“So, how are you?” Margaret asked me as I met her at the restaurant.
“I’m doing well,” I responded.
“Table for two,” Margaret told the hostess, who lead us to a table towards the back of the restaurant.
“This is nice,” I commented.
“I love the decorations,” Margaret said, her eyes trailing across the walls. There were some scrolls along the wall, written in what looked like Chinese or Japanese characters. The walls were painted dark red, almost a maroon color, on the bottom half with a gold chair rail and cream colored walls above the trim. There were colorful ornaments hanging from the ceiling. A waitress came up to us in a bright red traditional dress.
“Hello ladies,” she said, smiling at us. “Here are the menus. Please let me know if you need anything. I will be back soon for drinks.”
Margaret and I flipped through the menu, looking at all the pages of options. Each menu option was written in English with small subtitles in Mandarin.
“This looks pretty authentic,” I commented.
“I think the owner is Chinese,” Margaret informed me. “They opened up a store on the other side of town, and this place is just a new expansion of it.”
“What are you planning on getting?”
“I’m thinking the beef stir fry. What about you?”
“One of the noodle dishes,” I said. “I haven’t decided which one, though.”
“That’s the best and worst thing about Chinese places: They always have so many options!” Margaret explained, making me crack up at her enthusiasm.
“Margaret…”
“What? It’s perfectly normal to be indecisive!”
“How are you both indecisive and impulsive?” I questioned her.
“It’s a talent,” she said, faking smugness. I raised an eyebrow at her, and we both cracked up.
The waitress returned. Both of us ordered water. Margaret got her beef stir fry while I asked for whatever the waitress recommended. She smiled and pointed out some wide noodle dish, the name of which I had never heard before.
“I think I’m going to like this place,” I told Margaret.
“Good,” she replied. “Now, tell me all about Daniel,” she said in a no-nonsense tone, leaning forward with a devious grin.
“The date was great,” I said, smiling as I remembered it. “He’s a really interesting guy. He’s actually a little funny, and a bit awkward. It was nice, though. He wasn’t arrogant at all, which I love in a guy.”
“Hey! You called it a date!” Margaret pointed out, and I groaned.
“You’re as bad as Shelly!”
“Nah, I’m worse. It’s my mad skills,” she winked at me. “So, what did he look like?”
“Well, I believe you called him hot,” I commented.
“I called him hot? Wait, when did I meet him?” She asked, looking at me warily.
“Remember when we went to the bar a few months ago, and I was sitting next to a guy while watching you dance? You called him hot when we went to the diner afterwards.”
“Oh!” Margaret said, as if a light bulb went off in her head. “I know who you’re talking about. That man is incredibly attractive.”
“He’s not too bad looking,” I blushed.
“Come on, even you with your asexual self has to admit that he’s at least cute,” Margaret said, leaning in conspiratorially.
I blushed an even deeper shade of red. “He’s not bad to look at,” I repeated vaguely.
Margaret gave me a look, prompting for more.
“Ugh, fine! He’s pretty adorable,” I conceded, telling her what I really thought. I told her all about Daniel’s cute dimples and twinkling eyes.
“Wow,” Margaret said, leaning back in her chair. “You have really got it bad.”
Just then, the food came, saving me from having to respond. Both of us dug into our food. Daniel was nice, but it wasn’t like I was in love with him or anything. He was just… Daniel. Right now, things felt more like a friendship than anything else.
“This is delicious!” Margaret exclaimed with a mouth full of stir fry.
“Yum,” was all I could manage in response.
We both licked our plates clean, only literally in Margaret’s sense. We declined getting dessert as both of us were already stuffed.
“We should do this again,” Margaret said as we walked out to our cars together.
“Yeah, this was fun,” I agreed.
“Maybe bring Daniel next time,” Margaret said, getting a wicked look in her eyes.
“I don’t like that look,” I said warily.
“What look?” She asked innocently. I just shook my head at her.
“Night!”
“Night.”
The next day in work, I found myself getting a bit more interrupted than usual.
