Jake ignored three Slack messages, one calendar alert, and a knock on his office door.
He just stood there, in the middle of Conference 4, staring at the chair where Olivia had been sitting twenty seconds ago.
“You good?” Carla asked eventually, from the doorway.
He snapped out of it.
“Fine,” he said. “That went… well.”
“Relatively,” she said. “Considering.”
She stepped back into the room, closing the door behind her. Her eyes were sharp, assessing, but not unkind.
“She’s good,” Carla said.
“I told you,” he replied.
“I understand now why you didn’t want anyone else to have that story,” she said.
He frowned. “I didn’t say I—”
“Please,” she said. “You could’ve redirected her editor to any number of other outlets. You didn’t.”
He exhaled. “I thought it was better to… face it.”
“‘It,’” she echoed. “The past. Her. Both?”
“Both,” he admitted.
Carla folded her arms. “Do you think you managed to keep the focus on TerraNova?”
“Yes,” he said. “Mostly.”
“Mostly,” she repeated. “You know none of the personal stuff is going in, right? At least not from that hour.”
“I know,” he said. “Off the record.”
“But she’s going to write it,” Carla said. “In her head. Whether or not it ever hits the page.”
He’d known that, walking into this.
He hadn’t expected it to sting.
“She’s not out to screw you,” Carla added. “I watched her face. She pushed, but she didn’t… she never went for the cheap shot.”
“She never did,” he said softly, mostly to himself.
Carla’s gaze sharpened. “How long were you together?”
He hesitated. “A few years. Off and on.”
“And you just… haven’t seen her since?”
“Ten years,” he said. “Give or take.”
Carla whistled. “That’s a lot of unresolved material, Morrison.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Is this the part where you tell me to talk to a therapist?”
“Already did that three years ago,” she said. “But sure, add this to the list of things you should unpack on someone’s couch.”
He almost smiled.
She sobered. “Be careful.”
“With her?” he asked.
“With yourself,” she said. “We’re thirty days out from the biggest launch of your life. You can’t afford to spiral because some old feelings woke up.”
He stiffened. “I’m not sixteen.”
“I know,” she said. “You’re better at pretending now. That’s not the same as not feeling.”
He blew out a breath. “I’ll be fine. We’ve got enough fires this week that I don’t have time to obsess over one article.”
“Good,” she said. “Because whatever else is going on in your head, that woman is going to deliver a piece that people actually read. Probably reread. That’s good for us. As long as you don’t say something to her later that we can’t walk back.”
He thought of his last words to Olivia in the room.
*If you ever want to ask the questions you really want to ask…*
He hadn’t said anything he couldn’t stand by.
Yet.
“I know the line,” he said.
“Just… don’t forget where it is,” Carla said. “Because she’s the kind of writer who makes you want to cross it.”
***
By the time he got back to his office, his Slack was a wall of notifications.
#launch-3.0, #press-ops, #infra-nyc, #random-memes.
He clicked into the memes channel first, because the alternative was thinking too hard.
Someone had already posted a screenshot of the *Metro* homepage, which now featured a small banner: *Coming Soon: Inside TerraNova with Founder Jake Morrison.*
Underneath, a gif of a man sweating.
His name had been tagged.
*Devon*: @jake when you realize your South Side ex is about to drag you in front of all of Brooklyn
*Aisha*: bet he deserves at least some of it tho
*Samir*: i for one welcome our new metro overlord
He shook his head, fingers flying.
*@jake*: pay attention to your deployment tickets instead of my personal life and maybe we’ll ship on time
The responses were swift.
*Devon*: sir yes sir
*Samir*: no promises
*Aisha*: he didn’t deny the ex part 👀
He muted the channel before he could be tempted to type something he’d regret.
His calendar pinged.
**3:15 – Infra NY Check-In (Samir, Aisha)**
He took a breath, squared his shoulders, and went to talk about load balancing and fault tolerance like his heart hadn’t just spent an hour racing for reasons that had nothing to do with server clusters.
***
Olivia stepped out into the cold and was immediately engulfed by noise.
“—NO MORE DATA WITHOUT OUR SAY—”
“—WHOSE STREETS? OUR STREETS!—”
The protest outside had grown. A couple dozen people now, clustered near the corner. Some in faded hoodies, some in office-casual coats, one notably in a full Guy Fawkes mask that made Olivia roll her eyes internally.
She hesitated.
Her recorder was still running in her pocket from habit. Her notebook was under her arm. She had quotes from the man upstairs whose company these people were protesting.
But the journalist in her knew better than to walk past a story unfolding on the sidewalk.
She crossed the street.
A woman with a knit hat and a bullhorn turned as Olivia approached.
“You with the company?” she asked, chin jutting toward TerraNova’s gleaming logo.
“No,” Olivia said. “Press.”
She flashed her badge.
The woman’s posture shifted a fraction, suspicion giving way to wary interest.
“Who you with?” she asked.
“*Metro*,” Olivia said. “We’re doing a series on TerraNova.”
“About time,” the woman muttered. “You writing about how they’re turning the whole city into a data mine?”
