Code and Coffee – Part 2: The Race Condition

They found the race condition at a quarter past five, when the sky over the IT park was turning the colour of weak tea. Priya read the last log line twice, then sat back in her chair with a whoop that made the security guard look up from his newspaper on the far side of the floor.

"We did it!" she said.

"You did it," said Surya, grinning, pushing his hair back. "I just stood here making sarcastic remarks."

"You fixed the cache."

"Okay, I fixed the cache. But you found the log that nobody else could see. You're very annoyingly good at this."

"Thank you," said Priya, very pleased with herself.

They wrote the fix together, one line at a time, arguing softly about the variable names. They tested it three times, watching the payment module run clean on the test server. By the time they pushed the code to the shared branch, the first buses were rumbling past the glass doors and the first developers were arriving with bags full of breakfast.

Surya closed his laptop and stretched until his back cracked.

"I'm going home," he said. "To sleep for twelve hours. Then I'm going to dinner."

"With whom?"

"With you," said Surya, very simply. "If you say yes."

Priya looked at him: rumpled shirt, sleepy eyes, the easy confidence that had slowly stopped being annoying over the last few months and started to feel like something she could rely on.

"Yes," she said. "But I'm choosing the restaurant, and I'm paying for half, because you've been stealing my biscuits all week."

"That's fair," said Surya. "I'll let you pay for the dosa."

"Only the dosa?"

"Only the dosa," he said. Then he looked at her more seriously. "Priya, can I ask you something?"

"Yes."

"Do you want this? Dinner, and then maybe more? Or do you want to keep working late and pretending the bug is still alive, so we don't have to talk about it?"

She laughed, shaky and surprised. "I think I want the dinner. And the talking. And maybe the biscuits."

"Then let's do the dinner," said Surya, and reached out, slowly, to brush a stray strand of hair from her forehead. "And I'd like to kiss you before the security guard starts recording us."

"He's already recording us," said Priya. "He's been watching since the whooping."

"Then he'll have a good story to tell his wife."

"Yes," said Priya, and her voice was softer now. "Kiss me, Surya. But ask first, because I'm very tired and I'd like to remember it properly."

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, quietly, his hand resting lightly on her cheek.

"Yes," said Priya. "And if I say stop, you stop, and you still owe me a dosa."

He kissed her, slowly, in the grey light of dawn, the smell of stale coffee and the faint sweetness of the cardamom on his skin. Her hand rested against his chest, and his arms came around her, careful and warm, while the buses roared past outside and the whole city began to wake.

"Green?" he murmured, against her mouth.

"Green," said Priya, laughing softly. "Very green. Now go home and sleep, and I'll see you at seven for the dosa."

"Seven," said Surya, grinning like a boy. "I'll bring the coffee."