Chapter 32

And I didn’t. I managed to keep my mind running down two tracks, but even at my most focused on work for the next three days, there was an underlying script running in the background. Come to Oregon. Come to Oregon. That’s crazy. Think about it anyway.

Tuesday night near midnight Ranée wandered out to the kitchen for some water. “Whoa,” she said spotting me at the table. “You still working? I thought you guys were set.”

“We are. Everything came out fine in QA. I’m just refactoring a few code smells.” When she blinked at me, I said, “It’s like dotting I’s and crossing T’s.”

“Got it. So it should be fine tomorrow?”

“Should be.”

“How are we going to celebrate you surviving your first major project as a manager?”

I shrugged, still distracted by Jack’s invitation. “I don’t need any more shoes.”

“Meet me at Sarno’s after work. Drinks are on me.”

“I might be too exhausted for that.”

“But you have to do something.”

Yeah. Like go to Oregon. I shifted in my seat. I hadn’t told Ranée about Jack’s invitation because I didn’t want to hear her input. I wanted to make a clear-headed decision about it. Unfortunately, Ranée had learned to read me too well.

“Something’s not right.” She sat and peered at me. “What’s going on? Work got you down?”

I shook my head. “It’s been good. Hard, but this was my first of our biannual hell weeks and I’m getting through it fine.”

“So what’s up? Why not celebrate?”

“Because…”

She crossed her arms in a way that said she wasn’t moving until she got an answer. “Talk to me.”

“I’ll get a couple of comp days if the rollout goes well tomorrow, which it will.” I flicked a glance at my checklist, which I was going through for the fourth time. “I’ll get an extra-long weekend. So Jack asked me to come up.”

Her jaw dropped, and she gaped for two whole seconds before it shifted into a slow smile. “Well, well, well. When do you leave?”

“I don’t think I’m going.”

That wiped the smile off her face. “Why not?”

“For all the same reasons as before. Sean says Jack is buried under some sort of avalanche of guilt, and I’m not the rescue crew. It’s not my job to save him from himself. I don’t have the skills for that.”

“The skills? Girl, what do you think it takes to pull someone out of a rut?” She held up one hand, turning it this way and that. “This is all you need. All he needs. A hand up. This doesn’t take special training or equipment.”

“But this isn’t a simple rut. I’m worried if I pull him out that I’m going to have to keep carrying him. I’m not that strong.”

“You can’t carry the weight or you won’t carry the weight?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“It does. And what’s more, I think you’re being overdramatic. Let’s imagine you go to Oregon. What’s the best-case scenario?”

“Jack and I have perfect chemistry and fall madly in love and he leaves everything behind to live in San Francisco. But you know that’s not how my brain works. I’m already thinking ahead to the problems, so I can solve them, but I see no good solutions.”

“We’ll get to that. Tell me the worst-case scenario.”

“I go to Oregon and we don’t have any connection.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “You think that’s a possibility?”

An image of him smiling while he pushed his hair out of his eyes flashed in my mind. “No.”

“Tell me your real worst-case scenario.”

I knew it too well. “That Jack and I have perfect chemistry and fall madly in love but we both stay exactly where we are, and I get to deal with ‘what might have been’ for the rest of my life.”

“Aren’t you there yet?”

My forehead wrinkled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that if you don’t go to Oregon, aren’t you going to wonder what might have happened if you had gone?”

There was no arguing with that. She was right.

She leaned forward and rested her hands on my knees, squeezing them to make her points. “You like him”—squeeze—“and he’s into to you”—squeeze—“and I think you already fell for him”—squeeze—“so any other story you’re telling yourself is a lie”—squeeze—“and so what if he needs a little rescuing? Whatever else you guys may be, you ARE”—squeeze—“friends, and you’d do the same thing for me. But I won’t make out with you, and he will, and you should definitely”—squeeze—“get on that.”

She sat back and crossed her arms again. I rubbed my knees.

She made a good point. If I tried to escape life too long, Ranée would come looking for me. And I would do the same for her. Jack was my friend. He’d become a really good friend. Shouldn’t I do the same for him? Because the thing she was most right about was that I’d always wonder if I didn’t go.

I rubbed my eyes. “I can’t even think about this until we push out the update tomorrow.”

“But you’ll think about it as soon as the update goes live?”

“I’m going to be dead tired when work is done.”

“Emily.” It was a tone of warning.

“I’ll make a decision after work tomorrow.”

“You better, or I’m going to decide for you. Spoiler alert: my decision involves kidnapping you and driving you to Oregon.”

“Go to bed, Ranée. I still have work to do.”

“And decisions to make,” she sang as she obeyed and disappeared down the hallway.

I worked until I napped on my keyboard. Then I put myself to bed for a few hours and headed into the office early. The update was scheduled to go live at 3:00 AM so that computers could do automatic updates overnight, but I wanted to be there when the East Coast opened for business to track any issues in real time. I was at the office by 6:00 AM, and by mid-morning it was obvious we’d executed the update successfully.

Peter, my boss, tracked me down in the developer’s workroom mid-morning. “Just the person I was looking for. Raj,” I asked one of the junior developers, “could you bring in two chairs from the conference room, please?”

When Raj returned with the chairs, Peter climbed onto one and held up his hands. “We’ve been running for seven hours with no error reports, guys. You killed it!”

A cheer went up from my team. Peter turned and extended a hand. “Take a step up, Emily. Let’s hear it for your fearless leader,” he said, when I climbed on the chair beside him. He high-fived me, and they cheered even louder. “I know you guys have been putting in a lot of overtime to make this happen, so Emily, put together a skeleton crew and take the next two days off. You’re not allowed to be on it. The crew will get their comp days next week. If there’s anyone on your team that you think deserves longer than two days, consider it approved.” That won the loudest cheer of all.

“Really great work. You can take the chairs back, Raj,” he said, climbing down.

“Not yet,” I said. Peter looked up at me questioningly. “Not until each of them also stands on the Chair of Glory for a high five. Hop up, Raj.” Grinning, he did as ordered, and I slapped him five while the other developers scrambled to get in line for theirs.

“This is why you’re going to go far, Emily Riker.” Peter saluted me before heading back to the executive suite.

I let the developers with the most overtime leave at lunch and hung around with the skeleton crew until the day officially ended at five. We only had two issues come up, and both were user error, easily solved.

A few minutes after five, Hailey stopped by my office. “Someone said you got here at six. You must be wiped. Go home and sleep.”

I shook my head. “I know I should be exhausted, but I’m not. And I have a couple of things left to do.”

“All right, but I’m out of here. I better not see you back in here before Monday.”

“You won’t,” I promised. I picked up my phone as she shut the door behind her. I had an important call to make, and I couldn’t help smiling as I tapped in the Portland area code.