“Bangalore? Okay, so I have to work nights then or something?” Emma tried to envision this new schedule. She’d been waiting for the inevitable, dreadful breakup conversation she knew she and Jeremy were heading for, but maybe this way she could finish out their lease in her beloved apartment. She and Jeremy could coexist in silence for months with minimal awkwardness, because they’d have completely different schedules. Mimosas would be swapped for happy hour. Done. Totally fine with it.
“Not exactly. How do you feel about the idea of moving to India for a while?”
Move to India? Emma, conjuring up what she knew of India, tried to picture what that would be like: stories she’d heard from coworkers about traffic a hundred times worse than Seattle’s or festivals that involved throwing colored powder on strangers until the streets became stained like a giant rainbow.
Then that was overtaken by visions of her weekly takeout dancing in her head. Butter chicken. Garlic naan. Saag paneer. Chana masala. How did she feel? She felt hungry about it. India seemed like a place populated by her kind of people (programmers) and her kind of food (she ordered from India Palace twice a week for a reason). They collaborated with teams in the Bangalore office all the time, but she’d never had a chance to visit. Leaving Seattle. Her friends. Her team. Jeremy. Jordana. Hmmm.
“I wasn’t sure, because of Jeremy, if you’d still be interested,” Maria added.
“How long is it for?”
“Probably a year.”
A year was nothing. Helix had taken two years to develop, and that seemed like it had just started yesterday. She’d be gone and back just like that. Besides, when would she ever get another offer to move continents and live in another country?
“How are you feeling?” Maria asked.
She wondered if she could be excited and terrified all at once. She had never been out of the country before and could count on her hands the number of times she’d been on a plane. It wasn’t like she could afford vacations when she was younger. And for the past five years, she’d been working off her loans, paying rent, and supporting her financially disastrous and decadent restaurant habit.
Maybe this opportunity and Jeremy’s proposal were a sign from the universe that this was the chance for Emma to get her life back on track.
“I’m in.”
“Really? I mean, you don’t want to talk to Jeremy first?”
“I’ll tell him tonight.” Or, if he still wouldn’t talk to her, she’d send him an email and leave a note on the microwave with some India Palace takeout.
Maria rolled on her ball, arms crossed, her eyes asking a question that Emma wasn’t ready to answer. “Okay, then. I’m going to send you an email with all the details, and I’ll tell Jas and connect you two. He’ll be your new manager.”
Jas was Maria’s counterpart in the Bangalore office. Emma had talked to him on calls before, and he didn’t check the boxes for sociopath, VP suck-up, or egomaniac, which made Emma breathe a sigh of relief.
“Don’t worry, though: I won’t let you stay,” Maria called as Emma tried not to skip toward the door.
“Ha! You can’t get rid of me that easily.” She could adjust for a year without her favorite coffee shop across the street, her beloved rainy Seattle weather, and her mint-green Linus bicycle, but for all her excitement, there was no way she’d stay.
“Also, remember Rishi, who you said was at your postmortem?” Maria asked, and she froze. Rishi. The guy she owed an apology to and hadn’t run into again. Who also knew about Helix and the app. This couldn’t be good.
She spun around on her heel. “Yes?” she croaked out.
“He’s on Jas’s team, and since he’s here for a while, you should talk to him. He’s supposed to be amazing at app dev, like the best, and I know you like working with the best. Since this one might be a stretch project for you, I would say to start talking to him now, figure out the lay of the land, and make sure he’ll be on your project team. I think you’ll need his support, and he’s in a great position to help you ramp up. Plus he’s here right now, so it’s the perfect opportunity to start building that connection.”
Rishi, who she needed to be on her project team now, and against whom she’d committed unabashed doughnut robbery. That shaggy-haired, gray-eyed guy she’d first met with chocolate smeared on her chin. To whom she still owed an apology, and who was going to laugh in her face when she not only asked for his help on the project but also said that she needed him on her team.
“Roger that.” She couldn’t let Maria see how terrified she was, after she’d stuck out her neck for Emma. She made a little salute and headed for the solace of her desk, groaning. Her temper and overall acrimony over Jeremy were launching with a nosedive into enemy territory something that should have been happy, happy news.
She slid down in her chair and read through the email that had just come in. Furnished corporate housing in Bangalore . . . one-year relocation . . . new position starting in two weeks. She was going to have to act fast to apologize to Rishi, scrape together some kind of explanation for her behavior, convince him they would work great together, and then give Jeremy the news.
Two weeks?
Could she get Rishi not to hate her in that time?
And Jeremy . . . what would he say?
But if the same happened to him—a chance to work overseas, to save his position in a company that he was passionate about—she would be happy for him. And maybe that was exactly Jeremy’s point: that Emma could actually be happy for him if he left. Whereas he was ready to spend the rest of his life with her.
A sigh blew out of her, ruffling the papers on her desk. It was clear she needed to be the one to initiate the painful breakup conversation. She hadn’t been able to talk about all the craziness that had happened this week since she’d been downgraded to resident ghost in their apartment. She pulled out her phone and texted him.
