Page 106 of Paradigm

Arlowe left the remote meeting, closed her computer, and wiped at her face, feeling exhausted. She’d been working remotely in another time zone for two weeks, and it hadn’t been easy. Some of her meetings had been in the middle of the night for her, so she was on a pretty strange sleep schedule on top of the fact that she was working from the tiny apartment, with Eline asleep in the bedroom, so she had to keep her voice down and wear her headphones so as not to wake her, which often meant that someone would be asking her to repeat herself a little louder. It was annoying at times, and it was inconvenient all the time, but she was here, and she could handle it.

“Hey, are you done with your meeting?” Eline asked, setting the bowl down on the table in front of Arlowe, who usually worked on the sofa.

“Yeah.”

Eline picked up a couple of those cheese twisty things, handed one to Arlowe before eating the other, and leaned into Arlowe’s side.

“Want to go somewhere today? I’ve gotten all my work done.”

“Really? It’s only two.”

“Yes,” Eline said and shifted a little until she was sitting facing her, with her legs somewhat in Arlowe’s lap, and she had her hand at the base of Arlowe’s neck. “So, I was thinking that if you wanted to, we could go for one of our walks and have dinner out tonight.”

Eline then moved her hand up and into Arlowe’s hair, which was one of Arlowe’s favorite things.

“You seem to be finishing work pretty early every day. Is it because I’m here? Are you going to get in trouble for calling it a day before five?”

“Oh, baby… This isn’t America. Most places aren’t as intense as you’re used to when it comes to working until five o’clock every day, as long as the work gets done, but I’m done for the day because what he’s asking of me isn’t all that difficult, and he did a lot of the coding work already that I didn’t know about before I took the job. I thought I would be building things from scratch, but he has some of it worked out already, so I’ve been reviewing, fixing, and building from there. I update him on my progress as I go, and he tells me when that’s good for the day because he wants to review it before I go any further, but he’s still teaching, so he can’t do that until later. It’s pretty boring, but it’s work.”

“You’re bored?”

Arlowe placed her arm over Eline’s legs.

“At work, but not with you.”

Eline wiggled her eyebrows.

“Well, that’s good to hear because we’ve only been together again for, like, six weeks.”

“It’s a job,” Eline replied. “You know I’m only doing it until I can go back with you.”

“And he’s okay with that, your boss?”

“He doesn’t know yet. I know that’s not ideal, but even with the visa application now filed, it’s still likely to take a few months to hear back. I’m going to do as much as I can for him before I tell him, and there are plenty of great engineers here who can replace me.”

“Where do you want to walk?”

“Depends,” Eline said.

“On?”

“Do you want to be around tourists or not?”

“Ah… Well, I really don’t care as long as I’m with you, so whatever you want.”

“Want to take a short tram ride and walk around the city aimlessly until we want dinner?”

“That’s the best kind of walk,” Arlowe said with a smile before she leaned in and kissed her.

Eline got up and grabbed a handful of her snack before she walked into the bedroom. Arlowe followed her, and they moved around the small space with relative ease. Arlowe would put her hands on Eline’s hips and move her to the side when she needed to get by her. Eline would lean against Arlowe’s back and wait for Arlowe to move for her turn at the sink in the bathroom. It had only been two weeks of them living there, but it felt like they’d been living together for years.

“You look really cute in this shirt,” Eline said, helping her button up a short-sleeved white button-down.

“Yeah?”

“Yes. But now I want to undo all the buttons I just did for you.”

Eline leaned in and kissed her on the neck.