The Sacing of Rome

//Author's Note: Bighuge thanks to ArmyGal33 for her invaluable input, without which this story would not have been possible.//

Rome sank back into her chair, clapping because everyone else was clapping. All around the room, the excitement was tangible. Jim was, of course, going the hardest, and making intermittent eye contact with everyone to reinforce the

this was good, you should be happy

mood that basically everyone but her was already there for. She gave him a smile as she clapped, and that seemed to appease him, but it was a half-effort at best.

"That's a wrap!" Jim said, closing down his laptop and unplugging it from the meeting table. "Thank you, everyone! They seemed pleased!"

"Yeah, that went well!" said Kevin, another of her teammates, as he stood up from his chair. "I don't know if you guys were watching, but one of the guys in the back that came in late was their CEO."

"White shirt, blue tie," Jim said, nodding emphatically. "Yeah. I recognized him too. He was smiling by the end."

"I'm just glad Not Connected didn't pop up," said an older woman, seated across from Rome. Darla was one of the oldest members on the team, and took a practical approach to progress that Rome tried to emulate.

Of course, the Not Connected bug had likely come from Rome's stream, and was entirely her problem to fix, so her affection for the sentiment was muted.

"All we need is for the app to work as advertised, right?"

"That's what patches are for,"

everyone said, together, by rote, as Jim waved his hand in the air like a conductor.

"Hitting a milestone like this," Jim said, taking up his spot at the head of the table, "is good. That was a great demo, everyone. You should all be real proud of yourselves."

At another round of clapping Rome again followed suit, though she felt even more disconnected from the mood. No one was saying it, but it felt like the rest of the room was just happy that her part hadn't made them all look like idiots. She hadn't noticed that tension before, but now that it had been put in front of her she couldn't help feeling it.

"One more thing," Jim said, raising his hands as bodies started moving toward the door, Rome's included. "5 o'clock. TJ's. Nance. Em. Rome? You in? Darla? Kev?"

A chorus of yesses filled the room, but Jim was staring at

her

. She was always the most reluctant to spend her free time with the team. Rome quickly nodded affirmatively, before too much more attention could be trained on her for her reticence, and sighed as she moved out into the hall.

***

TJ's was a popular bar for all the wrong reasons. The drinks were overpriced and watered down. They were proud of the fact that they had over two hundred televisions in the joint, most playing sports of one kind or another; all the advertisements talked about it. No kind of local flavor. She'd never been able to fathom why her coworkers always wanted to go to TJ's, but she thought that maybe, at some point in the future, she'd recommend someplace else first just to have some form of control over the conversation. That seemed doable, if scary, and ultimately worth it.

Rome sat in her car for a full ten minutes once she'd parked. She was sure that, given an infinite universe, there was a bar out there somewhere that would appeal to her. TJ's was not that bar. It was loud, full of visual noise, and distracting.

As much as she wanted to, she couldn't avoid it forever. Poor Mitzy, her long haired cat, would need to fend for herself for a few extra hours.

It wasn't that Rome was anti-social; she just wasn't much of a people person. Given the option to choose for herself, she spent her free time doing solo things. Visiting the art museum, or writing at the coffee shop around the corner. Curling up with coffee on the couch, and binge watching Korean dramas. Drinking coffee.

She could really use a cup of coffee, she realized, as she pushed through the front door. It seemed like too much to hope for that a bar could make a good cup, but if worse came to worse she knew a shop not too far away. She could duck out early...

...and get coffee on her way back to work, to put in a little overtime. Jim would certainly let her go if she used that excuse, no questions asked. It was the

no questions asked

part of this plan that appealed to her much more than the

going back to work

part, but the Not Connected bug loomed in the back of her mind. It really wasn't her fault, per se, but it was her responsibility to fix.

It was the legacy hardware, not that anyone believed her.

She heard her name being called from the back, and saw Jim waving emphatically over the crowded room, so she started heading that way. She ran her hand through her bob, tucking it behind her ear. She was definitely too dressed up for the crowd she passed through, with her button-down blouse and slacks, and found the group in back much larger than she was expecting.

"Rome!" Jim cried, smiling broadly. "Did you take the long way?"