Jeremy, I really need to talk to you tonight. Can you please make some time for me?
She could do this. Just pack up her life and move halfway across the world in two weeks. She basically just needed to take some clothes. Everything else would wait in Seattle for her. It would all be just fine.
Her phone buzzed.
Okay. Maybe I have been a little harsh. We can talk.
Great thanks. I’ll grab us a pizza. My treat : )
If Jeremy thought he’d been harsh, how would he feel about her news that she’d just accepted a job on another continent?
But she couldn’t focus on that now. Now she had to think about the other complicated relationship, which wasn’t even a relationship. Rishi.
CHAPTER 5
Emma scanned the rows of cubes, looking for Rishi, and thought about her strategy. If she was going to somehow simultaneously apologize, convince him that she would be a great team lead, and persuade him that she didn’t have an impulse-control disorder, she needed an approach. She needed to befriend him. She’d made a mistake and now needed to repair it. She needed to approach this situation like she would her software, like a bug fix.
Rishi was a developer, and developers were the same the world over. Logical, practical, and quietly egotistical, if they were good at their jobs, which he was famed to be. She needed to appease his logical side by explaining the situation and then flatter him. That had usually worked in the past, and hopefully it would work on Rishi.
She just needed to find him.
His hair would be easiest to spot. From what she remembered, it was like an overgrown shag carpet. Black as night, longish and wavy, like he needed a haircut but refused to get one. She saw numerous heads peeping over the partitions in the cube farm in front of her, but not his. As she rounded the corner by the kitchen, who was standing in front of the coffee machine but the very owner of the hair she was looking for?
He was taller than she’d remembered. When she examined his profile, she saw that his nose deepened into almost a hook, his gaze intent on the coffee machine, his lips pushed down into a frown. T
hat frown she remembered very well. Along with his eyes as they’d stared those impenetrable cement blocks into her.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
He looked up from the machine, eyes narrowed. “What do you want?”
She held up her hands. “Look, I come in peace. I just wanted to apologize.” She tried to smile sweetly at him. The same sweet smile she’d given Maria a half dozen times after she’d dropped the f-bomb on her code at a volume that echoed across the freakishly efficient office acoustics.
He peered at her suspiciously and then set a cup under the machine and pressed the start button.
“I’m really sorry about my behavior toward you.” Even as she said the words, her eyes fluttered and closed. She still couldn’t believe she had actually committed an act of Top Pot barbarity. She took a deep breath. “I was not myself that day, and I’d been going through a lot, and I want to apologize. I’m also sending my team a note to explain the same and to state that in no way did you deserve the retribution I bestowed upon you.” There it was: logical, straightforward, and practical.
“Hmmm.” Rishi nodded at her, like he was thinking this over. She just needed to now initiate Operation Flattery, and they’d be set. “Actually, it’s interesting, the word choice you used. Retribution. Retribution seems to imply that I did something to provoke this behavior you’re apologizing for.”
Emma tried not to roll her eyes. When had developers gotten all selective about word choice? “Well, I was upset, obviously, and I just meant that my harsh words and doughnut hoarding were a result of that emotion that had been drawn out.”
“Drawn out . . .” Once the coffee had finished percolating, he took a drink and made a face that looked like he’d just taken a sip of toxic waste instead. “It’s like you’re still not taking ownership of it.”
“Well, to be fair, I did feel a bit surprised by the update you’d delivered to us. I think we all were.”
“But not everyone verbally attacked me because I’d simply attended the meeting I’d been forwarded and had a little more information than you did.”
“No, but they probably were, in their minds.” The words just popped out of Emma’s mouth, and her hand flew up to cover her lips, like that could hide the evidence. But it was too late. Her racing heart, rather than her brain, was controlling the rapid fire of her words. Rishi’s eyes got big, like full-on revolving drums agitating the concrete within. “Wait,” she said, trying to salvage what she could. This was not what she was supposed to be doing. “That’s not true. They’re much more civilized and mature than that.”
“So you’re saying you’re uncivilized.”
She could see the look in his eye: so pleased with himself at getting her to say this. Because there was no way out of admitting that she was an uncivilized heathen who couldn’t deal with confrontation or surprise proposals, or maybe human relationships at all. Her hands formed fists at her sides, and she tried to crack a smile. “Yes, I suppose in that meeting, in that moment, I was.”
“Would you put that in writing? To your team? And maybe you could cc me?”
“What?” She’d admitted it to him. That should have been enough. She opened her mouth to tell him exactly what he could do with that email but then closed her eyes. Took a breath. Reset. She’d gotten so caught up in defending herself that she’d forgotten to get this guy on her side to help her. This was never going to work. She might as well have kissed her little Helix app goodbye right then.
“Okay, sure. I will email that and cc you.” She held out her hand to shake, and he looked at it, thinking for a minute, and then took it in a firm shake.
Then he poured the coffee down the drain.
“Did you make that coffee as a defense mechanism?” she had to ask.
“I can’t drink this sludge.”