“That’s one of the questions,” Olivia said. “Can I get your name?”
“Leah Gordon,” she said, adjusting her hat. “I’m with CityWatch. We’ve been ringing alarm bells on this shit since Version 1.0.”
Olivia had heard of CityWatch—small but loud, the kind of grassroots watchdog group that city hall alternately hated and grudgingly respected.
“What’s your main concern with TerraNova?” she asked, pen poised.
Leah huffed out a breath, a white cloud in the cold air.
“Pick one,” she said. “They’re embedding sensors in everything. They’ve got access to real-time data on where people are, how they move, where they spend money. And we’re supposed to just… trust that they won’t sell that to the highest bidder? Or hand it over to cops every time they ask?”
“They say they have privacy safeguards,” Olivia said. “Independent audits.”
“They say a lot of things,” Leah shot back. “Contracts are opaque. Public oversight is a joke. You know how many community boards actually read the technical specs before they sign off? None. Because they can’t. They don’t have the expertise. So they trust the company to do what’s right. And companies don’t do what’s right. They do what makes money.”
“TerraNova has turned down contracts that didn’t meet their privacy standards,” Olivia said, watching Leah’s face closely.
“Yeah?” Leah said. “They told you that?”
“Jake did,” Olivia said.
Leah snorted. “Of course he did. Mister ‘I’m just a humble coder trying to fix your commute.’ Look, maybe he *believes* it. Maybe he’s better than most of them. But what happens when he sells? Or retires? Or gets hit by a bus? The system stays. The person goes.”
Olivia scribbled. *The system stays. The person goes.*
“Do you think the alternative is better?” she asked. “Leaving infrastructure in the hands of city agencies that can barely keep up as it is?”
“I think the alternative is public investment,” Leah said. “Actual funding for public departments to build their own systems, not contracting out to the private sector. But that’s not sexy. It doesn’t get you splashy headlines about ‘visionary founders.’”
Her eyes flickered toward the building.
“Ask him who owns the code,” she added. “Ask him what happens if a city wants to walk away from TerraNova. If they can take the platform with them, or if they’re locked in forever.”
“I will,” Olivia said.
“You actually going to print that answer if you don’t like it?” Leah challenged.
“I don’t print answers I like,” Olivia said. “I print the ones that are true.”
Leah studied her, then nodded once. “Okay, *Metro*. We’ll see.”
Olivia moved through the crowd, collecting quotes. A grad student worried about data privacy. A delivery driver who said if TerraNova could get him a bus that came on time, he’d consider selling them his DNA too. A retiree from Queens who’d come because her grandson told her “the app” was “sketchy” and she trusted him more than the mayor.
By the time she ducked into a coffee shop a block away to thaw her hands and sort her notes, her head was buzzing.
She found a small table near the back, took out her notebook, and started jotting down impressions before they could fade.
The bell over the door jingled. A rush of cold air swept in, along with a couple in matching peacoats arguing about the L train.
Her phone vibrated.
*Ma*: ¿Terminaste? How was it?
*Olivia*: Survived. I’ll call you later. He looks older. Less stupid hair.
*Ma*: Good. He needed better hair. Don’t forget Leah’s questions. (Your cousin’s friend’s group. I told you about them.)
Olivia blinked.
*Olivia*: wait how do you know Leah?!
*Ma*: She came to the community center meeting. Very smart. Don’t let him charm you, mija. Eat something.
Olivia huffed a laugh.
*Olivia*: I’m literally in a café.
As she stood to order, she caught her reflection in the glass of the pastry case.
Flushed cheeks. Hair escaping her bun. Eyes too bright.
She looked like someone who’d just had a fight. Or a very good fuck.
Heat flooded her face.
*Get a grip,* she told herself.
She ordered a sandwich and a coffee, then went back to her table and pulled out her laptop.
Blank doc. Cursor blinking.
She typed the working title at the top:
**Fault Lines: Inside TerraNova with Jake Morrison**
Then, beneath it:
> Jake Morrison doesn’t look like your idea of a villain. > > In a conference room high above the Brooklyn waterfront, the founder of TerraNova—New York’s most ambitious (and controversial) “smart city” platform—leans back in his chair and talks about trash pickups.
She paused. Was that too cute? Too meta?
She rewrote.
> From the 14th-floor conference room of TerraNova’s Brooklyn headquarters, the city looks abstract. > > Streets shrink to lines, bridges to neat arches of steel. The East River is a sheet of hammered metal. From up here, the buses that carry housekeepers and hedge fund analysts alike are nothing but colored dots on a map. > > Jake Morrison prefers it that way. > > “I like systems,” he says. “If you can see the whole thing, you can see where it’s failing.”
Not bad.
She could feel him in the room with her still, the cadence of his voice, the way his hands moved when he got passionate about a point.
She kept typing.
She wrote about the neighborhood. About the South Side community center. About Leah’s concerns. About trash pickups on West 19th that finally got fixed after three weeks because TerraNova flagged the failure.
She wove his quotes in, letting his own words both bolster and complicate the narrative.
Half an hour later, she sat back and read what she had.
