“I should be okay. Thank you.”
“Let me get the elevator for you then. Follow me.” He smiled and led the way to the bank of elevators and held the door as she wrangled the dogs inside. When he pushed the button to the floor she needed, he stepped back. “You have a nice evening ma’am.”
“Thank you.” The doors closed and she sighed. It wasn’t the best idea to bring the dogs. At least she didn’t think so. It wasn’t even the best idea her going out. All she really wanted to do was crawl into bed and sleep for days. Being in a building with this many animals was asking for trouble but Simon had offered and she hated leaving them at home if she could avoid it. So long as she didn’t spend all night running up and down for comfort stops, she’d be happy.
The elevator stopped and the doors opened into a shiny chrome on glass reception room. The front desk was unmanned and Ruby checked out the corridor to the right when she spied Tyler striding through an office with his unique lanky walk.
She moved toward him. Dogs pulled on their leads when he turned, saw her and grinned. “Ruby.” He ambled over with his long-legged gait and stopped when he saw her dogs waiting. “Woah, all the beasts tonight.” He turned and called out. “Simon. Your dinner guest has arrived.”
He turned back to Ruby. “Poor guy is going nuts. We can’t get a line of code to go right. We’re both pulling our hair out. Should be simple for geeks like us but for some reason, it’s like a mutant ninja that wants to take over and corrupt the whole freaking system.”
She glanced at him blankly. “You’re talking to the wrong person, Tyler. You should know that. But if you want to talk food, I’m your gal.”
A big grin creased his face. “Do I smell tacos?”
She nodded.
“From Mama Bell’s Tacos on Main?”
She nodded again. “I bought plenty because I knew you’d be here too.”
Tyler punched the air. “You’re a legend. Let me take that bag off you and you can handle those ferocious beasts of yours. I promise to leave you two lovebirds alone after I eat. Simon!”
When he didn’t come out, Tyler tilted his head. “Come this way.”
He guided her down the hall and into a darkened room. “He’s in here. I’ll go get some drinks, back in a sec.”
Ruby stood in the doorway. A wall of emotions hit her in the face. The old couch she used to curl up in when the boys were working sat in the middle of the room with the home made scarred coffee table in front of it just as it had been in the basement of Simon’s parent’s house. A couple of comfy armchairs, covered in checked brown blankets were either side. The box television set with its crooked bunny ears that had belonged to Simon’s grandmother flickered over in one corner, the picture wavering as it always had. It’d never worked back then either but Simon had been gifted it and couldn’t bear to part with it.
“Hey there.” Simon waved from over the other side of the room where he sat facing a large screen.
“You kept it all.” She brushed at the tears trickling down her cheeks. This was the room where he’d first told her he loved her. The room where they made out when Tyler wasn’t around and the couch where they’d first made love together. The couch where she’d cried at the thought of San Francisco setting up an animal kill shelter and where she’d decided to make rescuing animals her life. Simon had been behind her one hundred percent. They’d made plans for the future snuggled together on that couch. So many memories. “Why?”
Simon got up, came over and put an arm around her shoulders brushing her tears away with the ball of his thumb. “We found that we couldn’t work in the kind of conditions that people expected us to so we went back to the drawing board and figured out why. Welcome to the new version of our basement.” He spread one arm out to show her the rest of the room. Over against the far wall where he’d come from, their desks and a series of multiple screens took up most of the space. “This was our gig and it works for us so we do the basic formulas here. Build up our programs the way we like them and then ship them downstairs to the lab to the guys there to clean up and make them look pretty enough for the big guns to sit up and take notice.”
“Why?”
“Because people we do business with have certain expectations about who they deal with. If we want to compete in that kind of market, we have to work in town, not someone’s basement. Even if that space worked better for us. This was the solution.”
He took the bag from her and put it down on the floor and pulled her back into his arms, kissing the top of her head as she snuggled into his chest. She relaxed against him.
Tyler came back, unzipped the bag, opened a box and took out a fry, jamming it in his mouth and chewing with a look bordering on ecstasy before joining the conversation. “We tried it the other way, Ruby. For months we sat in the lab downstairs and stared at blank screens, wondering if we’d ever be able to do anything again. Wasn’t until we put this room together that it all started working for us.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Simon chuckled and his laughter vibrated between them. “Me either. Just goes to show we’re a couple of normal nerdy guys at heart.”
Tyler spoke with his mouth full of food. “You mean nerdy slobs, don’t you?”
Simon laughed. “Probably. But it works for us so who cares.”
Tyler sniffed the other bag of food before answering. “Not me.”
“Sorry, Ruby.
