Gaby is perfectly lovely. He has a soft voice and he smells like limes. “Here’s to you both,” I say, and we clink plastic cups. “I thought I knew everything that went on around here.”
“We’re very happy for you,” Cyrus says.
“How did you two meet?” Gaby asks Cyrus and me. I realize we’ve never really sat down and talked to Gaby. I’d just put him in the Rupert category—someone to count our money and tell us what to do.
“We’ve been in love the whole time,” Cyrus says.
“It’s true,” Jules tells him, “they have. They met in high school and that was it.”
“Well, not really. I was into Cyrus, but his head was in the clouds.”
Gaby smiles. “That sounds about right.”
“It took me ages to ask Gaby out,” Jules says.
“Yeah, because you hired me.”
“I was sitting there in the interview wondering if it would be better if you worked here or not, but then the thought of seeing you every day was too tempting.”
“Wow, I had no idea,” Cyrus says. Jules must have been lonely, and we’ve been so caught up in each other that we never noticed. Cyrus puts his arm around me and I nudge closer, and I realize it’s been weeks since we’ve had a moment together. We’re always too tired when we get home from work, or we get home and spend the last bits of our energy talking about WAI. I haven’t minded until now, but seeing Jules and Gaby holding hands, I feel a twinge of longing. Cyrus and Gaby are talking about someone on the team, and I just want to wrap up and go home. I yawn. “Shall we get going?”
“Why don’t you come over?” Cyrus says. “We have—what do we have, Asha?”
“Nothing. But you’re totally welcome,” I add, thinking of the trail of dirty dishes I ignored on my way out the door this morning.
In the end we decide to go to Jules’s. He instructs us to take off our shoes at the door, and I’m about to make a joke about Crazy Craig, but I stop myself. I’ve been here dozens of times, but it’s different now: Gaby takes our coats and asks if we want anything to drink, and then he glides easily around the kitchen, opening drawers and taking out glasses. “We should invite people over more,” I say to Cyrus.
“I love you,” Cyrus replies.
We sit by the window with all the New York lights before us. Jules lives by the High Line now, just a few blocks south of Utopia, with bouquet after bouquet of buildings on either side. Gaby hands me a glass, and the wine goes down slow and warm. Again I feel a surge of desire for Cyrus; I study his face to see if he’s with me, but he’s looking at something on the other side of the room.
“I have some ideas about the funding situation,” Gaby says. “I was going to bring it up tomorrow, at our exec meeting, but we could talk about it tonight if you’re up for it.”
“You’re in the family now,” Cyrus says.
“Well, Jules and I have been brainstorming.” Gaby finds his laptop, turns the screen toward us. “I’ve modeled it. With our current runway, we hit a wall in three months.”
We all know this—Jules has said it a hundred times. I even have an hourglass programmed into my screen at work.
“But we could stretch the runway, if we make a few cuts, and launch subscriptions in December.”
Cyrus leans forward and examines the screen. “Subscriptions?”
“We ask the community to pay a small amount every month.”
Cyrus turns to look at Jules and me. “You’ve heard about this plan?”
I shake my head. “Not me.”
“It’s just an idea,” Jules says. “Hear him out.”
“It can be ten dollars a month or even less—seven or five. Less than your Netflix subscription. Certainly less than all the other things people pay for—gym, phone plan, Amazon Prime.”
Cyrus pulls out his wallet and takes a folded piece of paper from inside it, and I realize he’s been carrying our manifesto around with him. “It says it right here,” he says. His voice is cutting in and out like an analog radio. “We said we weren’t going to sell anyone anything. We said it would always be free.”
Jules leans forward on his chair. “That was naive of us, Cyrus—I should’ve told you that right off the bat, but I was too eager to get you to say yes.”
Gaby points to his screen. “It would mean controlling our own destiny. We would only need twenty-five percent adoption.”