It was raw. Too first-draft-y to show anyone. But the skeleton was there.
Her phone buzzed again.
Unknown number.
She frowned, answer finger hovering.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hey,” came Jake’s voice. “It’s me.”
Her stomach did something stupid.
“How did you get this number?” she asked, even though she already knew.
“I asked Carla,” he said. “As predicted.”
“That feels like an abuse of power,” she said.
“You can write an op-ed about it,” he said. “I’ll give you a quote.”
She fought a smile. “What do you want, Jake?”
“Well,” he said. “I figured since I just handed you a lot of content in an hour, maybe you could do me a professional courtesy in return.”
Her hackles went up. “If this is about quote approval, that’s not how this works.”
“I know how it works,” he said evenly. “I’m not asking for copy approval. I’m asking for… context.”
“Context,” she repeated.
“I said some things off the cuff,” he said. “About walking away from contracts. About… other stuff.”
“The moral high ground versus share price,” she said. “The stuff your board’s going to love.”
“Exactly,” he said dryly. “Before you put that in a story that could tank a week of my investor relations calls, can we at least talk about how it lands? Not so I can make you cut it. So I can be prepared.”
Her skepticism warred with her curiosity.
“Why not have Carla do it?” she asked.
“Because she’ll try to sand off the edges,” he said. “You won’t.”
“You’re very sure of what I will and won’t do, considering you haven’t seen me in a decade,” she said.
“I read your work,” he said quietly. “You don’t soften things because they make people uncomfortable. You never did.”
Her throat went dry.
“I’m not doing a second interview,” she said. “Not before this piece runs.”
“I’m not asking for one,” he said. “Just… coffee. Off the record. Two exes sitting in a diner, talking about how much tech coverage sucks. You can bring a friend if you think I’m going to try to recruit you into my evil empire.”
A beat of silence.
It was stupid to consider it. Messy. Unprofessional, maybe, if anyone found out.
It was also exactly the kind of messy she had always been weak for.
“I’ll think about it,” she said finally.
“I’ll take that over a no,” he said.
“Don’t get used to it,” she replied.
He was silent for a second.
“Olivia,” he said, voice lower. “You did a good job in there. I’ve done a lot of these. No one’s asked me half the things you did.”
Heat crept up her neck. “That’s because half the people you’ve talked to live in neighborhoods you didn’t grow up in.”
“I know,” he said. “That’s why I said yes to you.”
Her chest tightened.
“Don’t make this into some fate thing,” she said, sharper than she meant. “We’re not in a movie.”
“I’m very aware,” he said dryly. “Movies usually have better lighting.”
Despite herself, she laughed.
“Goodbye, Jake,” she said.
“Think about the coffee,” he replied.
She hung up before he could say anything else that might make her cheeks burn in a public place.
When she looked up, the barista was watching her with mild curiosity.
“Refill?” he asked, nodding toward her empty cup.
“Yeah,” she said. “I’m going to need it.”
***
Back at TerraNova, Jake stared at his phone for a long moment after she hung up.
“Smooth,” said a voice from his doorway.
He looked up.
Samir lounged against the frame, arms crossed, annoyingly perceptive.
“You listening at doors again?” Jake asked.
“Your voice carries,” Samir said. “Also, Carla told half the floor not to bother you for ten minutes, so we all knew you were either on a very important call or having a nervous breakdown.”
“Bit of both,” Jake muttered, pocketing his phone.
Samir stepped inside. “You asked her out?”
“I asked her to coffee,” Jake said. “As a… follow-up. For context.”
“Ah yes,” Samir said. “The famous ‘context coffee.’ Absolutely nothing spicy or emotional has ever happened over one of those.”
Jake shot him a look. “It’s not like that.”
“Sure,” Samir said. “You just wanted to make sure she doesn’t frame you as a capitalist pig-dog without giving you a chance to rehearse your mea culpa.”
“I don’t rehearse,” Jake said. “That’s your thing before all-hands.”
“True,” Samir said. “But you *do* spiral. About optics. About narratives. About that time you yelled at that one council member in Oakland.”
“God, don’t remind me,” Jake groaned.
Samir plopped into the chair opposite his desk. “So. How bad is it?”
“How bad is what?” Jake said.
“The thing you’ve been pretending isn’t happening since Carla said ‘Olivia Martinez,’” Samir said. “Scale of one to ten.”
“Three,” Jake lied.
“Cool,” Samir said. “So, like, a twelve.”
Jake leaned back, looking at the ceiling.
“Seeing her…” he started, then stopped.
Samir waited.
“She’s different,” Jake said. “Older. Sharper. But also… the same. She called me on my bullshit within five minutes.”
“Sexy,” Samir said. “Did your PR person have a coronary?”
“Carla survived,” Jake said. “Barely.”
“And you?” Samir asked.
Jake thought of the way Olivia had looked at him when she asked, *Was I a casualty?*
“I’m… fine,” he said. “Uneasy. But fine.”
“Define ‘uneasy,’” Samir said.
“Like I’m standing on a pit full of all the crap I never dealt with,” Jake said slowly. “And she just took a shovel to the dirt covering it.”
