Page 75 of Tech Bros

“Is there more to it?”

“I’m their only child. They’re kind of obsessed with me.”

“Wow.”

“It was great until they got divorced. Then there was this awful custody fight and they’re still like—‘pick me, pick me.’”

“Pick you for what?”

“Extra time. Holidays.” He gestures toward the stove. “Whose pot roast is better. Everything.”

“Whose pot roast is better?” I ask.

“My mom’s.”

I smile.

“Anyway. Tangent. I have some things I need to work on, so…”

That reminds me. “How’s the software coming?”

“Good.” He sounds more confident than he usually does when he talks about it.

“Can I see?”

He hesitates. Then, “Uh…sure. I have it pulled up. I’ve been working on it since I got back.”

I put my keys on the island and drop the duffel I took to Isaac’s on the couch as I cross the living room and follow Evan into his bedroom. Apollo lags behind me. Evan sits down on his bed and gestures at the computer on his desk.

I don’t sit in the chair, instead leaning down and scrolling through the code on the left side of the screen. It’s clean and precise, the background of the master calendar at the core of the app. “Looks great,” I say after a few minutes.

“Thanks,” he says.

“You’re getting good at this.”

“Okay, you’re right. I get it. It is hard to take a compliment.”

I turn and look at him, standing straighter. He’s sitting on the bed with his legs crossed, showing so much thigh, I glimpse his groin creases. Snapping my gaze back to his face again, I force myself to manufacture a smile.

“You can sit.” He pats the mattress about two feet away from him. As I take him up on the offer, he keeps talking. “The calendar is super solid. The scheduler needs some work on the UI end, but the background is running the way it’s supposed to.”

“Have you talked to the copyright people yet?”

He points at the monitor. “I sent them that piece, but they keep giving me a hard time about not wanting to copyright it under Polytech. Isaac’s gonna have to email them, I guess.”

“I was with him this weekend,” I say.

“I figured.”

“We talked about you.”

He holds up both hands. “I don’t want to know. It’s gonna be weird enough having to go to work tomorrow.”

“He really wants to talk to you.”

Evan nods. “I know. He texted me, too.”

I don’t know when he had time to do that, but I’m not surprised. “Are you gonna hear him out?”