“How long what?”
“How long do you have?”
“A few weeks. We soft launch the app just before Christmas and the website isn’t strong enough to support the influx of traffic. I have to fix it.”
Jonah frowned. “I don’t know what your actual job is, but isn’t web design a little below your pay grade?”
“It’s not design, it’s functionality. The website is not attractive at this stage, but it does not need to be—it just needs to work. That is my job, to make things work.”
“Fair enough. It makes more sense when you put it like that. I don’t know much about websites beyond the pretty bits.”
Sacha chuckled. “That is charming, Jonah Gray.”
“Why, thank you. Are you heading out?”
“Yes.”
“To go home and keep working?”
“Yes.”
Jonah tapped a few keys on his computer, then shut it down with the mouse. A pause stretched out between them. Sacha wondered if he should leave, then Jonah appeared in front of him, his previously tired eyes wide and expectant. “Come on then,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Sacha blinked. “Go where?”
“Home.Myhome, I mean.”
“For what?”
“For work. Dinner. Companionship.” Jonah’s smile was boyish and sweet. “It’s what friends do, Ivanov, unless you have a pressing desire to be alone.”
“I don’t.”
“Then let’sgo.”
* * *
They took a cab to Jonah’s building, then rode the elevator to his penthouse apartment. At the top, Sacha found himself drawn to the window again, transfixed by the Christmas lights that had multiplied since his last visit. “Do you have a fir tree in your apartment?”
“I do, actually,” Jonah said. “I wasn’t going to bother, but Lily made me get a massive one.”
“Lily?”
“My friend. She thinks my apartment is too much of a bachelor pad.”
“What is wrong with that if youarea bachelor?”
“You’d have to ask her. Are you coming in?”
Jonah unlocked his front door and waited. Sacha backed up and preceded him inside, and as promised, a huge decorated tree took up most of the hallway. It was colour-coordinated and smelled of the forest. Sacha stepped closer and examined a bauble that had the face of a baby imprinted on it. “Is this supposed to be Jesus or you?”
“I dread to think,” Jonah said. “Lily got it from my mother, so it could be either.”
“And what is that?” Sacha pointed to the top of the tree. “An angel?”
“Yes. You don’t have those in Russia?”
“Angels? Yes, but my family did not have Christmas trees. We are…secular, yes? Not religious.”