“That’s… vivid,” Samir said. “Therapist on speed dial, remember?”
Jake sighed. “I know. I’ll text her later.”
“You could also just talk to Olivia,” Samir said. “Not as a source. As… I don’t know. A person you hurt. A person who hurt you.”
Jake’s temper flickered. “That’s not how this works.”
“Why?” Samir asked. “Says who?”
“Says common sense,” Jake snapped. “She’s writing a piece that’s going to be read by a lot of people whose decisions affect this company. I can’t go blurting out ten years of emotional baggage over pancakes. That’s not fair to her or to TerraNova.”
“You think she wants ten years of baggage from you?” Samir said. “She’s probably just trying not to stab you with her pen.”
“She doesn’t stab,” Jake said. “She slices.”
Samir laughed. “God, you’re still in it.”
“In what?” Jake snapped.
“Denial,” Samir said cheerfully. “But sure, let’s call it ‘operational focus.’”
Jake scrubbed a hand over his face. “I have to get back to work.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Samir said, standing. At the door, he paused. “Hey.”
“What.”
“You built this,” Samir said, gesturing vaguely at the office. “The servers, the contracts, the people cursing at Jira tickets. You can handle one woman asking you how you’re going to live with yourself when the grid goes down.”
Jake snorted. “That’s not *exactly* what she asked.”
“It’s the subtext,” Samir said. “Try not to fuck it up. With her. Or with the grid.”
He disappeared, leaving Jake alone with his screens.
He pulled up his email again.
Nothing from Olivia yet. Of course not. She’d just left.
He forced himself to click into something else. A proposal for a pilot in São Paulo. A legal brief on data retention limits in European cities.
He read the words. Parsed the numbers. Made two decisions on deployment timelines.
But a part of his brain, the part that had never stopped writing code even when his fingers weren’t touching keys, was now running a different kind of simulation.
Variables: Olivia. Past. Present. Article reach. Launch impact. Emotional risk.
The system spat out no clear answer.
***
That night, Olivia lay on her couch with her laptop open and a half-eaten slice of pizza on the coffee table. The glow from the screen painted her ceiling in pale blue.
She’d written a thousand more words since the café. Some sharp, some messy. She’d rearranged paragraphs five times. She’d cut a particularly melodramatic sentence about “kids from nowhere” that sounded too much like a movie trailer.
Her phone buzzed.
*Raj*: send me something before I explode from curiosity i’ll trade u one (1) bad pun and an oat milk latte
*Olivia*: tempted. but laura will feed me to the content gods if i leak.
*Raj*: rude but fair. how are u tho? fr.
She stared at the question.
*Olivia*: weird. he’s… different. and the same. said he reads all my stuff.
There was a long pause.
*Raj*: that’s either the hottest or creepiest thing i’ve ever heard.
*Olivia*: I know. help.
*Raj*: do u want him to read it?
She thought about that. Really thought.
Did she want Jake to see himself through her eyes now? To see the man he’d become filtered through the memory of the boy he’d been?
*Olivia*: I want the story to be good. for me. for the people who live in his city. if he reads it and it makes him squirm a little, that’s just bonus.
*Raj*: there she is. my tiny chaos muppet. u gonna take the coffee?
She chewed on her lower lip.
*Olivia*: haven’t decided.
*Raj*: pro/con list?
She could almost hear his voice.
She opened the Notes app and, before she could overthink it, typed:
**Coffee with Jake – Pros & Cons**
Pros: - More context for piece - Chance to ask follow-ups off the record - Could finally say some of the things I never said - Curiosity. (Fine. Whatever.)
Cons: - Emotional whiplash - Potential unprofessional line-crossing - He’s hotter now, which is unfair - Risk of doing something incredibly stupid - Like kissing him - Or worse, forgiving him
She stared at the list, then deleted the last two bullet points.
“Jesus, Martinez,” she muttered.
She closed Notes and opened her email instead.
She had a draft saved to Laura with the subject: **TerraNova draft – rough.**
Her fingers hovered over send.
No. Not yet. She needed to sleep on it. Print it out. Attack it with a pen.
Her phone buzzed again.
Unknown number. Or… no. Same unknown as before.
She hesitated, then answered.
“Yeah?” she said.
“Wow,” Jake said. “Liv. You’re not very professional on the phone.”
She squeezed her eyes shut briefly. “You have ten billion dollars. Get your assistant to label your number in my phone properly next time.”
“Noted,” he said, amused.
She sat up, pushing her pizza box aside. “What.”
“You thinking about coffee yet?” he asked.
“You realize normal people wait at least a day before asking for a follow-up,” she said.
“I’m not normal,” he said. “And we’re on a deadline.”
“*I’m* on a deadline,” she corrected. “You’re on a self-imposed crisis schedule.”
“That too,” he said.
She inhaled.
“Tomorrow,” she said, surprising herself. “Manny’s on 5th. 11 a.m.”
Manny’s was a diner halfway between her apartment and the TerraNova building. Greasy eggs, good coffee, cracked vinyl booths.
