Secret Chords

Chapter 11 - Iterative Modulation

They met again the following weekend, same café but a different corner. Kristina arrived early and commandeered a table next to the window, her sunglasses this time perched on top of her head. She wore the hoodie, but in a defiant, deliberate way, sleeves pushed to the elbows, drawstring knotted and fanned at the throat.

Theo was precisely on time. He spotted her from the street and gave a quick, almost military salute through the glass before entering. It was so corny she had to laugh, and when he saw her reaction, he grinned back.

She had already ordered them two coffees. "You struck me as a creature of habit," she explained as he slid into the seat across from her.

"I like to think of it as iterative refinement," he replied, folding himself into the small space with the care of a man used to not taking up more than his share. "If something works, you don't improve it. Or at least you don't break it."

She liked the way he said it, not in the brittle, defensive tone of men who had something to prove, but in a way that suggested he'd long ago accepted his own preferences and made peace with them. She wondered if that was an engineer thing or just a Theo thing.

They talked about nothing and everything: the weather, the rising cost of rent, the impossible wait times for getting anything fixed in LA. Kristina, unmoored from the routines of publicist-driven interviews, let herself say what she actually meant, sometimes double-backing when she got nervous, sometimes catching herself and pushing forward anyway.

Theo talked about his job with a kind of enthusiasm that made Kristina smile even when she barely followed the jargon. He explained the satisfaction of an elegant codebase, the petty rivalries of inter-departmental politics, the transcendent joy of a Friday afternoon when all the tests finally passed and you could just go home.

When she asked him what he would do if he could do anything, he surprised her by saying he would teach. "Not kids," he clarified, "but college, or maybe high school. Something where you could show people how things really fit together, without worrying about bottom lines or status meetings. Just the pure stuff."

She leaned forward, chin in her palm. "You'd be good at it," she said. "You explain things without making people feel stupid."

Theo blushed. "Well, you don't seem stupid."

"That's because I'm not arguing with you," she teased, and he laughed, a sharp bark of a sound that startled the couple two tables over.

They were midway through their second cup when he mentioned his friends. "I have this crew," he said. "Marcus, Elena, and Darren. We've been friends since college. Still hang out pretty much every week."

"That's cute," she said, and he groaned.

"They would hate that. But yeah, I guess it is."

She sipped her coffee, already knowing the next question would be about relationships. She was used to it, the conversational calculus of first dates: establish the friends, then the job, then the exes, then the vulnerabilities. But Theo surprised her again.

"We're going to Vegas in a few months," he said, "for the Mia Amor concert."

She almost choked, and then genuinely did, a mist of coffee atomizing from the back of her throat. She coughed, grabbed a napkin, and dabbed at her mouth.

He looked alarmed, but also a little delighted. "You okay?"

She nodded, still sputtering. "I just didn't peg you for a pop concert guy."

"I'm not," he admitted. "It's a long story, but basically, we made a pact. Marcus says it's about cultural enrichment. Elena just wants to dance. Darren is mostly there for the Vegas buffets."