Free The Moment of Everything by Shelly King Page B

when he was here.”
    Dizzy shrugged. “You were with him for two years and he still introduced you as ‘my friend Maggie.’ You don’t get heartbroken over a guy like that.”
    “It just all seems like more trouble than it’s worth,” I said.
    “Then you’re not doing it right.”
    “I’m not talking about sex.”
    “Neither am I,” he said. “Mayo the bread.”
    “What about you?” I asked, taking the bread out of the bag. “The Apple guy didn’t work out?”
    “He wanted to order Philadelphia rolls. At Sushi Maru. Can you believe that? You’re in this palace of authentic… authentic …sushi and you order a fucking Philadelphia roll. Let’s just go to South Legend and order lemon chicken while we’re at it. And you know the goddamn heathen cut his linguini with a knife. A knife!”
    “I take it I can read up on the details online?” I asked.
    “Yeah, yeah, it’s all over Urbanspoon,” Dizzy said, sliding the cheese-carpeted bologna onto the bread. “Fuck ’em. We’ll stay single forever and shack up in a nursing home for gay gods and their favorite fruit flies.”
    “To wiping drool off each other’s chins,” I said and held my beer bottle out for him to clink, but he left me hanging as an explosion went off in his pocket.
    “Shit,” Dizzy said. He dug around for his phone and looked at the text message. “It’s after lunch in New Delhi. I’ve got to get into the office. Wander Fish has the whole company by the balls. We’ve got to put together a demo for them by Monday.”
    Demos meant hours and hours of late nights knitting together parts of the product to give the impression the software did more than it could. They were brutal, like running a marathon at a full sprint. They would need him tonight in the worst way.
    “You know what? I’ll come with you.”
    “What was that?” Dizzy asked, getting up.
    “Give me a minute.”
    I slid past him and waded through the flood of clothes on my bedroom floor to the corner, where I was sure there was a reasonably clean pair of jeans I could trade in for my sweats.
    “You don’t work there anymore,” he called from the kitchen.
    “Maybe not, but I’m still a stockholder. What are they going to do? Throw me out?”
    I was tingling at the thought of the night ahead. The adrenaline of a deadline, the dull ache behind my eyes, the self-inflated sense of importance, the primal joy of seeing the Starbucks across the street open at five o’clock tomorrow morning. I’d gotten a hundred thousand views of the Dragonfly’s website in twenty-four hours. I was a goddess. ArGoNet so deserved me.
    “It’ll be great. Just like it used to be,” I said, sniffing sweatshirts and pulling on the least offensive one. “You’ll see. I’m the empress of demos, remember? You used to say that all the time. They laid me off because they couldn’t afford me, right? Okay, I’m not asking for money. I’m just helping.”
    Dizzy stood, leaning against my bedroom door with his arms folded.
    “You want me to come with you, right?” I asked.
    “You know I do.”
    “Okay, so, what’s the problem?”
    He just stood there and waited for me to answer my own question. I could feel the corners of my eyes heat up with traitorous tears. He wrapped his arms around me. For a long moment, one of those that lasts longer than others, I thought he would say it. If they didn’t want me, then he didn’t want them. But from the living room, I heard his phone announce another text message.
    “We’re going to get you back,” he said. “Call Avi. Go have lunch. It’s going to be just like before.”
    He looked at me expectantly. Had he said the right words? Was I okay? Could he leave now?
    “Helping out at the Dragonfly is temporary,” I said. “I just need something to impress Avi. You know that, right?”
    “Of course,” he said, heading for the door. “We’re getting you back. You’ll see.”
    I watched from the doorway as he drove away in his