“Anaya,” Lily was the first to come in. “I heard you went out on a date on Friday. How was it? Are you two official yet?”
“Things don’t quite work that quickly,” I corrected Lily with a smile. She was only twenty four, and fairly fresh out of college. “We’re just friends.”
“Okay, okay,” Lily said with a sigh. “But you like him, right?”
“He’s nice,” I responded vaguely.
She rolled her eyes at me. “Girl, I want details!”
“Then tell me the details about what you chemists have been up to with the substance you created a few days ago,” I shot back, effectively making her drop the topic.
“Ugh, fine,” she huffed at me, but then her eyes lit up as she started telling me all about the chemicals in the substance. Eventually, I started tuning her out as she talked about moles of substance and adding heat and other catalysts.
“Sounds good,” I said, once she finally stopped talking and took a breath of air. “Would you go talk to Charles? I know our lab has done a few tests today. See what they’ve done, and you guys can collaborate to move forward.”
“Okay!” She responded cheerily, and bounced out of my office.
Right around lunch time, Shelbie was the next to come bug me.
“Hey Anaya, Lily told me you had a date,” she said, stealing the seat across from me.
“For the last time, it wasn’t a date,” I sighed, a bit exasperated.
“Okay, okay,” Shelbie said, holding her hands up in the air. “Defensive much?”
“I’ve already talked to Sheila, Margaret, and Lily, all of whom are insanely hyper,” I said wearily.
“Oh, fun,” Shelbie grimaced with me. “Well, did you have fun?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
“Then that’s all that matters, friend or dating or whatnot. Fun is universal. Just don’t get pregnant,” she winked at me.
“Don’t plan on it,” I rolled my eyes at her.
“Well, I’m going back to work. See you later!” Shelbie said, walking out.
Finally, right when I was getting ready to leave, Dave came in.
“So, I hear I’m supposed to ask you how Friday went,” he said, seeming a bit amused.
“Oh, not you too! The gossip girls got to you?” I asked, shutting down my computer.
“Yes. They seem pretty interested in your love life.”
“It’s not exactly a love life; we’re just friends,” I said wearily.
“I know that,” he said. “Good luck convincing the girls of that, though.”
I just rolled my eyes. “So, how are lab tests going?”
“They’re going well. Your materials science engineers are taking over the lab, though. The conditioning department might start to get annoyed if they keep it up the whole week.”
I groaned. “Those guys should know that they’re not supposed to do that!”
“They’re just like little kids fighting over pieces of candy with the sample.”
“Don’t we have the reactants for it, though? We could re-create it fairly easily.”
“Wait, have they not told you?” Dave asked me, surprised.
“Told me what?”
He shook his head. “That’s for your engineers to say.”
I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Are they still in your lab?”
“As of half an hour ago, yes.”
“Fine then,” I said, setting down my case and grabbing my keys. “Let’s go talk to them.”
“Hey guys,” I greeted the engineers as I walked into the lab. Charles and two other people on my team were down there as well as Lily. “Oh, hey Lily. What are you doing here?”
“Just collaborating about the substance. Anyways, I’d best be off!” She said cheerily and waltzed out of the door.
“Okay, so what have you guys found?” I asked the remaining three.
“Well, we’ve figured out some of the properties of it. We tested it for viscosity and density and other basic properties. It isn’t anything that we’ve used before, as the values don’t compare to the other ones we have saved in the database,” one of the engineers responded.
“So make some more and let’s run more tests. Have you analyzed the chemical formula?” I asked, purposefully acting ignorant.
Charles scratched the back of his head, and the other two shifted nervously. None of them responded.
“Well?” I prompted.
“That’s the thing,” Charles started guiltily. “We don’t know what’s in it.”
“Didn’t the chemists record what they were putting in the beaker when they mixed it?”
“We tried to recreate the reaction, down to every single step. We even mixed up steps of adding reactants. We couldn’t remake the substance.”
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I've been getting progressively lazier in my editing, so please point out any mistakes and places where the story could use more detail and/or is factually consistent. Thank you <3