by Robin Hale
“Wild horses, princess. Wild horses.”
* * *
THE COFFEE SPOT wasn’t the reason I’d moved into the apartment with Rain and Dave — in fact, I didn’t find it until a few months after I’d moved in — but as soon as I realized that the world’s greatest hazelnut latte was less than three blocks from my front door? It had become a serious reason to stay put.
Stepping into a coffee shop always felt like somehow stepping into the same coffee shop no matter where in the country you were. There were older folks reading the paper, a couple of middle-aged women laughing over lattes, and an entire sea of laptops. It was easy to believe stepping into a coffee shop in Minneapolis would look exactly the same — only the contents of the screens would change.
In LA you’d see screenplays, in Columbus it’d be term papers, and in San Francisco — the urban hub of Silicon Valley — creative works shared space with screens full of code.
I snagged my usual seat near the window — another thing the Spot had going for it was an abundance of power outlets — and settled in with my latte to skim email while I waited for my croissant to be heated and my name called.
The biggest part of the grind, I’d found, was learning how to be ruthless with my time. Admin could eat up my whole day if I let it, and then none of the creative work that actually turned into money would get done. It was just a shame that admin was the work keeping everything else running. But I didn’t let it get me down. I moved through my inbox with the decisive energy of a triage specialist in a war zone, tagging my emails with keywords that would let me sort through batches of the same task at once.
There were quote requests from potential clients, data dumps waiting to be turned into spreadsheets that I could analyze for ROI, and — an email from my mother.
The preview for the message was enough to turn my stomach: ‘Family update: Gregory has been accepted into…’
I snoozed the notification and moved on. It was just practical. I was working, I didn’t have time to deal with personal email. In fact, I should make sure emails from my family were getting pre-sorted into their own folder on the server side. Hadn’t I already done that?
“Almond croissant for Amber?” The barista’s voice cut through the din of the coffee shop and I jumped from my seat in a burst of guilty, startled motion.
I hadn’t even looked up, which made the ensuing cascade of iced coffee tumbling through the air painfully predictable. Mom would’ve called it ‘natural consequences’ for ignoring her email.
I jerked to a halt, eyes wide and mouth round in mortified horror as I finally set eyes on the person I’d blundered into. In the words of a meme nowhere near popular enough to justify my time on it: ‘Oh no, she’s hot.’
Wild blonde hair was pulled back into a haphazard ponytail, the roots dark with sweat while the tips were almost platinum. Thick, heavy-rimmed ‘hipster’ glasses — someone obviously hadn’t marked the shift to brow-line frames or cat-eyes — guarded blue eyes so bright they looked like she was walking around with a filter over her in real life. She’d clearly been doing some kind of exercise. Running, judging from the — oh God — itty bitty shorts that capped legs miles too long for someone who had to look up to meet my eyes.
Not that she looked up.
My blonde victim watched the to-go cup crash to the floor in a pantomime of caffeinated tragedy. She quirked the corner of her flushed pink lips — is that what she looked like after a run? After a run, I looked like I was about to go into cardiac arrest — into a frown, and pivoted on her expensive running shoes back toward the counter. The barista holding up my croissant watched my humiliation with a look of horrified solidarity.
“I’m so sorry,” I blurted, reaching toward the blonde as if to steady her. I didn’t quite lose control enough to actually touch her arms, but the shift brought my body into the path of her movement. That had been a mistake.
The blonde looked up at me, startled, clearly surprised I’d spoken. “I don’t require an apology,” she said. “I require coffee.”
It should have been scathing. The words were certainly sharp, but something about the way she said it was just…matter-of-fact. Maybe she couldn’t really summon ire pre-caffeine. Or maybe people bumping into her in the coffee shop were tiny, unavoidable natural disasters — to be handled, but not angered by.
“I could...buy you another one?” I offered awkwardly. Somehow I managed to sound like I was asking her on a coffee date rather than fixing my blunder. I wanted to swallow my own tongue. What was wrong with me? I was good with people. Good with surprising situations. Why couldn’t I find my feet?
The mystery blonde squinted up at me. “You don’t know how I take it.” She turned to look past me to the barista at the register. “Monica! I need another one. Add it to the account on file.”
On file? I blinked. Blonde Runner had a catering account with the Spot? Oh no. Was she a regular? Did I have to find another coffee shop? I fought back the urge to groan and started grieving the loss of my hazelnut lattes. Maybe Dave would pick them up for me sometimes.
The line between her brows, the downturn at the distracting corner of her mouth deepened. “You’re still standing there.”
Heat flooded everything from my chest upward and I could only imagine the shade of fire-engine red I was turning. “Right. I — sorry. I’ll just —” I babbled, scooting out of the way as quickly as I could without running into anyone else.
The blonde slipped by me with tidy, purposeful movements. It was the sort of graceful prowl that made it clear she owned the room and the rest of us were guests in it. She braced herself against the water cooler, filling one of the little biodegradable cups and arching her back as she tipped the water down her throat and —
My mouth went dry in the wake of an undeniable shiver. That back arch. Mercy.
“Amber?” The barista called again, jerking my eyes away from the blonde and back toward my pastry.
