Page 6 of Derivation

“That’s confusing.”

“Tell me about it,” she replied with another laugh and turned her head back to check on her friends.

Noticing Arlowe still passed out on Enya’s shoulder and Enya back on her phone, Sarai smiled at the two of them and turned back around to look out the windshield, thinking that when they got home, Violet wouldn’t be there anymore because she had a new home. It hit her then. She’d been joking all night. They’d all thought they were prepared for it. But she swallowed and wiped a tear from her eye, trying to keep Gabi from noticing.

CHAPTER 2

“You don’t have to stay in a hotel, you know?” Chase, her friend, told her over the phone.

Gabi looked around the hotel room she’d been staying in for the past week, ever since she’d relocated for work. She had known that she’d be relocating for a month, but she had been searching for a place to live for almost as long, unfortunately. It seemed like nearly everyone was moving to this used-to-be-small town that had been going through a tech and business boom for the past several years, and that meant that while they’d been building more apartments in the tri-county area, there still weren’t enough to go around. She’d applied for three but had lost out on all three of them to other candidates who might have had better credit than her own, more income, or had just applied before her.

As a result, Gabi had been without a place to live by the time her new job had started earlier that week. Technically, she hadn’t been required to relocate, but they had offered a small stipend for just that purpose because the company still preferred people to be in the office at least three days a week, and she’d been looking for a change anyway. She had agreed to be a hybrid employee, had set a start date, but she hadn’t anticipated not being able to find a place to live by the time she’d had to report to her office for her new-hire orientation the previous Monday.

She’d found this job through Chase, whom she’d met in school. They’d stayed in touch, mostly on social media, but when Gabi had mentioned that she’d been looking for a new role after missing out on a promotion that she’d thought had been all but guaranteed, he’d let her know that his company had been looking for someone. It wasn’t exactly what she’d wanted – Gabi had majored in mechanical engineering with an emphasis on product development, and she’d planned on working in hardware – but she’d taught herself how to code as a teenager and had even considered going to school for that initially, so it wasn’t something that she hated. She’d been a software engineer at her previous company, too, since they didn’t sell hardware, and she’d liked it enough. It just wasn’t what she wanted to do long-term. Chase’s company, now also her own, didn’t sell hardware, either, but she’d gotten a role one step above her old one, and so far, at least, she felt like it might be the right place for her at the moment.

“I know. I have another application out, though, and I should hear back tomorrow. I think I have a good chance at getting this one. It was only listed for rent for about three hours before I did an online 3D-tour and applied.”

“You didn’t even go check it out in person?” he asked.

Gabi looked through her suitcase that she had lying on the luggage rack and thought about all the rest of her clothes that she currently had in storage, wishing she had thought to bring one of her football jerseys with her. She had a few. One had been her dad’s, and she wore it whenever she missed him, which was often. The other two had been gifts from him and were all for their favorite team. She didn’t have any of those here, though, so she found a casual-looking T-shirt and a pair of jeans, pulled them out, and put Chase on speakerphone.

“No, there’s not really time for that. Everything is going so fast. They have the option for a six-month lease, so if my application is accepted, I’ll check it out in person then. If it’s doable, I’ll sign a short lease and look for something else if I need to, but I have two business days to sign the lease anyway. I need to get my stuff out of storage, and I’m tired of not having a kitchen.”

“I told you that you could stay with Mark and me.”

“I know, and I appreciate that, but you two just got married. Literally, you got back from your honeymoon two weeks ago. The last thing you need is a houseguest. I’ll be fine here, and I’m sure I’ll get this place anyway.”

“Okay. Well, just let us know if you change your mind. And we don’t care, by the way. Yes, we just got legally married, but we’ve been together since MIT.”

“I know. Lucky,” she said with a smile. “I have to run. I have a thing tonight.”

“You have a thing?” he asked.

“Plans with a friend.”

“You have friends here besides me?”

“Wow! Hilarious, Chase,” she said sarcastically.

He laughed and said, “I only meant that I thought Mark and I were the only people you knew here.”

“I thought that was the case, but I ran into someone I met once a million years ago at the bar the other night.”

“You went to a bar?”

“For dinner. Well, that was the plan. I wanted to order food to-go because I can’t cook anything here, and it was a couple of miles away. I was about to order when Sarai walked up, and we talked. She was there with her friends, and I met them back then, too, so I just hung out with them.”

“A million years ago?”

“When I was eighteen, so yes.”

“That was a long time ago,” Chase joked.

“Hanging up now. Have to go.”

She heard him laugh and hit the icon on her phone to end the call. Then, she got dressed, looked around to see if she needed to bring anything else, grabbed her purse, which she rarely carried because she was used to lugging around a heavy laptop in her backpack, and left the cheap hotel room that she hoped to be checking out of soon.

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