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“This doesn’t mean anything,” I tell him.
It means everything.
He squeezes me just a little, and I’m afraid I’m going to start crying.
He lets me go, and the hallway feels suddenly cold. He reaches out and slides a strand of my hair behind my ear. His fingers leave a trail of confusion on my skin.
Then he turns around and goes back into the room. I can hear him talking to my brother. “She really doesn’t feel well,” I hear him say. “Do you have a car here? I don’t.”
I don’t hear my brother’s response.
“Well, you should probably take her home if you can.”
It’s a nice thing to do. It’s thoughtful. I hate that he’s nice and thoughtful. I hate that he can be nice and thoughtful. I know this side of him far too well, and if Jay had let me see this earlier…
But he didn’t, and now it’s too late.
When he walks by me, I don’t make eye contact.
I don’t dare. If I look at him again, I might not let him leave.
18
JAY
I call her at nine.
She answers. “Hi.” It’s all she says.
“Are you okay?” I’m pacing in my living room, trying to figure out what to say.
“No.” She exhales. “Are you?”
“No.”
We settle into a silence.
When your relationship is all text, there’s a lot of silence. But silence on an actual voice call is audible and real in a way that an absence of typing is not.
I don’t see the read receipts telling me that she’s there, that she’s listening.
“I fucked up,” I say. This is an understatement. I feel like the captain of a ship, surveying a gash in the side, wondering where that iceberg came from and why there are so few lifeboats.
“Me, too.” Her voice is low.
I wish this feeling were new. That I didn’t know what it was like to break things so badly that I can’t blame someone for giving up on me. I don’t know how to say “trust me.”
But I want to know how. I want to know it desperately.
“I need time,” I tell her.
“Me, too.”
“Em?” I realize I’ve called her by her other name a second after I do it. I don’t take it back. “Everything I said last night still stands.”
She exhales.
“Come by any time you need…” I trail off, not knowing what to offer. A hug. Some soup. Me. I don’t finish the sentence.
“Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
* * *
The room is cold, and the air conditioner is running even though it’s February and below sixty outside. It’s been two days since I talked to Em, and I’m still at a loss.
Some people are reminded of their childhood by leaf piles or the smell of pancakes. For me, it’s the feel of artificially cold air on my neck, the clinical smell of ozone and the scent of antistatic wipes. It’s the persistent hum of server rooms, of a raised floor that clacks beneath my feet. I encounter pockets of heat from machines that do their best to overcome the industrial-strength climate control.
This space brings back old memories. Sitting in a conference room and doing homework. Occupying emptied cubicles at night with some of the other kids. Challenging each other to network duels.
It’s been years since I came here, but Eric out front still recognizes me and waves me through.
My mother is talking to a group of people in the corner of the room. She is holding a mug of coffee in a metallic gold travel cup, gesturing to a whiteboard. Flecks of marker dust dot her cuffs. She is completely in her element, arguing with someone about a black box pentest on enterprise level server systems.
Cyclone has a tendency to grab people and never spit them out. My mom started at Cyclone six months after I was born, never intending to stay past the moment Cyclone went public and her stock options turned into real money. She’s talking to Kenji Miyahara, who I’ve known since we were both teenagers, back when we did penetration tests after school for fun and Cyclone shares.
Now he plays red team/blue team hacker games for a living and bosses around people twice his age.
For a moment, I think about leaving without disturbing her. I’m not even sure why I’m here, or what I’ll say to her.
Kenji is half-Japanese, half-black. He’s shaved his head since the last time I saw him. He towers over my mother. She still manages to dominate the room, gesturing, brushing back her hijab when it catches on her shoulder.
Kenji sees me first. He turns. “Hey!” He starts toward me. “Script kiddie!” It’s an insult we used to use—a dorky insult, because when you’re a kid whose parents work at one of the largest computer companies in the world, coding prowess is the only measurement of worth you tolerate.
I raise my chin in his direction. “Give me twenty years and and all your boxen will belong to me.”
“Have fun with that,” he says sarcastically. “I’ll stick to computers I can back up without destroying the results.”
“Asshole.” In the Cyclone style, I say this with affection. I shake his hand as he offers it.
He punches me in the shoulder with his free hand. “Saint K., I didn’t know we were getting a visit from the prodigal son.”
“Oh, I’m prodigal, am I?”
“Doing all that science and then putting it in the public domain? Whew.” Kenji grins. “That requires a hell of a lot of forgiveness.”
“Spoken by the man who has never had to deal with a university patent office.”
My mom comes up beside me. “I am unspeakably embarrassed.” Her hands go to her hips. “Jay, did you show up unannounced to engage in this sorry excuse for shit-talking? I taught you better than that.”
“Of course not,” I say. “I want to talk to you. I’ll wait until you’re done.”
Her eyes narrow, and she tilts her head to one side. I feel like she’s looking through me, past the half smile on my face.
I keep it in place, but I’m not fooling her. It’s the middle of the day. The middle of the week.
“You want to talk to me. And you can wait.” There’s a subtle emphasis on those words, as if she can’t quite believe what she’s hearing.
I stuff my hands in my pockets. “Yeah.”
She dusts off her hands. She’s wearing jeans and a white T-shirt—now marked with red and blue flecks that almost match her flowery hijab—and she doesn’t even come to my shoulder when she hugs me. She smells like the shampoo she’s used since before I was born. Some part of me has classified this smell as Mom. It brings with it a wave of nostalgia. Of comfort. Of safety.
It makes me think of grilled cheese sandwiches made on a hotplate in the corner of this office and tomato soup nuked in a microwave. My version of comfort food.
“Shit just got real,” says Kenji.
Mom pulls back and frowns at the calendar on her watch. “I’ll just tell Aaron I’m going to lunch. We’re done here, anyway. I can rearrange my afternoon.”
“I don’t want to bother you. I know you’re busy.”
She gives me a look. “If we waited until I wasn’t busy, we would never talk to each other.”
Over the last five years, I’ve been busy, too. A lot. I look over at her and swallow.
“We can go down to the Cyclone cafeteria, if you want,” she says, “or we can splurge and head to Nikki’s.”
Nikki’s is a soup and sandwich shop that’s two blocks from the Cyclone campus. It’s not expensive; when she talks about splurging, she’s referring to the time it’ll take.
She doesn’t wait for my answer.
“Never mind. If you came all the way down here, Nikki’s it is.”
We don’t talk about much on our way there. Mom drives, and I try not to distract her. It’s not that she’s a bad driver; it’s exactly the opposite. She’s great, and she knows it, which is why she swears at everyone who is a worse driver than her—in other words, everyone.
“Why
, why,” she rants, “why is your turn signal on? Merge if you want to change lanes. If you don’t, fuck off!”
The other drivers, thankfully, can’t hear her.
She’s given a table in back when we arrive. Mom comes here often, and they know who she is.
I consider the menu when we’re seated. Sandwiches. Breakfast all day. But I think of Em, and order minestrone.
“So,” my mother says after the waitress leaves. “Why are you here?”
“I need some advice.”
Her eyes get subtly wider. I have not asked her for advice since…no, I didn’t even ask her about my choice of university.
“Advice about what?”
“I think,” I say carefully, “that I’m a little like you.”
One eyebrow raises. “In what way?”