He was quiet for a second. “You sure?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But I’m doing it anyway.”
He let out a breath she could almost feel through the line.
“Okay,” he said. “I’ll see you there.”
She hung up before he could say anything else.
Then sat back and stared at the ceiling.
“Congratulations,” she told herself. “You’ve officially invited chaos.”
Her stomach fluttered. Not entirely with dread.
And that, more than anything, scared her.
***
Jake sat in his darkened apartment, phone still warm in his hand, a faint smile tugging at his mouth.
He’d half-expected her to say no. Or at least to make him jump through more hoops.
Tomorrow. Manny’s. 11 a.m.
Manny’s. He knew it. He’d taken a junior engineer there once for a pep talk after a brutal code review. Greasy, cramped, loud. No one would blink at two people in a booth, talking too intensely over eggs.
Across the room, on the counter, his laptop chimed with an incoming email.
He got up, padded over, and flicked it open.
From: **Aisha** Subject: **South Side Trash Ticket Escalation**
> Saw your note on the 400 block of West 19th escalated case. > > Inspections went out today. Contractor’s getting fined. City’s happy. Residents are marginally less pissed. > > Good catch. Go to bed. > > —A
He stared at the words.
West 19th.
Olivia’s old block was a few over. She’d lived closer to the corner store with the perpetually flickering sign.
He closed the laptop.
“Go to bed,” he muttered.
Instead, he walked to the window and looked out at the river.
Tomorrow, he was going to sit across from the girl who’d once told him his dreams weren’t enough—not for her, not for them—and show her the world he’d built out of the wreckage.
He wasn’t sure whether he wanted her approval.
He *was* sure he wanted her to see him.
The boy she’d left had become someone else.
Whether that someone else still had room in his life for her—and whether she had room in hers for him, even in some more fractured, adult way—was a question he had no model for.
No algorithm. No predictive map.
Just two people, ten years of history, and a diner.
Fault lines, he thought, watching headlights move across the bridge.
Sometimes they held. Sometimes they snapped.
He had a feeling tomorrow might tell him which way this one would go.## Chapter 5: Manny’s
Manny’s smelled like burnt coffee, bacon grease, and ten thousand conversations layered on top of each other.
Olivia wrapped her hands around the chipped white mug, letting the heat sink into her fingers. The laminate table stuck faintly under her forearms. A sugar packet caddy leaned at a permanent diagonal.
It was perfect.
She’d gotten there at 10:45, because she refused to be the one walking in second. The lunch crowd hadn’t hit yet; only a few scattered regulars hunched over plates. A guy in a construction jacket inhaled eggs at the counter, a couple in their sixties shared a crossword in the corner.
By 10:58, her knee had started bouncing under the table.
She told it to stop. It didn’t listen.
She checked her phone. No messages.
“He stands you up, I blacklist him from the omelet special,” Manny muttered as he topped off her coffee. He was in his sixties, big hands, gray hair slicked back. He’d adopted half the neighborhood by sheer force of personality.
“He’s not going to stand me up,” she said.
“You sound very confident for someone stirring sugar packets like they insulted her mother,” he said, nodding at her hand.
She glanced down. The pink-and-white packet she’d been worrying between her fingers had been reduced to a crumpled accordion.
“Occupational hazard,” she said. “I catastrophize for a living.”
Manny snorted. “You writers. All drama.”
The bell over the door jingled.
Olivia didn’t turn right away. She made herself take a breath, look out the window at the gray slice of 5th Avenue, then look back.
Jake stood just inside, scanning the room.
He’d dressed down—if dark jeans that fit like a glove and a navy sweater over a white collared shirt counted as “down.” A beanie was shoved in his pocket, hair mussed in a way that didn’t seem entirely intentional.
For a second, he looked almost… uncertain.
Then his eyes found hers.
The uncertainty shifted into something steadier.
He walked over, hands in his pockets.
“You’re early,” he said.
“You’re late,” she said, even though it had only just turned eleven.
He glanced at the clock above the grill. “Two minutes. You going to dock my pay?”
“Don’t tempt me,” she muttered.
He slid into the booth opposite her. The vinyl creaked under his weight.
Up close, in shitty diner light instead of the controlled brightness of a conference room, he looked… real. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there at twenty-two. A faint shadow under his jaw that said he’d slept, but not enough.
“Coffee?” Manny said, materializing with the pot in his hand.
“Please,” Jake said.
Manny poured, eyes flicking between them.
“You friends of hers?” he asked Jake, chin jerking at Olivia.
“Something like that,” Jake said.
“Then don’t piss her off,” Manny said. “She can get mean with a pen.”
“She always could,” Jake said.
Manny grunted his approval and waddled off.
Olivia shot Jake a look. “Don’t win over my diner people.”
“I didn’t realize they were yours,” he said. “I thought Manny was a free agent.”
“Everyone in here belongs to Manny,” she said. “We just rent the tables.”
He huffed a laugh, wrapped his hands around his mug.
For a moment, they just sat, the noise of the diner washing around them—silverware clinking, someone ordering pancakes, the sizzle of food on the grill.
