Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 216(@200wpm)___ 172(@250wpm)___ 144(@300wpm)
She nods, seeming to accept this explanation, her eyes dropping back to the video feed. “I hope he’s that stupid. It should make things a lot easier.”
I hum in agreement. It’s almost a funny thing for her to have said – and if we were just working together on a client case, I would have chuckled. But the fact she is talking about her father somehow just makes it dark.
I hook up my desktop to an external hard drive I keep in one of my drawers and then connect the hacking program on it with the email address I want to access. I fold my hands on top of the desk and lean back in my chair, watching it and waiting.
“Don’t you have to type a whole bunch really fast to hack?” Jenna asks. I check, but she’s still watching the feed like she should be.
“No, that’s just a Hollywood thing,” I say. “I have a computer program to do it all for me, so I just have to wait and see. It’s quite boring, actually. Would you like some lunch?”
She nods. “It’s a little early, but I am actually hungry.”
“Early is good,” I say, getting up. “It means we can fuel up and then be ready when your father goes on his lunch, just in case. How does a grilled cheese sound?”
“Perfect,” Jenna nods, glancing up just once and then back at the screen. She’s intensely focused, which I love.
I head to the kitchen and make the food quickly, heading back in to check on my computer’s progress once the ingredients are made, just in case. Then, seeing that it doesn’t have anything for me to read yet, I return, grill the cheeses, so to speak, and then bring them back steaming hot and dripping with melted cheese on two plates.
When I bring them over, Jenna looks away from the screen with real interest.
“Don’t lose focus,” I remind her, setting one plate down in front of her. I head back and sit behind my desk again with my plate.
I made them as special as I could manage in this environment: three types of specialty cheese that are noted for their meltiness and stringiness, half a yellow onion cut up between the two servings to add some tang, plenty of butter, and thick, rich bread with extra cheese baked into it.
It’s good grilled cheese, even if I do say so myself.
Jenna bites into hers and rolls her eyes, making a sound of sincere appreciation. “How did you make these so good?” she asks, her voice a little muffled by the food.
I laugh. “A lot of practice,” I say. The thought is almost tinged with a little sadness. It took a lot of practice, and no one ever really got to try them – until now. I’m glad I perfected my at-home comfort food recipe in service of this day.
“Did you make it for your wife?”
I look at her and give a startled chuckle. “I’ve never had a wife.”
“Oh.” Jenna nods, watching the screen. “Your last girlfriend, then.”
I’m a little amused – is she trying to dig into my past relationships? “I’ve actually never made this for anyone but you.”
“Why didn’t you make it for her?”
I laugh properly now. “Who is ‘her’?”
“Your last girlfriend.”
I shake my head at her with an amused look. “I don’t think my high school girlfriend would have been interested in the grilled cheese I was able to make back then. I would probably have given her food poisoning.”
Jenna pouts slightly. “No, I mean your most recent girlfriend.”
I shake my head again and laugh. “I just told you about her.”
“You’ve been single since you were in high school?”
I nod slowly. “Is that weird to you? I’ve had a lot of other things to focus on. My parents’ health before they died, work, and my personal development. I haven’t ever met a woman before that I wanted to really build a life with.”
I hope she hears the keyword: before, which means, before now, because now there is someone who fits that description very well.
She has a thoughtful look on her face, but she keeps staring at the video. I wonder if she’s taken it in properly or if she’s just thinking about all those years I’ve been single.
“So,” she says after a long moment and a few more bites of her grilled cheese. “High school, huh? What was that – a generation or two ago?”
I blink. I look up at her and see her glance at me slyly.
A joke. She just made a joke about my age.
“More or less,” I say. I cautiously chew another bite of my food, thinking that now is a good time to adequately broach the subject. “Well, twenty years more than when you were in high school.”
Which was pretty recent for her, I remind myself. I can barely remember my high school days. Probably because I never think about them, having gone through them and discarded them as useless.