“You’d be okay with that?” I asked and tapped the implant in my temple to activate NeuroLink. I mentally asked for the air quality for New Los Angeles. The information scrolled across my vision, and I blinked it away. “Air-Q says it’s going to be hazy today so bring your purifier.”
“Yes, Mom,” my daughter drawled, rolling her eyes. “And you’re avoiding the subject.”
I looked at my fifteen-year-old daughter, wise before her time. I’d always thought it was the divorce. It’d been rough on all of us, but once Giles and I finally agreed our marriage was over, I had room in my life for something besides anger and frustration. And our daughter saw it.
“I guess I thought it would be too hard for you to see me with someone other than your dad.”
She put her arms around me from behind where I sat at the kitchen counter, blueprints for my next project hovering in front of us.
“What’s hard is seeing you lonely and unhappy,” she said. “You’re too much of a hot commodity to be sitting at home alone, scrolling the entire Kindle romance library night after night.”
“Not the entire library…”
She laughed and kissed my cheek. Outside the window, an empty car glided up to the curb.
“My ride’s here.”
“Have a good day at Demo.”
“I will,” she said, then made a shooing motion. “And you. Go.”
I laughed. “Okay, okay. Maybe I’ll go and get a coffee and see what happens.”
“Ooooh, coffee. Sexy.” She blew me a kiss and went out.
Through the window, I watched her go down the front walk. The batwing door of the electric car opened, and she climbed in. It glided away, taking her to Demonstration Complex #387, where she and her classmates would have to show that they could apply that week’s data in physical space.
I initiated a conference call with my team of architects, their faces appearing on the screen in front of me, and we went over the plans for the new recycling center. It was the biggest one yet and yet not big enough. After high tides had swept Los Angeles into the ocean eighty years ago, it finally dawned on humanity that we were in serious trouble. Recycling plants began to pop up all over the world. Some said it was too little too late, but I didn’t believe it. I believed in second chances.
Maybe even for myself.
When the meeting was over and the screens were shut down, I tapped my temple and called for a ride to the closest coffee shop to our housing complex. On the way over, I linked my order, and my cappuccino was waiting for me when I got there. I managed to find a table in the crowded café; the rest were occupied with people who looked like they were staring off into space, scrolling their Links.
Except for one man at the next table. He looked to be about my age, early forties. He kept himself in good shape—his dark clothes fit him well, and his black hair was thick and rich. Almost as striking, he had an actual book in his hand. Cutting down trees had been outlawed more than fifty years ago, but this was the real thing. He flipped real pages of words written on real paper. An antique. I was surprised he risked taking it out in public and nearly commented to that effect.
A little voice told me to keep my mouth shut, drink my coffee, and mind my own business. That this beautiful man didn’t want me bothering him.
Those voices had been loudest in the worst months of my disintegrating marriage, telling me to stay, telling me that I was a failure if I put my happiness over the family unit. But when I stopped listening to them and filed for divorce, it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted. As if my life had been on pause and was now resuming.
I leaned over. “I’m sorry to bother you, but is that an actual book?”
The man looked up and the smile that broke over his face made my heart stutter. Light brown eyes met mine. They were soft with kindness yet sharply intelligent. He took in my suit, my face. Maybe it was just my imagination, but his gaze lingered on my own dark blue eyes, with a spark of something like recognition…
“It’s real.” He held up the book’s cover. From the Back of the Room: The Collected Poems of Weston Turner.
“Oh wow, I love that poet,” I said. “He’s a favorite.”
“Yeah? Mine too.” The man extended a hand. “I’m Cyrus.”
“Lilith.”
“Pleased to meet you, Lily,” Cyrus said, then gave himself a shake. “That’s not what you said. I don’t know where that came from. Pleased to meet you, Lilith.”
We both realized at the same time he was still holding my hand.
He let go self-consciously. “Am I just batting a thousand or what?”
“You’re doing all right,” I said, grinning. An actual grin. I smiled for my daughter, for colleagues, at strangers to be polite, but it seemed like I hadn’t grinned in years. “Have we met before? You seem awfully familiar.”