“Right! Yes, that’s me. Sorry.” I hurried toward the counter with a sheepish grin and accepted my croissant and the wink that accompanied it.
“Right?” The barista stage-whispered, flicking her gaze over to the water cooler where I was resolutely not looking.
I nodded miserably. “I know.”
With considerable effort, I made it back to my seat — and my mountain of work — without further incident. When I looked up again, casually glancing toward the water cooler, the blonde had already left. Which was reasonable. She hadn’t looked like she was ready to settle in with a coffee and a book. A nice spy thriller.
Or a white collar crime novel. Maybe she had a whole stack of justice porn piled on her nightstand: novels written in the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, holding the people responsible to account. Or humorous autobiographies from celebrities or comedians.
The image of her furrowed brow and downturned lips resurfaced in my mind. Okay. Not the lighthearted bios. Military history. That sounded better.
My phone broke me from the distraction of my own scattered thoughts with a chirp. The sound was a unique one, triggered by a nascent social media post in my general location. That tool had been a godsend. The post was only a few minutes old and already picking up engagement — perfect for me to quote and share with my followers.
My thumbprint unlocked my phone and the image of Blonde Runner’s perfect backside filled the screen. Someone in the coffee shop had snapped a photo of her and posted it — but why? It was a nice ass, sure, but people didn’t usually send out a picture like that when it was someone random.
I squinted down at the screen, reading and rereading the caption until my only partially caffeinated brain managed to catch up.
‘Someone let SparkSignal know their CEO is leaking confidential ASSets in the Coffee Spot.’
SparkSignal. My mind flooded with barely-remembered clips and headlines — a serious-faced blonde in a dark sweater next to the words ‘Under Thirty’ and ‘Game Changer’. Oh hell. The blonde runner. The bl
onde runner had been Iris Spark.
Suddenly, my mild embarrassment seemed like the best outcome I could’ve hoped for. Iris Spark was one of those Silicon Valley legends: a dynamo coding prodigy who ate normal people for breakfast. At least, that was the rumor. She hadn’t taken a bite out of me.
It was tempting to close the app, pretend I hadn’t seen the post, and keep my head down. But on the other hand, I knew a photo like that was going to do numbers. And it was better for me if it boosted my overall profile. Besides, the original caption was a little…mean. The tone could do with a tune-up, and why shouldn’t I be the one to do it?
‘Smart, athletic, and just as addicted to caffeine as I am???
As long as we’re #thirsty — what are we drinking, friends?’
I put my phone to the side and tried to focus on the emails, calendars, proposals, and revision requests I needed to get through. Social media would do its thing thanks to Ms. Spark. Now I needed to do mine.
3
IRIS
The whirr of the exercise bike — the liquid rush of the resistance mechanism and the nearly silent purr of the pedals beneath my feet — was the comfortable background noise of the start of my day, and had been since I’d first started listening to all those therapists, instead of brushing them off in futile teenage rebellion. They were right.
Even if I had the sleep cycle of someone caught in an endless loop of manic phases, even if I rose before the sun every day of my life, I was more rested, more in control when I spent the first part of my day burning the dust out of my system.
Dahlia had called it ‘racing back to reality’ — as if the problem had been that I was still clinging to childish dreams. That I wasn’t properly awake.
Dahlia had taken the opposite tactic. She avoided sleep until she collapsed beneath it, then might not rise for days.
A bright, tinkling tone rose from my phone. It perched on the riding desk next to the schedule of meetings and preparatory notes that Carrie sent to me every morning.
Speak of the devil.
Very few people were categorized in a contact group that got through my ‘Do Not Disturb’ settings before most of the west coast started their day. Carrie was always allowed through. My mother. Dahlia.
Only those three.
I swiped open the lock screen and squinted down at Dahlia’s message.
‘You even do social media gossip better than I do. Overachiever.’
Was Dahlia drunk? Still? At — my eyes flicked toward the novelty clock selected for me by my oldest niece, a flickering array of lights announcing the current time in binary — five o’clock in the morning?
‘If you aren’t going to make sense, maybe try sleeping.’
The message appeared under my fluttering fingers and I set the phone aside to focus once again on Carrie’s preliminary reports. She’d rescheduled a marketing meeting in order to fit in a strategy session, and Dahlia wasn’t going to get in the way of that.
Predictably, the phone chirped again.
The message was a link, and despite my better instincts, I tapped on it. Immediately, my screen filled with a photo — a photo of me. Taken from behind. While I was in my running kit.
Fucking hell.
The original caption was a crude, uncreative mess. But the post Dahlia had linked, the one with — holy hell — thousands of likes and shares and hundreds of comments in the fifteen hours since it was first sent out, was slightly more charming.
Slightly.
It was still an idiotically frivolous post centered around my ass, but it was at least getting comments about what one might drink with Iris Spark after getting that sweaty.
Only some of the answers were crude.
Could’ve been worse.
Could’ve been a whole hell of a lot better.
‘Is there a reason you thought I needed to see that?’
In a just world, opening that message would physically cut Dahlia from the sharpness of its tone. As it was, I was sure my free-wheeling cousin had only laughed.
