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“You’re twelve minutes later than usual,” Yemi said when Esther got into work the next morning. He was a design analyst who sat at the cubicle behind Esther. He was Nigerian, wore glasses with thick black frames, and could calculate square roots up to six digits in his head.
“There was a traffic light out on Overland,” Esther said as she docked her laptop. It usually took her thirty minutes to drive to work during morning rush hour, but today she’d underestimated how stupid people could be in the face of a blinking red light treated as a four-way stop.
Yemi turned back to his own computer. “You should take the freeway.” His accent was almost undetectable; he’d been born in Abuja, but his family had come to the U.S. when he was ten. The only time his accent came out was when he was talking to one of his parents on the phone.
“You know I don’t like sitting in traffic.” Esther reached up to check the bun she’d twisted her hair into this morning. She wore her hair in a bun almost every day, but she’d been in a hurry this morning and was afraid it might be lopsided.
“On average, you’ll spend five percent longer waiting at traffic lights than it would take you to get through rush-hour congestion on the 405. Your aversion to freeways is irrational and inefficient.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” Esther said, smiling.
Some people found Yemi’s directness off-putting, but it was one of the things she liked best about him. He didn’t dissemble or try to hide what he was thinking. His honesty and practicality made him an outstanding analyst. She liked working with him, because she never had to waste time cutting through the bullshit or trying to figure out what he really meant when he said something. He always told you clearly and concisely what was wrong, and what you needed to do to fix it.
Esther spent a few minutes skimming through her email before opening up Excel and diving back into the spreadsheet she’d been working on on Friday. When her phone vibrated with a new text message two hours later, she was so deep in concentration she nearly jumped out of her seat.
It was Jinny, asking when she wanted to take lunch. They worked at the same office, but Jinny was a network systems engineer on the deep space telescope project, and her cubicle was clear on the other side of the building, so they had to coordinate their lunch breaks via text.
Esther stretched her arms out and rolled her head from side to side, working the kinks out of her neck. “Hey.” She spun around and kicked the back of Yemi’s chair.
He was squinting at a heat map on his screen. “Hmmmm?” he replied without looking at her.
“Lunch?”
“It’s only ten o’clock.”
“I’m asking what time you want to take it.” Esther waved her phone next to his ear. “Jinny wants to know.”
He tore his eyes away from the screen and swiveled to look at her. “I don’t care.”
“I know you like to have a schedule.”
“As long as I know what the schedule is, I don’t care what it is.”
“What’s the special today?” Yemi always knew the cafeteria schedule. He memorized it every month when it came out.
“Lasagna.”
“Better go at eleven forty-five, then.” The lasagna was one of the cafeteria’s better offerings. There would be a crowd, and sometimes they ran out.
“Fine.” Yemi had already gone back to work.
Esther texted Jinny the time, got an affirmative confirmation, and plunged back into her spreadsheet. An hour later, Esther startled again when Jinny showed up at her cubicle.
“Pssst,” Jinny said behind her.
Esther dragged her attention away from the PowerPoint deck she’d been squinting at and swiveled her chair around. “Hey!”
“What do you think of this dress?” Jinny asked, twirling to show off the floral halter dress she was wearing. There was still a tag hanging on it.
“I think you look amazing,” Esther told her.
Jinny looked down as she fluffed the skirt. “I ordered it last week and it just came today.” She had all her packages delivered at work so they wouldn’t get stolen from her apartment building lobby. “I’m thinking of wearing it on my date with Jonathan.” She looked up, biting her lip. “Too much?”
“No, definitely not.” Jonathan’s eyes were going to pop out of his head.
Jinny rested her hands on her hips, frowning. “Tell me the truth—do you think it’s too soon to be dating after a breakup? It’s only been a week.”
“You’re not a Victorian widow,” Esther said. “You don’t need to observe a formal period of mourning for the relationship.”
