Page 17 of Paradigm

Eline smiled and said, “You remembered?”

“Yes, I remember the drink you ordered every time we went out for coffee.”

“Did you get a hazelnut latte?”

“No, actually. I don’t drink those very often anymore. I think I got sick of them or something. This is a caramel latte. Close but different enough.”

Eline nodded and said, “So…”

“Yeah, so…” Arlowe said back and took a drink of her latte, which was probably way too hot because she squished her face together and set it down, making Eline laugh.

“You never could be patient.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Arlowe replied with a little smile. “So, you live here now?”

“I do, yes. I moved here about two months ago.”

“How? I mean, how did you do it?”

“Work visa. I’m the director of quality engineering over at GoldStash.”

“That cash-for-gold software?”

“Yeah, that’s the one.”

“So, you help people sell their gold?”

“The software does. I just help quality-check it. It’s not exactly something I’m passionate about. I was looking for my next job, and I applied to several places. They reached back out and liked me but were also willing to sponsor me to come here, which most companies aren’t. It’s a long process, and it costs them money, with no guarantee that it will even get approved, but I guess it did because I’m here. I live in a little apartment about fifteen minutes from here. Well, I say little, but it’s much bigger than the place I had before. You know how small Amsterdam apartments can be. There are so few apartments available and too many people who need them, so I took what I could get thanks to my dad’s connections.”

“Do you like it here so far?”

“The apartment?”

“Living here. I mean, I know you lived here before when you were in high school – well, not here, but in the country – but I didn’t know you wanted to move here.”

“I didn’t,” she said quickly. “Arlowe, I didn’t. If I had, I–” Eline stopped and took a breath to prevent herself from rambling too much when they’d only just sat down and started talking. “I thought I’d be in Holland. I never planned to move here. If I had, I would’ve told you.”

“But then you did; you moved here. Two months ago, apparently.”

“Yes.”

“And the process to get you here probably started long before that.”

“Yes,” she repeated, knowing that there was something Arlowe wanted to say next, but instead of saying it, she merely ran her hand through her hair and sighed. “So, you all started a company?” Eline changed the subject. “I thought you were either going to work for someone else or freelance and work on your own thing. This is kind of a combination of that, huh?”

“I thought a lot of things back then, but I wanted to work somewhere established, because they’d have all the cool toys that I couldn’t get or afford on my own, and freelance on the side, but after we all got back from that semester, we kept in touch, obviously, and after graduation, we started talking. Then, Enya had this idea for a language app that could be different than all the rest. We were a little drunk that night, but we all agreed.” Arlowe chuckled. “And when we talked about it again, sober, we decided to go for it. Violet was getting her MBA, and she became our CEO. I’m head of engineering. Enya is, well, Enya – the genius behind it all. And Sarai is in charge of marketing.”

“I also saw Gabi on your site. That’s the Gabi, right? The one we all thought Sarai liked?”

Arlowe laughed and said, “Yeah. And you’ll never guess what happened there.”

“What do you mean?”

“Gabi moved to this town, too. For a job, just like you, and they ran into each other at a bar one night a little over a year ago now. They’ve been together ever since.”

“Really?”

Arlowe nodded before leaning forward and said, “Oh, want to hear something even better?”