AllFreeNovel
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It's like he won't get another chance to.
Perhaps, we both share an instinct, or an intrinsic type of calling, or maybe just the simple fact that...
When you know, you know.
EPILOGUE PART ONE
6 MONTHS LATER
"Julianaaaa, are you done with that feature yet?"
Mei's whine fails to break my concentration, as my fingers race across my keyboard. Each keystroke is silky smooth, and for once, my laptop doesn't disturb anyone around me. Granted, there's no one else here, aside from the museum handlers carrying bubble-wrapped art pieces into the storage room. Even so, they don't hear a peep from this baby.
And I do mean baby. This right here is the newest, most precious piece of tech I own. The Sentinel M5000. Sleek, ultra lightweight, with a sixteen-inch monitor, it makes my old laptop look like a relic from another era, and don't get me started on the processing speeds.
Well, actually, I couldn't rattle off all the technical details, apart from my personal experience running my programming suite since purchasing the laptop last month—which is, The Sentinel is fast. Real fast. Anything far beyond that is outside my wheelhouse.
I'm a programmer, not an electrical engineer.
Jeremy, on the other hand, lit up like a kid on Christmas morning when he first saw the laptop, before launching into an exhaustive monologue about its specs. How many gigabytes of RAM it had, the storage capacity of its solid-state drive, the motherboard's build quality—all of which I was already aware of and could easily keep up with…
Until he broached the topic of the Central Processing Unit. Then he lost me, because my dearest brother, the over-enthusiastic engineer on Silicon Avenue that he is, didn't just gush about how fast it was, but delved into the reasons why it's fast—on an anatomical level. Circuits, thermal management, cache memory, boring boring boring, something about a Nano-Z chip unveiled at a tech conference last year, yada yada yada, even faster than the old generation, and whaBAM!
My new laptop earned Jeremy Brooks's stamp of approval.
"Hellooooo?" A palm waves in front of my monitor, blocking the view of my code. "Earth to Juliana."
"Huh?" I snap to attention, finding Mei folding her arms, a clipboard dangling from one hand.
Even though I arrived at Ascension Museum and Gallery over an hour ago, I'm still surprised by Mei's outfit—a knee-length, neutral-gray dress that conceals her dragon tattoo paired with two-inch heels and modest makeup. It's like she slipped on someone else's skin.
Who knew being a gallery assistant at a top New York City museum came with such a strict dress code? Isn't art all about self-expression?
Mei huddles close, her waist brushing my shoulder, when another pair of handlers passes through the tight space, grunting and wheezing as they balance a tall sculpture between their fingertips.
"Put that over by the wall in storage section C," she orders, earning nods from the sweat-beaded workers. "Not on the ground, like you guys did with the Baroque lounge chair, but on its respective conservation pedestal, away from employee foot traffic. Might I remind you that your laziness nearly cost the three-hundred-year-old chair a leg, and I'm not about to be blamed for it a second time."
More grunts.
She swivels back toward me, huffing a grand sigh. "Gosh, you'd think it was their first day on the job. For once, can't they just—"
Like a sixth sense, Mei's gaze snaps elsewhere, latching onto a similarly dressed girl exiting the storage room. Seemingly a few years younger than us, she carries a vase bursting with an impressive bouquet of lilies.
"Where are you taking those?" Mei's voice booms across the room.
The girl stops halfway out the door, a scowl souring her lips. "To the Main Gallery."
Shaking her head, Mei gestures toward another exit. "Angie, I told you yesterday, only orchids go in the main showroom. Lilies are for the East Gallery."
When silence crackles between them, I get the feeling the two have a longstanding history of conflict.
"Does it really matter?"
Mei taps a pencil to her clipboard, lifting a brow. "It does to our artist."
Tension coils in the air, much too thick for my liking, before the girl rolls her eyes and pushes off the doorframe, letting the door slam on its hinges. She breezes past our table, glaring at Mei. "In case you forgot, we have the same job title. You're not my boss."
"I am today."
