone. “You haven’t missed anything. They’re about to get started.”

At the sushi bar, the intern he’d met earlier sat next to him.

“Could I have an Ideal Roll?” Erin asked the chef, ordering one of the specials for the night. “There’s no nuts in there, right? I’m allergic.”

“No,” the chef said. “The ingredients are black sushi rice—representing ‘dark mode’ interfaces favored by programmers—wrapped with avocado, which is very Californian, Wagyu beef because OmnisZcience is the best, and topped with gold flakes as a nod to Ideal Life’s incredible valuation.”

“Sounds delicious,” Erin said. She unsheathed a pair of wooden chopsticks and turned to Sam while she rubbed the wood splinters off of them. “So, I heard you and Talia met while you were in college. That’s so amazing. Have you been in love with her all this time?”

Sam nearly choked on his sashimi roll. “What?”

Erin smiled. “Don’t worry—I haven’t told anyone. I don’t think Talia knows, either. But I could tell by how you swapped your champagne for hers so she could carry a partially drunk one, and the way you looked at her when she walked away with that venture capital guy; it was like, I don’t know, a sense of wonder was beaming out of you. It was really sweet.”

“I think you’re reading the signs wrong. Talia and I are just friends.”

“Okay,” Erin said, still smiling like she didn’t believe him at all. “Then tell me how you met. Because I’m a rising junior now, and I’m hoping my soulmate—I mean, my ‘just a friend’—is floating around somewhere on campus, too.”

“You’re very forward, you know that?” Sam laughed.

Erin did, too. “I know. It’s something Talia’s trying to soften in me. She says I have a lot of promise, but right now, I’m like the overly excited kid who runs straight into the flock of pigeons and scares them all away. Her goal is to teach me how to feed the pigeons instead.”

“You’ve got time. Talia started out by scaring the pigeons, too.”

“Do tell.”

The sushi chef slid her Ideal Roll over the glass counter, but Erin ignored it, leaning in toward Sam instead.

“It’s not that exciting of a story,” Sam said. “Basically, I was kind of a recluse in college—not on purpose, but I tend to get lost in books or even my own head, and it’s easy for me to forget to actually go out into the world. Well, Talia wasn’t going to let that stand.

“She found out that the physics department hosted a regular Thursday-night poker game. So one Thursday night, Talia walked into my room, grabbed the novel I was reading out of my hands, and dragged me out of the dorm without telling me where we were going. Now, keep in mind she had her younger sister with her—”

“Wait,” Erin said. “You know Libby?”

“Yeah. Talia’s family lived about thirty minutes away, and since Libby was sixteen then, she’d often drive over and do her homework while hanging out with us in the dorm. Sometimes I’d go to Talia’s room and she wouldn’t be there, but Libby would—she used to climb in the first-floor window. We spent so much time together back then I basically adopted her as my own little sister, which was nice because I don’t have any siblings. So, you’ve met Libby, too? I didn’t think she was around this summer.”

“No…” Erin blushed. “I’ve just heard about her.”

Sam smiled softly. “Yeah, I guess everyone has. Pretty wild that that kid is all grown-up and world-famous now. Anyway, the poker game. Talia marched us from the dorm all the way across campus to the physics department building. Then she sat me down at the table without even asking me if I knew how to play.”

“Did you?” Erin asked.

“Know how to play? No.” Sam laughed. “But of course Talia did, and she was charming enough that she convinced the other guys around the table to let me, her, and Libby be a team so that Talia could teach us. I think the guys said yes partially because they thought Talia would be an easy mark—she was a psychology major, she smiled a lot, and she was a girl. Yeah, I know, I know—don’t get me started on that last one.

“They told us the stakes and dealt us in. And before they knew it, she’d cleaned them all out and no one quite knew what hit them. That’s Talia, running into the pigeons and scaring them all. But she kept showing up to every physics poker night after that, and I tagged along. Libby, too, if she was around. And soon enough, they all fell a little bit in love with her because she was clearly brilliant but didn’t make them feel stupid for having underestimated her. And through serendipity—or more accurately, Talia’s relentless will—I learned how to play poker.”

“Damn, that woman is my hero,” Erin said.

Mine, too, Sam thought, but he didn’t say it aloud because Erin already knew.