Page 48 of Undone

No. If I started dwelling on Zoe leaving now, it meant that I’d never be able to enjoy the time I had left with her here.

As I’d said to my sister, Zoe and I were both mature adults. When we’d broken up the first time, I’d been young and inexperienced in love. Zoe was my first…well, not my first girlfriend or first lover, but she was the first one who mattered. The first time it really felt like love. The last time, too. Since then, I’d sampled other relationships, but I hadn’t experienced anything close with another woman to what Zoe and I had shared all of those years ago. No actuallovelove since her.

I glanced over at her and saw that her tank top strap had fallen off her shoulder.Fuck, she was so effortlessly beautiful. Nothing at all like the women I usually dated. Those hyper-girly, too-much-makeup women who were nothing like the one who’d stolen my heart. Maybe I picked those type of women on purpose? To try to trick my brain and short-circuit the wiring of my past?

It didn’t matter. I needed to stop dwelling on the pastandstart thinking about the future. The best place for me to hang was in the here and now with the cute little coder sitting on the opposite end of the couch.

I shifted position so I could sprawl across the couch and gave her a “come closer” gesture. Without taking her eyes off the documentary, Zoe scooted closer and then lay down. Taking the hint, I spooned her. Wrapping my arm around her waist, I kissed the top of her head and pointed at the television. “All of this is completely over my head, obviously, so tell me why some of this is so scandalous? Because unless we’re talking horses, I don’t get it.”

She relaxed, resting her head against my shoulder. “The next segment is supposed to talk about this huge case of stolen code. This guy, Harry Stranger?—”

I coughed out a laugh. “Please tell me that’s not his real name.”

Zoe’s body shook as she giggled. “Nope, it’s real. Anyway, he got catfished by someone who…do you know what catfishing is?”

“Well, I know what catfish are.” She grabbed the remote and hit pause, then shifted to look at me, her mouth open and I grinned. “Yes, I know what catfishing is.”

“That’s a relief.” She shook her head before turning to face the television again. “Anyway, turned out the guy worked for a competitor, and he managed to gain access to Harry’s server and was bragging aboutit. So, rather than risk a lengthy court case, knowing that the other side had an army of lawyers and it might come down to a ‘he said-he said’ scenario, Harry made the code open source and free to everyone.”

“You can do that?”

“Sure,” she said with a nod. “But that also meant he lost a lot of money in licensing and revenue. Like, potentially millions and millions.”

I frowned. I couldn’t imagine walking away from that much money. Especially when I thought about all the ways Lost Valley could use those funds: replacing fencing, installing new drain pipes out to the pastures, updating the electrical boxes, buying that stallion Shannon wanted for breeding—the to-do and wish lists were lengthy. While I still had the money from the bank loan, I’d been reluctant to use it. “That seems?—”

“Like Robin Hood, right?” she said, I could feel her excitement, but I couldn’t agree.

“I was thinking it was a weird choice. Didn’t he need the money? You can’t run a business if you’re constantly in or near a deficit,” I said thinking again about how I would use the money.

I felt her shoulders tense and realized that I’d upset her. She let out a breath. “Sometimes, the principle is worth more than the money. In this case, a large corporation was looking to steal from him, so rather than let them, he chose to give it away so more people could use his code without having to worry about how to pay for it. In fact, I used some of it on Lost Valley’s website. So you, and lots of others like you, have access to programs that might be too expensive to use otherwise. Hence?—”

“Why he’s Robin Hood,” I finished for her. I could understand the sentiment but the loss of that much revenue made my head spin.

“Exactly,” she said, relaxing against me again.

She hit play on the remote and we settled back in to watch the documentary and I tried to pay attention, but my mind kept drifting thinking about my dream list. Zoe was on that list but as she chatted about what was happening in the doc, I kept thinking about how that dream list was exactly that: a dream.

THIRTY-ONE

ZOE

“If I never see another cow again, it’ll be too soon,” I said to myself as I rearranged the photos on the website for the third time.

Andrew Bridger—he said to call him Drew—had been so happy with the headshots I’d taken for his bank staff that he’d talked me up to the president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, and they’d offered me the website redesign job for their association. At the time, I had been thrilled. The money I’d earned from my freelance jobs around Poplar Springs would cover my first semester’s tuition before any grants or scholarships I might get.

But now in the throes of working on it, I was bored. There were only so many ways to make cows look interesting, and even though I’d pushed the powers that be to allow me to incorporate more photos of the actual ranchers working with the animals, they’d been resistant. I was thankful that discussion had been over the phone so they wouldn’t see me rolling my eyes as they fumbled through an explanation about how they wanted the focus on the cattle and not the people. While animals, ingeneral, were great attention getters, by combining the two—including some of the women members—the CCA would come across as more approachable and an organization that more people might want to join.

Then there was the copy they’d sent me, which had very clearly been written by AI. At least they were open to some cleanup on the text; especially once I pointed out some of the glaring issues with the AI content. Ultimately, any work was good work as a freelancer, so I sighed and made the photo of the heifer on the main page bigger, as requested.

After three minutes of diligent work, I decided to reward myself by checking my email. I’d read somewhere that it took more than twenty minutes to get back to productivity after being derailed by distractions like email and social media, but I was so over doing the busy work that I felt like I deserved a treat.

I popped open my email account and sifted through the junk mail until I spotted a subject line that stopped me cold.

Your application and next steps.

I hadn’t heard a peep from the admissions office since I’d submitted my info what felt like months ago, but there it was, a message in my spam file with the promise of good news. I hovered my fingers over the keyboard and debated what to do.

Obviously, ithadto be good news since it mentioned “next steps.” There were no “next steps” if I’d been rejected, so it made sense to open the message right away rather than waiting. But would I be able to concentrate and finish my to-do list after reading it? Part of the reason I was successful being my own boss was because I held myself to a strict schedule every day.

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