"I guess," she said, nervously eying the faces she didn't recognize. A lot of faces.

"Rome, this is my girlfriend," he said, throwing his arm around the shoulder of a brunette. "Angie, this is the last member of my team. She's sort of a...

sui generis

."

Angie seemed to take Jim's trademark latin insertion with good humor, giving him a rueful smile and shaking her head. Rome only knew what

sui generis

meant because it wasn't the first time Jim had used it, and she'd googled it.

"Babe," she said, giving him an elbow, "come on."

"He means that I do the weird, old stuff," Rome said, "that no one else wants to deal with."

"Oh!" she said, her eyes widening. "Are you the one dealing with those old handheld thingies?"

"Yes she is," Jim said, proudly.

"Jim had some rants about those," she said, giving them both a very genuine smile.

Rome started to get a kind of knot in her gut.

"But that means that if the demo went well, you handled it?"

"There's some kind of lingering reset function," she said, wincing, "in their hardware that isn't documented in what we could find, and something we're doing keeps tripping it."

Angie gave her a patient smile, and when she was done, added, "But the demo went well."

"Yeah," Rome said, nodding and looking down at her shoes. "It did."

"Congratulations."

Jim gave her a meaty clap on the shoulder, which jolted her.

"

So,

" she said, searching for a change of topic, "how long have you two been together?"

"Six months!"

Rome could not hide her slack-jawed reaction, and tried to tug up on the ends of her lips to make shock look like a smile. "Wuh-uh, w-wow!"

"Yeah, sorry," Jim said, jerking his thumb over his shoulder, "you kinda missed me saying something about it to everyone else. Today makes six months on the dot."

"We already had something planned with our friends," Angie said, reaching toward her without quite touching her, which Rome appreciated, "but of course, with something like this, the more the merrier."

"Well, thank you for having me," Rome said, the pit in her stomach turning into a yawning expanse.

"I'm gonna get us another round," Jim said, moving in front of his girlfriend, putting his hands on both her cheeks, and giving her a quick-but-intense kiss.

"Ooof," Angie said, smiling excitedly as he backed away. "Settle down, tiger, we're still in public."

Rome took that as her cue to make for a wall.

Whatever Jim and Angie had been hoping for, the groups did not intermingle much. Kevin was, of course, glued to Jim's hip, laughing at everything, and Jim and Angie made the rounds to get face time with everyone. Rome was pretty sure that the friend group would have to be Angie's friend group; she wouldn't call Jim a workaholic, by any means, but he was pretty dedicated to the company. She took a beer the third time Jim asked if she wanted anything, if only to get him to stop asking, and nursed it for an hour.

There were a few times where she felt eyes on her, from around the room, but couldn't figure out who it was. At one point, it was such a powerful pressure that it almost made her get up and leave right then, but Jim was busy talking and she didn't think she could interrupt. Leaving without saying anything was a non-starter.

Jealousy was not a part of Rome's mental map of herself, and in most things she accepted her lot in life. She thought lots of people were beautiful, and that their attractiveness was not a comment on herself. She didn't compete, thanks in no small part to the fact that she felt destined to lose just about every kind of competition. She wasn't perfect, and on bad days she had definitely had some black thoughts about others for no good reason, but she tried. She made an effort.

The one area this wasn't true was socializing. Rome was intensely jealous of Jim especially, and his easy demeanor around others, because he used it so manipulatively. She looked at Jim's social ease like an asthmatic glaring at smokers. Wasting their perfectly good lungs. It would be too strong a word to say she hate-watched him in meetings, but she was always more sullen and surly after a two hour team troubleshooting session.

She had cataloged his tics, his sayings, and his most common phrases, and so when, from across the room, she saw him make the little arm movement followed by a slight, self-deprecating roll of his eyes, she knew he was about to say,

"Business Finance, at Yale," and mouthed it right along with him. It categorically did not make her feel better to be able to predict him, but it soothed her frustration a little.

She was so focused on staring at him without staring at him that she almost missed it when one of the women talking to him, or somewhat in his orbit, looked at her and mimed something with her hand. Two fingers pointed, thumb extended. Wiping her forearm?

