Chapter 22: One Hundred Eighty

We sat on the courthouse steps in the snow.

Nolan's knee was pressed against mine.

"Which one?" he said into the phone.

Garner told us.

Nolan took his glasses off and put them back on.

"They saw the demo day video," Garner said. "And the clinic network's pilot numbers. The pilot we almost lost in October."

"They don't want Lantern in a drawer. They want it on every cheap phone they sell."

"How much?" I asked.

"Too early for a number," Garner said. "They said a number with a lot of zeros, and then their lawyer made them stop."

He laughed, high and a little wild.

"Come home, both of you. Drive safe. The road's icy."

He hung up.

Across the street, a bus went by with a banner for the bank on its side.

The same bank.

I started laughing and couldn't stop, and Nolan laughed because I was laughing.

A man walking past with an umbrella looked at us twice.

The winter was long, and full of people in good suits flying into Boston.

They came to the garage first.

Then Garner stopped letting them into the garage, because one of them tripped over the lawn mower.

Nolan moved his mug back to my desk in January.

He didn't say anything about it.

He just put it there one morning, next to mine, and sat down.

The girl with the nose ring drew the two little hearts on the whiteboard in the garage, fresh and dark.

Nobody erased them.

The deal closed on April fourteenth.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Future Self Called to Save My Ruined Life from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.