Chapter 12: Penn Avenue

I read the text until the screen went dark.

Then I turned the phone face down on the floor.

I didn't answer her.

I didn't open the laptop.

I went to bed and lay there listening to the last firecrackers going off in the alleys, one at a time, until about three.

On Tuesday afternoon, Jenna posted a photo from Boston.

She and Josh in front of a glass tower, holding hands, squinting into the sun.

The caption said: Boston said YES to the next step!!! Big things coming.

In the corner of the picture, Josh was holding an old phone with a cracked case.

Two years old, at least.

The kind of phone my app still worked on.

So he had found a way around it.

He always found a way around it.

I went back to work.

On Friday, Jude stopped by my desk at six. Everyone else had gone home.

"You've been somewhere else all week," he signed.

I signed, "Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be hungry. Let me buy you dinner."

I looked at him.

He held up both hands.

"Not as your boss," he signed. "If you want. Or as your boss, and we talk about database migrations. Your choice."

I signed, "Not as my boss."

He smiled.

We walked to a little place on Penn Avenue with paper on the tables and a jar of crayons on each one.

It was warm out. The windows were open. The street smelled like bread and bus exhaust.

The waiter came, looked at Jude, and said, "And what's she having?"

Jude didn't even look up from the menu.

"I don't know. Ask her."

The waiter turned to me, a little pink.

I pointed to the gnocchi on the menu and held up one finger. He nodded and wrote it down.

It was nothing. It was the first time a waiter had ever asked me.

We talked across the table with our hands while the food went cold.

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