Rome spit out a little of her beer in surprise when she realized the other woman was

miming a suicide.

She cleared her throat and apologized to the two people who turned to her with mild disgust, and looked back over.

Hardcore,

she thought to herself.

Up under the jaw rather than the temple.

The other woman was still looking at her with an unreadable expression. Not flat, but something else.

Looking at her very intently.

Rome very quickly reached her limit on eye contact and turned bodily to the side, gearing herself up for the brief monologue she'd give Jim on her way out.

On my way out. Heading back to the office. On my way out, thanks for inviting me, heading back to the office. It was nice to meet you...

Angie. Angie.

"Leaving so soon?"

Rome had only just started to turn before being startled, gasping and clutching her beer close to her chest. That woman was right next to her, nearly in her face, leaning casually against the table Rome had been occupying for the previous hour. She had the darkest, shiniest black hair Rome had ever seen, with red dyed tips. As she leaned, her leather jacket shifted asymmetrically, revealing colorful tattoos reaching up her neck.

Rome was staring.

Stop staring. Say something smart!

"Leaving so soon."

Nailed it.

The woman quirked her head and chuckled, amused. "Did I scare you?" Her voice was fried, like it was cracking over and over. She smelled like autumn.

"I just... didn't see you." Then Rome added, "Coming," which made the woman's smile go all kinds of crooked. Which made her blush when she realized what she'd said.

She seemed to spend a good second longer than necessary relishing in Rome's discomfort before finally saying, "I heard Ange saying you work with Jimmy boy?"

Her reaction was so instinctive, to giggle stupidly as she said, "He hates it when people call him Jimmy," that it came out without any kind of conscious thought.

"I also saw you doing a pretty good impression."

"What?" she said, incredulously. "No. It's

terrible!"

"It's not all about getting the voice perfect," the other woman said, smirking. "You had the timing and the affect down cold."

Rome had another one of those moments where she felt herself staring, and had to snap herself out of it again. "Well... thanks? I guess?"

"No problem."

Sometimes, when she talked, the woman's voice sounded a little like a cat purring. Staccato variations in tone. Other times it just sounded like a harsh whisper. She also wasn't leaving.

Why isn't she leaving,

Rome thought,

and why does she keep looking at me like that?

"I'll cut to the chase," the other woman said. "I don't like your boss."

"Already?" Rome said, laughing nervously.

"I don't like him for Ange. I get a bad vibe."

"Yeah, he's good at that," she replied, peeking over the other woman's shoulder to check how far away Jim was. "It's right at the top of his LinkedIn. Bad Vibes, 2009 to present." She mimed her hand in the air, sideways, like she was highlighting the text on an invisible phone.

"Since 2009, huh?"

"He got into crypto early. Never shuts up about it."

This elicited a simultaneous chuckle and shudder from her, causing her multicolored hair to jangle around her face. Rome had never met someone who could pull off bangs so well.

"The thing is," the woman said, "I can't just

tell

Ange. I need evidence."

"Oh?"

"She won't believe me if I just tell her

I don't like this one."

"Why not?"

"Because I

never

like them,

and

she never listens,

and

I'm always right."

"It's that last part she struggles with, huh."

This earned her a kind of appraising peer. Narrowed eyes scanning up and down, but accompanied by a smile dripping with bad intent.

"I need evidence, and my instincts are telling me you know something." At her open-mouthed stalling, while she again internally berated herself for staring, the woman added, "Yeah, when you did that. When they said they'd been together six months. I was right there." Then she leaned in even closer, bordering on too close, and said, "You know

something

."

"He's my boss," Rome said, stupidly, which was not an answer to any of that nor had she been asked any questions. She pulled herself together and said, "I don't know anything."

"But you suspect a lot."

"How do you keep doing that?" she asked, in awe. Then, feeling a rising panic she could not explain, she looked over the woman's shoulder again. Jim was even further across the room, facing away and, judging by the way his arms were over his head, telling his Michigan fishing story. Her voice was both quieter and harsher when she said,

"I thought you said that suspicions weren't enough!"

"Here's the thing," the other woman said. "I'm very motivated. Ange is my best friend." Then she added, "Try not to look so shocked."

