Page 49 of Love's a Glitch
But again, she wouldn’t be happy with any of the exes who’d let her go without a fight. Wasn’t my desire for her to be happy, even if it wasn’t with me, a gallant goal? I’d say so, but I was biased as hell.
And I didn’t want her to be with anyone else.
Say she was willing, how would that even look?
We could text as often as possible and I’d call when service and time allowed.
Instead of only coming home once a year, if that, I could request more stateside assignments and endeavor to see her in person every… three or four months?
Was that enough?
Too much?
I waited for the suffocating sensation to kick in, but it didn’t. Perhaps a big part of me wanted to avoid being another idiot who let her get away.
Before I could even pose the possibility of committing to that much, I needed to examine the idea of Ellie and me through the best and the sharpest, high-magnification macro lens. That meant getting to know every single side of the woman turning me into the sappy fool I’d sworn I’d never be.
A good place to start would probably entail exchanging last names.
23
Ellie
“What do you think, Dot.com?”
My kitty stepped on my keyboard, facing me and not the three website mockups on my laptop. I quickly saved in three places before she could destroy anything, then closed out the website and presentation, and my email, so she wouldn’t send any more ill-advised drafts.
“Whatever happens, I can honestly say that I stretched myself beyond my previous limits, found a way to compromise with the client without compromising my skills, and that it’s some of my best work.” Admittedly, I preferred my design that pushed the envelope the farthest—a term borne from aeronautics, not stationary, FYI—but even the most basic and simple mockup was a design I’d proudly attach my name to.Afteradding a disclaimer that the boomer client didn’t want anything fancy and insisted on a “classic” motif, as that sounded better than “plain.”
At the end of the day, what would happen would happen, so there was no use stressing about it.
Not that that would stop me.
Me:It is done.??
Luke:It took me a second, especially since I don’t remember Rafiki taking a dump in the movie, but I got the Lion King reference.
I senta gif of people clapping. It’d taken me a while to get Luke all caught up to speed on the proper way to use emojis, gifs, and other such nonsense he’d missed out on while traveling the world and not caring about that sort of thing. We were still working on slang.
How long till his wanderlust kicks in and I have to start over?Not to pat myself on the back, but I’d done a rather good job of seizing the day and living in the moment. But here and there, as I fell asleep with our conversations running through my head, or my heart thumped harder at the sight or mention of his name, the temporariness of our situation would hit me.
I’d officially burned all the bridges with every dude who’d been interested after my phone update from hell. To the point, there weren’t even frayed ropes or planks that swayed in the breeze. The pathway between them and me was now just a straight-up ravine.
My friends had frowned when I’d told them about my arrangement with Luke via FaceTime, struggling to believe I was okay with it, no matter how many times I assured them I knew what I was doing.
Of courseI didn’t know what I was doing. Nothing in life was guaranteed, except for the fact that I’d have fun if Luke was involved. As far as guarantees went, that seemed like more than enough to me.
Unless I thought about a month or two in the future, which was why I avoided that.
Good thing, too, because with tomorrow’s big presentation, I had more than enough on my plate without scooping on extra helpings of relationship drama.
* * *
One of thebenefits of being hidden by a computer monitor most of the day was that no one cared if you wore yoga pants and a comfy, threadbare t-shirt. Describing the atmosphere at Zero Gravity Designs as casual would be a huge understatement.
Take Joe Schmoe over in the corner. He’d worn the same t-shirt three days in a row, and it’d had that brown stain on it from day one. I was pretty sure he had enough energy drinks in his desk to be awake and jittery during the apocalypse, and several of the nights he stayed late were spent gaming instead of coding. Web companies tended to have some of the fastest servers in the world, and a lot of the dudes took full advantage, whereas I preferred to go home and hang out with my high-maintenance cat.
While I’d love to be in my comfies, today was the big meeting with Charles L. Davis, and he struck me as the type of old-school guy who ranted about the loss of values and insisted the women working at his company wear skirts to the office.