“So,” she said finally. “Context.”
“Right,” he said. “Context.”
He took a sip of his coffee, made a face.
“You dragged me here for this?” he asked.
“Careful,” she said. “That’s blasphemy.”
“It tastes like burnt despair,” he said.
“Burnt despair and nostalgia,” she corrected. “Very specific flavor profile.”
His mouth twitched.
The waitress appeared, pad in hand. “You two know what you want?”
“Veggie omelet,” Olivia said. “No onions. Wheat toast.”
“Pancakes,” Jake said. “And bacon. Extra.”
The waitress scribbled, looked between them like she was putting pieces together, then moved on.
“You used to order pancakes when you were nervous,” Olivia said, the memory slipping out before she could catch it.
His eyes flicked up. “You remember that?”
She busied herself with the sugar packets again. “You inhaled a short stack before your first college final. Then slept for fifteen minutes on my shoulder and woke up with syrup on your cheek.”
He smiled, slow and a little crooked. “You licked it off.”
Heat flared in her chest, shooting straight down.
“I wiped it with a napkin,” she said. “Don’t rewrite history.”
“That’s not how I remember it,” he said under his breath.
She shifted on the squeaking vinyl, willing her pulse to slow.
“You said you wanted context,” she reminded him.
His expression sobered. “Yeah.”
“Okay,” she said. “Here’s some context.”
She set her mug down, leaned forward slightly.
“I’m not your PR,” she said. “I’m not your ex-girlfriend trying to get closure. I’m a reporter. My first loyalty is to the story, not to you.”
He met her eyes. “I know.”
“I’m not going to tank your company for fun,” she went on. “But I’m not going to protect you because we… have history.”
“Good,” he said. “I’d be offended if you did.”
She searched his face for sarcasm. Didn’t see any.
“And you?” she asked. “What context did you need from me?”
He was quiet for a moment.
“How bad is it?” he asked.
Her brow furrowed. “The piece?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Be honest.”
She hesitated, fingers tracing a nick in the table.
“I’m still drafting,” she said. “But… so far? It’s… complicated.”
“Complicated how?” he pressed.
“You come off as someone who actually gives a damn,” she said. “But also as someone who’s wielding a terrifying amount of power and thinks good intentions are enough to keep that from going sideways.”
He winced. “Ouch.”
“You asked for honesty,” she said.
“I did,” he acknowledged. “So… what, I sound naive?”
“No,” she said. “You sound… certain. And certain people break things, even when they don’t mean to.”
He absorbed that in silence.
The waitress slid their plates onto the table. The smell of butter and syrup and overcooked eggs rose up between them.
“You’re not wrong,” he said finally.
“About the certainty or the breaking things?” she asked.
“Both,” he said.
She cut into her omelet, watched melted cheese stretch.
“So what are you actually afraid of?” she asked. “Because that’s the part the board’s not going to see, and the part my readers will smell if I leave it out.”
He tapped his fork against his plate.
“I’m afraid we’ll miss something,” he said. “That there’ll be a bug in the model we don’t catch until it’s too late. That some city will use our platform to justify decisions that hurt people, and we won’t be able to walk it back.”
“That’s product-failure fear,” she said. “What about… personal failure?”
He looked at her, eyes dark.
“I already did that once,” he said quietly.
The words landed between them like a dropped plate.
She swallowed.
“I’m not going to put that in the piece,” she said. “We’re off the record, remember.”
“I know,” he said. “You keep saying that like you think I’m going to regret talking to you.”
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
He considered. “I regret a lot of things about how I handled us,” he said. “Talking to you now isn’t one of them.”
Her breath stuttered.
She took a big bite of omelet she didn’t really taste.
“Why did you say yes?” she asked once she’d swallowed. “To the profile. To me.”
He chewed his pancake slowly, like he was buying time.
“Couple reasons,” he said. “One: Carla was right. *Metro*’s a good outlet. You do deep work. If someone’s going to write the ‘hometown’ angle, I’d rather it be you than some Ivy League kid who thinks South Side is a subway stop you hit on your way to more interesting neighborhoods.”
Her lips quirked despite herself. “Flattery doesn’t get you quote approval.”
“It’s not flattery if it’s true,” he said.
“And two?” she prompted.
He took a sip of coffee, made a face again, but didn’t comment.
“Two,” he said slowly, “I… wanted to see you.”
The air tightened.
“You could’ve texted,” she said. “Years ago.”
“I could’ve,” he said. “But you were very clear that night that you didn’t want to see me again.”
Her chest squeezed.
Rain. Streetlight. His face, wet and furious.
*You’re choosing a computer over me.*
*I’m choosing the only shot I have at not being stuck here forever.*
*I can’t do this anymore, Jake. I can’t keep being the thing you sacrifice every time code breaks.*
“That was ten years ago,” she said.
“It felt like yesterday when I saw your name in Carla’s email,” he said.
She looked down at her toast, suddenly too dry.
“I didn’t call because I didn’t think it was fair,” he added. “To show up when I finally had something more than debt and broken laptops to offer you.”