Rome realized she'd looked past the other woman again, and was staring at Angie with doubt. Angie was tall, a brunette, and very pretty in a Varsity Cheerleader kind of way that did not at all align with the patched leather jacket, tattoos peeking out at the neck and wrist, and overall goth vibes she was getting from this other woman.

"Sorry," she said.

"I'm just giving you shit. I know we look like different species, but that's why I'm so keen on this. You ever have someone stick their neck out for you,

who had no business doing so

and could just as easily let you eat dirt?"

The answer was no, but Rome had eaten her fair share of dirt. If someone, anyone, had stood up for her the way this woman was implying, there was a very good chance Rome would still be following them around like a puppy. Instead, she said, "I think I can help. Maybe."

This earned her a slap on the shoulder and an honest-to-god, "Atta girl. Is this something we can do, like... right now? I've had my fill of this here tonight, and I'd really like to move on to the part where Ange is mourning her breakup."

"I've never done anything like this," Rome said, feeling such a rush that her hands started shaking.

"Meet me out front in five." Then, just as she turned, the woman turned back and said, "I'm Daphne."

"Rome," Rome replied.

Daphne just nodded, turned, and started walking. She called out, "Ange," and when Angie turned, Daphne gave her a crisp little salute.

"Thanks for coming!" Angie said, waving.

Just like that, the room seemed a lot less colorful and interesting. Rome pulled out her phone to mark the time, and proceeded to finesse the leaving speech that she'd already been working on in her head.

***

There was some kind of half-century old muscle car idling out front when she exited TJ's. A light brown bordering on orange, with a black stripe down the center of the hood and the top of the roof. Daphne was standing inside the open driver's side door, looking back over the top of it with a cigarette between her lips. She said, "Get in, loser."

"You said the thing,"

Rome cried, excitedly, as she scurried over and opened the passenger side door. The car was very old, and the door made quite a shriek as it complied. When she sat down, though, Daphne was looking at her with consternation from the driver's seat. "Do you not know?"

Daphne's uncomprehending expression remained.

"That's like a... that's a thing. Like a goth girl thing.

Get in, loser.

It's like a meme thing. Do you not... Wait, are you messing with me?"

The black-haired woman took a long draw from her cigarette, and leaned back toward the open driver's side window to blow out a long stream of smokey air.

"You

are

messing with me." Rome put her purse down between her ankles, buckled herself in as Daphne moved some things, and the car started rolling down the street with a deep and throaty sound. "Do you do that a lot?"

Daphne's upper body made a kind of rolling twitch, and beneath them the motor made a completely different sound. "Do what, mess with people or pick up pretty girls?"

The words died on Rome's tongue before she could get them out.

After another drag on her cig, Daphne smirked and said, "I guess it's yes either way."

Not trusting her voice, or that she could keep up with Daphne if Daphne asked her another question out of left field, Rome pointed as they rolled toward the edge of the parking lot.

"Right it is," Daphne said, cranking the steering wheel around in a way that looked like it took effort.

She kept that up for a while, pointing rather than saying anything, but eventually some of the intersections were too complicated and she had to open her mouth. Daphne just nodded and followed her instructions. She also drove one-handed, which was really cool looking but a little unnerving for Rome. Rome always drove with both hands on the wheel, in a much less relaxed posture than Daphne had, and it took her a little while to realize Daphne was driving with one hand because she was

shifting

with the other.

Rome couldn't remember the last time she'd seen someone drive a manual.

Daphne drew her cigarette down to the filter, flicked it out the window, and shifted in her seat. "So is Jimmy your manager?"

"Scrum master," Rome said, raising her voice to be heard. The motor was really loud.

"

The fuck

does that mean?"

"It's sorta like a manager, or a team leader, but with a bunch of implied six sigma bullshit. It's a programming thing."

Daphne narrowed her eyes into the distance, and, after a second, said, "Like that Jump to Conclusions guy? From Office Space?

I talk to the customers so the engineers don't have to! I'm a people person!

"

"Yeah," Rome said, slowly, trying to remember a movie that came out when she was about four, and that she'd seen maybe once when she was twelve. "Sorta, except that Jim loves to put us in front of customers and emphasize that he leads a team."