Page 32 of Paradigm

“I know it’s stupid – you’ve seen me naked. But–”

“No, I get it. I wasn’t thinking. I can wait for you out there.”

She walked out the door and stood in the hallway, taking a deep breath, and Enya walked out of her bedroom and turned just in time to see her take that breath.

“I was putting my computer in my room. Grabbing that snack now,” she told Eline.

“I’m just waiting on Arlowe to change,” she explained.

Enya gave her a nod and said, “It’s going to be okay.”

And for some reason, Eline believed her. Enya had always had that way about her. Eline had noticed it even back when they’d been in school. She just was believable, and her kind eyes didn’t hurt, either. She watched Enya walk toward the kitchen and turned back around just in time to see Arlowe emerge from her bedroom, wearing a T‑shirt and a pair of blue sweats.

“Just how many of my shirts did you steal?” she asked, crossing her arms over her chest when she saw the old dark-green Adidas shirt she’d lost and had forgotten about right around the time Arlowe had moved back home.

“Oh, at least five,” Arlowe replied with a little smirk.

“You said you had no room in your luggage for more souvenirs, and you had space for my shirts?”

“I wore one of them on the plane,” Arlowe said. “The other four were wrapped around stuff to keep things from breaking. I had my priorities in order, thank you very much. Now, come on.”

Arlowe nodded toward the door that she’d referred to as her office before. Eline followed her inside, and this room also looked exactly like a room that Arlowe would decorate.

“Oh, be careful,” Arlowe told her. “I haven’t picked that stuff up yet. I was looking at it last night.”

“What is it?”

“Hardware.”

“Yes, I can see that, Arlowe.”

“No, I mean that it’s our possible hardware for the company. Gabi, Sarai’s girlfriend, who also works for us, is heading up a wearable concept. Those are three different prototypes. They don’t work yet. They’re mostly just a 3D-printed shell. We’re trying to figure out how big they would need to be to have all the internal components necessary to run the software.”

“You’re making smart glasses, too? This is amazing, Arlowe.”

Eline sat down on the floor where three different pairs of glasses rested on pieces of paper, along with several component parts that they were likely toying around with going inside the glasses.

Arlowe sat down next to her and said, “It’s mostly Gabi. She’s a genius with this stuff. We have, like, five other prototypes that we’re messing around with. The hard part is figuring out how to make them something people would actually wear. They can’t be too heavy or large. You’ve seen the other smart goggles and glasses. People don’t like wearing them if they’re bulky or look funny.”

“These look great, though,” Eline said as she put on a pair of dark-rimmed, normal-looking glasses.

“Yeah, they do.” Arlowe chuckled.

“And they weigh next to nothing.”

“Because right now, they’re hollowed-out, 3D-printed glasses. We’d have to put all those parts inside them.”

“Want to do that instead of letting me find all the issues in your code?”

“What do you mean, all? I think you meant to say none. You might as well admit defeat now.”

Eline laughed, took off the glasses, and set them back down on the paper.

“You’re so overly confident right now; I bet I’ll find an issue in the first line.”

Arlowe laughed this time and replied, “You’re on.”

Then, Arlowe stood and held out her hands, and before Eline could stop herself, her hands were in Arlowe’s for the first time in twelve years.