Emma laughed. A weak laugh, but still. “That’s because it’s shitty coffee.” An idea lit her up. Perfect segue into the rest of what they needed to discuss. “Hey, do you have like thirty minutes? I wanted to talk to you about something, and there’s a great coffee shop across the street. My treat. I definitely owe you.”
He seemed to examine her face for what felt like a full minute before pulling out his phone and looking at his calendar. “I don’t have any meetings. What’s this about? I need to know if I need to inform my defense squad.”
“Do you have a defense squad?” She looked back at the cubes.
“It wouldn’t be a defense squad if you knew what to look for.”
Briefly, she wondered if he had some kind of underground app-developer mafia at his beck and call. Maybe ninja warriors who would pop up out of the shadows when one of their own kind was threatened. “I promise you don’t need them. I mean, what can happen over coffee?”
CHAPTER 6
Emma was acting like they were old friends walking down the sidewalk as she pointed out the coffee shops they passed, which were way too numerous for one block. “That’s a chain over there. That place sucks.” The only reason he was letting her give him this coffee tour was because yes, she did owe him, and also one coffee was five more dollars he could save up for the Dharini wedding fund.
He texted his coworker Ramesh as they walked.
If I’m not back in an hour, send out a search party to the coffee shops on the street. Look for a red haired she-demon and you’ll find me.
Emma stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, and he almost tripped as he tried to keep from running into her. “But this place. This!” she exclaimed, holding up her arms at a coffee shop on the corner. “This is just the best. They roast their beans in the back, and sometimes it smells a little funky, but the coffee is awesome.”
Speaking of funky, Emma’s actions were at the top of the list.
His phone buzzed. Ramesh. Dude, that’s awesome! Followed by a string of dirty vegetable emojis.
Rishi resisted explaining over text that “she-demon” in this case was most definitely not a good thing. He opened the door and took a whiff. “I know this smell. My grandmother used to roast her own beans.”
Emma stopped, her eyes wide, like he’d just told her that Krishna himself had roasted the beans, danced a little jig, and blessed their family’s coffee consumption. “Like at home?” she said, her voice almost a whisper.
“Yeah.” Was that unheard of in the US?
“Oh my God. That must be some amazing coffee.”
“Yeah, it was pretty good. We mix the coffee with chicory at home, though—”
“And adulterate the most sacred beverage of programmers everywhere? Blasphemy!” Emma said.
Rishi couldn’t tell if she was joking.
The inside of the coffee shop was plain. White walls. Light wood tables. Metal chairs. It looked like any of the countless coffee shops he’d visited in Seattle. But it recalled childhood summers in his grandmother’s home with that sour, smoky smell hanging in the air.
“What would you like?” Emma asked.
The menu on the wall behind the baristas listed out the regulars, plus a few of those unnecessarily ostentatious drinks Rishi didn’t bother trying to decode. As if microbubbles were really a thing. “Just a cappuccino.”
Emma ordered, and they waited for their coffees at a bar set against the wall.
“So how much longer are you in Seattle for?”
Rishi studied her, wondering how to answer. Her eyes were too bright, a glittering green color. He’d noticed the one purple curl that hung down her face in the middle of all that red hair, but he was getting a much more intimate view of it now. It reminded him of the syphilis bacteria he’d once seen through a microscope in college. Magnified, it had been a bright-purple curlicue, almost cute for something so diabolical. He could make a similar comparison to her. But the smell of her hair was more like oranges and honey than whatever syphilis smelled like.
He cleared his throat. “Oh, a few more weeks, and then we’ll see.”
“You’re going back to Bangalore, then?”
The barista called out Emma’s name, and she hopped up to get their coffees. Rishi watched her walk to the counter, still confused about why this was happening and what she wanted from him. She couldn’t have just had a change of heart and wanted to buy him a coffee to apologize. Could she?
“Okay, cheers.” She held up her cup to his.
He’d heard that the whole “cheers” thing was invented by a king who wanted to make sure his drink wasn’t poisoned and so heartily hit his goblet against his dinner guests’. In the same spirit, Rishi clunked his mug hard against hers, although the foam was too resilient to splash anything out. She gave him a look and muttered “Geez” under her breath. He dumped in some sugar and took a sip. It was good. Rich and strong. Not South Indian coffee, but a thousand times better than what had emerged from the office machine, which looked like it had an oil slick swimming on top of it.
“I can tell you like it. Way better than the office coffee, right?”
He nodded. He’d give her that. Anything was better than the office coffee.
“So what’s the Bangalore office like?” she asked.
“It’s like the Seattle office but not as big. Looks pretty much the same on the inside. Is that what you mean?” Discussing the architecture of the office could not possibly be why she’d invited him out.
“Yeah, I was just wondering about it. I’ve worked on a few projects virtually with some people there.”
“It’s pretty much the same, but we have free breakfast and lunch. And the coffee is better.”
“Don’t tell me.” Emma held up her palms. “Someone hand roasts the beans.”
Rishi tried not to laugh. “What? No.” He didn’t add that his grandmother did that mostly because she didn’t trust anyone from outside their caste to touch anything she put in her mouth. Super old school.
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