Page 18 of The Refusal

And his lips turn up in a reluctant smile, half-thanking me for giving him crap and moving this conversation on. He reaches out and ruffles my hair in return, and I try to jerk backward out of his way. He studies his hand in disgust.

“Gel? And you have the nerve to mockmeabout my hair? I just can’t be bothered to cut it. At least I don’t style it, you asshole.”

“Can we go somewhere fucking warm and get a coffee? I’m fed up with your crazy meeting places.” I sound more grumpy than I intend.

“Got to keep switching it up, Janus.” He grins at me like a maniac and punches my arm. And I’m irrationally pleased with this exchange; our groove has been worn smooth through a thousand similar conversations. “Don’t want you to be a dreary old corporate drone, do we?”

“If fucking only, something boring and desk-bound would be bliss right now. I’ve been in more countries in the last couple of weeks …” I trail off and narrow my eyes at him as we move to head over the bridge. A guy whips past us on a bike not holding the handlebars, headphones on, nearly taking Fabian out.

“Fucker!” he says.

“You don’t want to come and work for me, do you?” I ask this every time I see him. It’d be fantastic to have him involved in our software. “Lots of crazy shit happens when you start new offices in new countries; enough to keep evenyouinterested.”

He laughs, knowing I’m not really expecting an answer. “Never mind me working for you, when are you coming over to code withme?”

Fabian’s Aladdin’s cave of an apartment in Brooklyn is packed to the rafters with kit, like one of those obsessive-compulsive hoarding people you see on television, except all high-tech gadgetry. His bedroom is command and control central, a huge rack of servers and screens, endless amounts of things to fiddle with to your heart’s content. I sigh, scrubbing my hand over my face. I haven’t managed to get over there in so long.

“I would kill for some cake.” His words interrupt my musing. “I’m ravenous. Interesting drug this one; I’m so fucking hungry.”

I roll my eyes at him, try to picture my calendar. “Next weekend. I’ll come by then.” I need to keep more of an eye on him. Taking his arm, I drag him across the bridge in search of that elusive Manhattan rarity—homemade cake.

11

Jo

Idump my bag on the floor by a cluttered table, and Kate looks up from her papers, squinting in the setting sun. The light casts a warm glow over the wooden tables and floors and Manhattanites catching up after their hectic workdays and even more frenetic gym sessions. Kate’s residency in ER keeps her too busy saving lives for us to meet up as often as we’d like, but the McNally Jackson Café has become our go-to place to hang out. I glance around at the pastries and the magazines littering every surface and feel my body ease. When I turn back to Kate, her face is lit with a broad smile.

“Hey, geek girl.”

“Dr. Dull.”

Kate screws up her face in a hilarious approximation of outrage and sticks her tongue out. This is our routine, honed over time in a shared room at NYU and ultimately a rented apartment near campus where she still lives with Liss, the final leg in our three-legged stool. Studying medicine meant that Kate’s course was longer than ours, so she’s still got years to go.

At college, I started helping people set up their IT systems to pay my way, which morphed into my small just-about-surviving business that buoys me up every time I think about it. When the Caltech contract came in, we had to double in size in six months, and Des and James have recruited like crazy as I’ve watched our cash flow get more and more precarious.

I let out a long breath, and Kate raises an eyebrow at me, gesturing to the counter of food.

“Are you eating?” she says.

Warmth seeps through me. She isn’t pushing for explanations concerning my no doubt panicked expression. She’s letting me be … or perhaps she’s just hungry.

“Oh God, yes, are you? I’m half-starved, no time for lunch, and I worked out this morning, too. My body is shouting, ‘Give me carbs right now!’”

She laughs. “Go order. Another coffee and a muffin wouldn’t go amiss while you’re there.”

As the barista swirls a pattern into the top of our two flat whites, my eyes land on a newspaper in the rack next to the counter. Caltech’s problems quickly came to the attention of the press, who wanted answers about who was going to sort it. Thank God they had a decent PR agency that protected me. Feeling that kind of heat, having that lack of control over what people were saying, the public scrutiny, was too close to how the press harassed my dad and me at home. They camped on our lawn for weeks. A shudder runs through me: It all got out of hand so fast.

And how much fallout could there be with Janus Industries? Janus is already in the public eye, and if it became known that his company had a security issue, the press would be all over it like a rash. Getting my own publicist would make a lot of sense. But given how close we were to the edge this month, how could I afford something like that? I almost laugh at my whirling mind, cutting and dicing possible options and solutions; mentally drawing flowcharts for absolutely everything.

When I return to the table, Kate reaches out to grab one of the coffees from my hand. “I’ve been so looking forward to catching up,” she says, leaning into the table expectantly as I slump into my seat.

I grin at her, shoving down my worries. “You know I’m working with Janus Industries?”

Kate shimmies her hands as she tips forward, knowing eyes locking with mine, voice dropping to a reverent hush. “I think I’d just spend the whole time gazing at him in meetings. I’m presuming you’ve actuallymethim?” She drops her voice like she wants me to share the greatest secret. “So,spill. What’s he like?”

“Oh, of course, he’s gorgeous.” I stare out the window at the street lit up by the evening sun and the stream of worker bees heading home. How can I even begin to describe Janus? “He’s impatient but considerate … fun, too. I can see why women swoon all over him.”

“What about this woman with me?” Kate asks, making circles with her pen over the table at me. “Is she swooning all over him?”

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