Page 63 of Sparks Fly
“Good answer,” she said.
Stella seemed to relax alongside him, until Effie piped up.
“And what about the part where your brother is going to useyourtech to get rid of us?”
Max was sure the mix of reggaeton and hip-hop that had been playing since he’d arrived was still on, but for a second, he swore everything went silent as Effie’s question hung in the air.
“First of all, you’re literally using that tech right now,” Stella said. “Secondly, we have no reason to believe anyone’s going to be let go anytime soon, much less because of Sparky. Max and I have already talked about this. He doesn’t believe Sparky can replace us, and he stands on that. Right, Max?”
They all looked to him, and he quickly nodded.
“Right,” Max said. “Sparky’s purpose was never to be a writer itself, but to help you all with your posts. It’s not a replacement.”
“Hm,” Effie said noncommittally.
“Oh good, our food is here,” Stella said, looking past him.
Max shifted enough to see their server with a tray holding their various plates of food. As if nothing had just happened, Stella grinned at everyone around the table.
“Let’s eat, shall we?”
Thirty-One
Stella was foolish.
The idea that Kira and Effie would be any better than Chelsea when meeting Max was ludicrous, and she should’ve known better. Granted, their questions weren’t necessarily bad, although she could’ve done without hearing Kira sayfuckingto Max. That was just not what she wanted to talk about.
One of Stella’s greatest skills was compartmentalizing things. Her therapist said she was disassociating, buttomayto,tomahto. The point was, if she didn’t want to think about something or deal with something, she could push it aside to a little corner in her mind and leave it there for however long she needed it to stay there, or until she was forced to deal with it. That was where Stella currently had her thoughts about Yellow Sparks and Miles and Max being brothers stored.
If she didn’t think about it too hard, it didn’t matter. Max was just a guy she met at a sex club. It was that simple. Effie, of course, didn’t see it that way.
Thankfully, once their food arrived, everyone was too busy stuffing their faces to continue their previous conversation, although Stella could feel Max throwing occasional glances her way. She got the feeling they were going to break their no-talking-about-work rule after dinner, although if they were being honest, she’d already broken it when she told him about Sprint Week.
Perhaps there maybe was a part of her that did want to talk about these things with Max after all.
“So how’d you get into this AI stuff anyway?” Effie asked.
Everyone appeared to be startled by her question, particularly Max, who took a beat to answer.
“Oh, well, I’ve always loved tech,” Max said. “I was the kind of kid who always liked to look at HTML code and see why something worked the way it did.”
“Ah, you’re a nerd,” Kira interjected.
Max laughed. “Yes, exactly. I was a comp sci major in college but also took a couple engineering classes and fell in love with it. One of my favorite professors taught an introductory class on artificial intelligence, I took it, and I became fascinated. AI is just like an advanced level of coding. We have codes that if something happens then this will happen, and that’s kind of how AI works. We teach it how to respond to certain commands or answer certain questions or a number of other things. The possibilities are endless.”
Stella found herself staring at Max, and Kira and Effiewere doing the same. Max cleared his throat and brought a hand to the back of his head, rubbing it back and forth.
“Sorry, I can get a little carried away sometimes,” he said.
Stella placed her hands on his arm. “Don’t apologize. I go off like that, too, when I’m talking about something I love.”
Kira snorted. “Oh yes. She once spent an hour explaining to us why it made no sense for a publisher to change the height of the books in her favorite romance series halfway through.”
“Because it doesn’t make sense,” Stella said automatically. “They look wrong on my shelf!”
“See,” Kira said with a knowing grin. “You’re two nerds in a pod.”
Stella felt her face heat with embarrassment at her outburst, but Max was there, pressing a soft kiss to her cheek, and her body warmed for a completely different reason. She glanced at him.