“You thought I left because you were broke,” she said, frowning.
“Didn’t you?” he asked.
“Wow,” she said softly. “You really *didn’t* read me that well back then.”
His jaw tensed. “That’s not—”
“You think I cared about money?” she cut in. “We grew up in the same block, Jake. If I wanted a guy with a trust fund, I would’ve hung around the north side of campus, not in your busted apartment eating ramen.”
He opened his mouth. Shut it.
“Then why did you leave?” he asked, voice lower now. Rougher.
She hadn’t planned to go there. Not here. Not with ketchup bottles and sticky sugar packets between them.
But maybe that was why it felt almost… safe. Ordinary.
“Because I was tired,” she said. “Because every time you had to choose between sleep and another line of code, you chose the code. Between studying for your own exam and fixing a bug, you chose the bug. Between showing up to my brother’s court date and meeting an investor—”
“I told you I was sorry about that,” he said sharply.
“You *texted* me an apology two days later,” she said. “You sent my brother a ‘sorry I couldn’t make it, man’ like he missed a pickup game, not a hearing that could’ve put him away.”
His face went pale under his tan.
“I was pitching,” he said. “That meeting—”
“Was important,” she finished. “Yeah. I know. Everything was important. Except anything that wasn’t TerraNova.”
“That’s not fair,” he said, but there was no heat behind it. Just… strain.
“It’s not *un*fair,” she said. “I didn’t leave because you were broke, Jake. I left because you didn’t have room for anything that wasn’t this thing in your head.”
He stared at her.
“Do you… still think that?” he asked eventually.
She blinked. “Think what?”
“That I don’t have room,” he said. “For anything else.”
“That’s not my problem anymore,” she said automatically.
He gave a humorless laugh. “That’s not an answer.”
She picked at the crust of her toast.
“I think you’ve… grown,” she said cautiously. “You… acknowledged casualties. That’s new.”
“Got the scars to prove it,” he muttered.
“But I also think,” she went on, “you built a life where everyone around you works for you. Where your relationships exist inside the orbit of your company. I think you’ve probably gotten very good at compartmentalizing. And… I don’t know what that looks like at three in the morning when a deployment is on fire and someone you care about needs you.”
He was silent.
Around them, the diner hummed. The bell over the door jingled. Plates clattered.
Finally, he said, “I don’t sleep through deployments anymore.”
“That’s not what I meant,” she said.
“I know,” he said. “I also… haven’t really tested the ‘someone I care about’ part in a while.”
“Because you haven’t been in a relationship,” she said, more bluntly than she’d planned.
He quirked a brow. “You been Googling my dating history?”
“I’ve been avoiding it like the plague,” she said. “I don’t need to see you on Page Six with some woman in couture.”
His eyes softened, unexpectedly. “No couture,” he said. “A few flings. Nothing serious.”
“Too busy saving the world,” she said.
“Too busy not knowing how to be anything but… this,” he said, gesturing vaguely at himself.
She chewed slowly, considering him.
“Have you?” he asked suddenly.
“Have I what?” she said.
“Been in something serious,” he said. “Since.”
She tilted her mug, watching the coffee swirl.
“A couple of almosts,” she said. “One guy who thought dating a journalist meant having a private PR consultant. Another who said he loved that I was ‘fiery’ until I wrote something critical about his favorite politician.”
“He broke up with you over a politician?” Jake asked, incredulous.
“He said I was ‘too angry at the world,’” she said. “I said he was too comfortable in it. We parted ways.”
“Idiot,” Jake muttered.
“The point is,” she said, “I’m not exactly… relationship-proof either.”
“Maybe it’s a South Side thing,” he said. “Permanent chip on the shoulder.”
“Maybe it’s a ‘we watched too many people get screwed over by systems, so now we can’t coexist peacefully with anyone who thinks that’s just the way things are’ thing,” she said.
He smiled faintly. “Catchy.”
She found herself smiling back.
“This is the part where we realize we’re both emotionally stunted by our upbringing and call it a draw,” she said.
“Or,” he said, “this is the part where we stop using trauma as a punchline and admit that maybe we both fucked up at twenty-two.”
She stilled.
He held her gaze.
“I should’ve shown up more,” he said quietly. “Not just physically. I should’ve listened when you said you needed me to stop chasing every bug like it was a meteor about to wipe out the world. I should’ve believed you when you said you couldn’t do it anymore, instead of calling you selfish.”
Her throat tightened painfully.
“I said things that night I… regret,” he added. “Things I thought would hurt you as much as you were hurting me.”
She could still hear them.
*Maybe you just like playing martyr. Newsflash, Liv, the world doesn’t owe you anything just because your family’s broke.*
She’d pretended they bounced off. Gone home and cried into her pillow until her eyes swelled shut.
“I thought about apologizing a hundred times,” he said. “I didn’t. That’s on me.”
She stared at her plate.
“I’m not… innocent in this,” she said quietly. “I said things too. I threw every insecurity you had about money and class back in your face. I told you your dream wasn’t realistic. That you were choosing ego over… us.”
“You weren’t wrong to be pissed,” he said. “I deserved a lot of what you threw at me.”
