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While Chloë and Luli took up stations behind the counter Vanessa smoothed down her fitted black tee (relaxed, casual, fun) and went to open the door. La Vida Mocha was open for business.

“Hi,” she greeted the first person through. “Welcome to La Vida Mocha!”

Chapter 1

Six months later…

Megan decided she was done being nice.

One of her most dimwitted direct reports, Trevor, had just IM-ed her via Zoom for the sixth time today asking yet another stupid question, the answer to which was already supplied if Trevor would only do one of two things: look for it where he is supposed to look for it, or learn to read. What made it worse was that because he wasn’t on top of things like he should be, his team was going to be late releasing a major deliverable.

Her lips pursed and her jaw tight, she typed out a reply in the chat box.

Trevor, I remember SPECIFICALLY the answers to these questions being provided to us by Accounting in April during a meeting you attended. And now you’re telling me that your team may be late with the release because somehow those answers did not make it to your developers?

And why am I just hearing about this today? Why have you not brought this up during any of the release status meetings between April and now?

Before you go log off today, I want you to set up a meeting with me, you, your lead devs and Andy for Monday morning. The release is still two weeks away. Your team WILL make the release date and on Monday we’re going to figure out how you’re going to do it.

She clicked Send and then looked at her work laptop’s clock. 2:41 p.m. She typically logged off at three but 2:41 was close enough, especially on a Friday. Sometime later tonight she’d log back in and make sure Trevor set up that meeting. If he didn’t, there’d be hell to pay on Monday. No, scratch that…there’d be hell to pay tonight when she called him.

After shutting her laptop lid, she stood, stretched her five-six frame and then reached up and untied her auburn hair from the ponytail she’d had it in all day, shaking her head to loosen the curls. As she started walking out of the spare bedroom that she had had to turn into a home office she frowned when she noticed a tightness in her left hip. Sure, she had been sitting for two hours straight, stuck on boring conference calls, but certainly twenty-six-years-old was still too young to feel decrepit after sitting for a while?

Oh well. It was bound to happen eventually.

Unlike most of her friends, Megan had no qualms about aging. Besides, she was doing this whole approaching-thirty thing quite well. Slim and toned with youthful features that made people think she hadn’t yet reached twenty-five, Megan knew she had no right to panic over her looks.

Just as she entered her bedroom her phone rang. The caller ID said Abs.

“Hey, Abby,” Megan answered.

“Hey, what are you up to?”

“About to change out of my work clothes,” Megan said. She put the phone on speaker, laid it on the bed and set about unbuttoning her slacks.

“Oh my God! You are such a dork!” Abby screeched. “You’re still doing that?”

Megan laughed. When California went on lockdown a few months ago the company she worked for, BeachSoft, ordered all their employees to work from home until further notice. But even though this meant Megan no longer had to commute to BeachSoft’s offices in Vista, she still awoke for work Monday through Friday at the same time and still got dressed in the mornings as if she was going to the office. Her rationale for keeping to that routine was that once things returned to normal and white-collar workers like her returned to the office it would be much easier to resume her old morning routines if she never stopped them in the first place.

Abby, on the other hand, used work from home as an excuse to sleep an extra hour each workday and to stay in her pajamas until bedtime, when she would change into different pajamas.

Megan now pulled off her navy striped blouse and went to her closet to determine what to wear now.

“Anyway, dork,” Abby continued, “I want to make sure you haven’t forgotten about tomorrow.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Megan replied. “Seven o’clock. I’m picking you up.”

Their friends Angela and Desiree had just gotten engaged and were having a small party at their place here in Carlsbad. Not exactly Covid-19 protocol but Megan saw nothing wrong with it. She trusted Angela and Dee to use good judgment in their arrangements. Besides, it would be nice to get out of the house and see others because even she was starting to get a little crazy with all the forced isolation.

Giving up on choosing what to change into while Abby then chewed Megan’s ear off about a “large and in charge” woman who had winked at her last night in the grocery store, Megan remained in her underwear until the call ended a few minutes later. When it did, Megan blew out a relieved breath.

Finally!

She loved Abby to bits, but her best friend was like a Chatty Cathy doll with a broken string.

And it was Friday! At this moment, Megan wanted nothing more than to change into some shorts and one of the cute yoga crop tops Amazon just delivered Wednesday and head out for a stroll along the seawall of Carlsbad State Beach and then find a nice quiet bench somewhere to sit and do some drawing.

***