I flipped the phone to face against the riding desk, turned off the chime — including the one that broke through DND — and scowled into my notes.
It didn’t matter what Dahlia’s pithy response was. It didn’t matter why she’d thought it would be funny.
It didn’t even matter that a chunk of the internet spent the last day debating whether I wanted coffee or tea with my eggs the morning after.
What mattered was SparkSignal.
What mattered was keeping hold of the company I’d built from nothing.
What mattered was that no one could unseat me from the top of a mountain I’d built with my own fucking hands.
Distractions wormed their way in as the mile counter relentlessly incremented. I kept remembering the coffee shop, the reason I’d been at the water cooler to begin with.
My mind drifted to dark eyes and an artfully tousled pixie cut.
The collision had been inconvenient — though certainly not the catastrophe the dark-haired woman had thought it was — but the way she’d bitten her lower lip, the way she’d wrinkled her forehead and looked at me with such concern…that had been significantly more problematic.
The temptation had been there, certainly. The urge to let the other woman buy me a new drink, chat while it was made, smile and flirt and make all the right moves to find myself with Ms. Pixie Cut sobbing her release in my sheets — the temptation had been there.
Unfortunately, I hadn’t had the time. I was being forced out of SparkSignal. I had a regional launch in the next week. Feature reviews for the next quarter were already scheduled.
And at the end of the day, a pretty face — and, fuck, she had been pretty — was something that could wait until the work was done.
Even if the honeysuckle tint in her perfume had followed me into my dreams.
Three cheerful beeps from the bike’s control panel indicated the ride was completed — twelve minutes ahead of schedule.
I hopped down from the saddle and felt the warm ache moving through my thighs, my glutes and resolved not to mention to Dahlia that I’d been faster that morning.
Might give her the wrong idea.
* * *
CARRIE HAD my smoothie waiting for me when I sailed through the doors of the office, cold and sweating in an opaque container — an attempt to stave off my comments about pond slime — and scientifically balanced by my nutritionist to keep my mind sharp for the hours I needed from it.
It didn’t taste that bad. Not really. It wasn’t quite an ice cream sundae, but it was better than the compressed meal-replacement bars one of the senior VPs had sworn by. I’d quietly adopted a policy to investigate family ties before accepting a recommendation in the future.
Unfortunately, the perfectly serviceable smoothie was like the morning bike ride suggested by my therapists: good at doing exactly what it was supposed to do, regardless of how little I enjoyed it.
“Would you come in, please, Carrie? And close the door behind you.” The leather satchel came to rest by the desk in its usual place as I settled in and woke the array of displays.
“Something you needed to discuss, Ms. Spark?” Carrie asked. Her voice was rough — I knew she’d adjusted her schedule to suit my whims and that she wasn’t used to being up so early. It wasn’t the usual habit in Silicon Valley.
“I wanted to run a few ideas past you for countering this…eviction,” I said dryly.
“Really?” Carrie’s eyes were slightly widened. “Me?”
A frown tugged at the corner of my mouth. “Of course you. For one thing, you’re the only one in the company I’ve authorized to know about the attempt —” The statement settled over Carrie’s face with a resignation that grated on my nerves. “And aside from that, you’re the single savviest political mind I’ve ever met.”
The warmth in Carrie’s cheeks was almost uncomfortable to look at. And the shine in her eyes pushed the matter from ‘almost’ to ‘definitely’.
My frown deepened. “I suspect your performance reviews have been insufficiently thorough if that comes as a surprise to you.” Another slurp of sludge gave me a moment to think. “You know me better than most, Carrie. I couldn’t have someone average at my right hand.” I held up the hand in question to stave off the possibility of an outburst. “And before this becomes even more disgustingly sentimental, let’s take it as read I know you smooth the way for my rough edges and leave it at that.”
“Of course, Ms. Spark.” Carrie’s voice hadn’t gotten any less rough. Worse, her throat sounded thick with the sort of emotion I preferred to leave to fiction.
Best to move on.
“I’ve reviewed the advertising revenue data when correlated with the strategic decisions from my office over the past year. I have three examples of direct value the board can’t ignore.” I tapped the cloud storage link on my desktop and set about opening the charts for her to review. “But I need them sanity-checked. Sometimes their willingness to overlook the obvious surprises me.”
Silence reigned for long seconds while the report sat, unnoticed, on my screen. When I looked over at Carrie, she was attempting to bury the look of hesitation flashing over her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m sure — well. You know this company better than anyone —”
“That isn’t true,” I said, cutting Carrie off. “You do. So what is it you’re worried about telling me?”
“The board of directors — they don’t care.” The words flew from her mouth like they’d escaped, and I spared a moment to be impressed at how Carrie recovered. She’d said it, shocking herself, then fixed her expression to own it.
“About?” I prompted.
“Any of that.” Carrie’s hand gestured toward my screen. “You and I both know there wouldn’t be a SparkSignal without you. We know that if anyone else had been in charge, none of the first launches would have worked. Without your decisions about capital, we wouldn’t have had enough processing power to handle the traffic when the trouble in Istanbul started.”