“I don’t know about deserve,” she said. “But I know I hit below the belt on purpose. And then I left. Completely. No calls. No… nothing.”
“You asked me not to,” he said. “To call.”
“I know,” she said. “It was still… brutal.”
They sat in the thick of it for a moment.
The past, laid between them like another plate.
“So,” he said finally. “We agree we were young and stupid.”
“Extremely,” she said.
“And we agree we both… hurt each other,” he added.
She nodded.
“Now what?” he asked softly.
Her heart tripped.
“Now,” she said, “I go back to my apartment and keep writing. You go back to your empire. In a few weeks, an article comes out. People tweet about it. You get mad at some of the interpretations. I get mad at some of the comments. Life goes on.”
His jaw worked.
“And us?” he asked.
“There is no ‘us,’” she said, her voice more even than she felt. “There’s a man I used to love and the woman who left him. And there’s a reporter and a subject trying to do right by a complicated story. That’s it.”
He flinched, just a fraction.
“Okay,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“It’s what I can handle,” she said. “Right now.”
He nodded slowly.
“I’m not going to… push,” he said. “You say you need a line, I’ll respect it.”
“Thank you,” she said.
“But I’m also not going to pretend I don’t… feel anything,” he added. “That would be… insulting. To both of us.”
Something hot and sharp twisted under her ribs.
“Don’t,” she said softly. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
He exhaled, looked down at his half-eaten pancakes.
“Okay,” he said again. This time, it sounded like surrender and holding back in equal measure.
They finished their food in a more subdued silence.
When the check came, she reached for it automatically.
He was quicker.
“I’ve got it,” he said.
“You’re not bribing me,” she said. “I’m expensing this.”
“You can still expense your half,” he said. “I’ll sleep fine.”
“It’s a conflict of interest,” she protested, even as relief flickered—her account was not in a place to be arguing over diner checks.
“You wrote about me for free for years in your head,” he said. “Consider this back pay.”
Despite herself, a laugh bubbled up. “That doesn’t even make sense.”
“Let me do this one small, non-structural thing,” he said. “I am, occasionally, capable of a normal human gesture.”
She hesitated, then let her hand fall back.
“Fine,” she said. “But I’m tipping.”
“You always were better at that,” he said.
At the door, cold air rushed in as they stepped out.
They stood on the sidewalk, a foot of space between them that felt like a canyon and a tightrope at once.
“So,” she said. “Thanks. For… breakfast.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For not skewering me. Yet.”
“Don’t get cocky,” she warned. “I still have time.”
A corner of his mouth curled.
He shoved his hands into his pockets, looked like he wanted to say something else.
“Good luck,” he said finally. “With the piece. With… all of it.”
“You too,” she said. “With the launch. Try not to break the city.”
“That’s the plan,” he said.
She turned, started walking toward the subway.
After a few steps, she glanced back over her shoulder.
He was still standing there, watching her.
She forced herself to keep going.
At the corner, she let herself exhale.
Her phone vibrated.
*Raj*: well???
She typed, fingers shaking.
*Olivia*: I didn’t kill him. That’s all you get for now.
*Raj*: tease.
She pocketed the phone and descended into the dim, urine-scented subway, feeling like she’d just walked a tightrope and wasn’t entirely sure whether she’d made it to the other side or was still falling.
***
Across town, Jake walked back toward the waterfront, hands in his pockets, the taste of diner coffee and regret combining into something bitter on his tongue.
His phone buzzed.
*Aisha*: u alive or did the metro journalist eat you for breakfast?
He snorted.
*@Jake*: jury’s out.
He reached the building, nodded at the security guard, and swiped his badge.
In the elevator, he caught a glimpse of himself in the brushed metal. He looked… rattled. Not crisis-mode rattled. Different. Something softer around the edges. Or maybe just more frayed.
On fourteen, the doors opened.
Carla was waiting near reception. Of course she was.
“Well?” she asked, falling into step beside him as he headed toward his office.
“Well what?” he said.
“You look like someone peeled your skin back a few layers,” she said. “I assume that means it was productive.”
“She’s… going to be fair,” he said. “And brutal.”
“Good,” Carla said. “Honest brutal is better than agenda brutal.”
“She understands the tech,” he added. “The politics. The… stakes.”
“Wonderful,” Carla said. “Then we did the right thing.”
He stopped outside his office, turned to her.
“She also doesn’t trust me,” he said.
Carla’s gaze softened. “Do you blame her?”
“No,” he admitted.
“Then don’t try to win that back through the piece,” she said. “That’s not where that happens. If it happens at all.”
He leaned his head briefly against the cool glass.
“I agreed to coffee as a professional courtesy,” he said, more to himself than to her.
“Sure you did,” Carla said, patting his arm once. “Now come be a professional and get on the investor call you’re ten minutes late for.”
He pulled himself upright.
Empires didn’t run themselves.
He walked into his office, shut the door, and left Manny’s and its sticky tables on the other side—for now.
But the fault lines felt closer to the surface than they had in years.
And the tremors had only just started.
---