Chapter Text
Sara sat on the couch, staring at her computer with furrowed eyebrows. One arm hung over the back of the couch as she clicked, dragged, clicked again, waited, then took a deep breath. With her mouth to the side, you could tell she was biting her cheeks again.
You walked into the room and observed your partner as she clicked with frustration at her computer, watching her face for any sign that she’d be available to talk. “Sara?”
Your girlfriend looked up. “What?” She sounded pissed, but changed her tone when you flinched. “Sorry, that came out wrong. I’m just… stressed.”
Wanting to help, you grabbed a blanket from your armchair and settled next to her on the couch with your legs tucked into your chest.
“What’re you up to?” you probed as you unwadded the blanket and draped it over yourself. Sara lifted her laptop, and you covered her legs with the blanket as well.
Your girlfriend sighed. “It’s just this stupid program I’m using. I can’t manually save my progress, but it doesn’t show me when it’s updated, and I just… ugh.” Sara turned her laptop toward you, showing you the Encounters video she’d been working on. She was right—the new looked confusing as hell, and you couldn’t find a floppy disk icon in any corner of the screen. “Like, how the hell am I supposed to save this?” she groaned.
You snuggled into her side and rested your head on her shoulder. “Are there any other programs you could use?”
Sara’s fingers clenched and flexed. “No,” she explained, “My fucking free trial ended on the other one, which had lasted a whole year, and now I’m left with this shit.” She gestured toward her screen. Panels with unfamiliar words and actions stacked up the sides, and it took several seconds to find the chain of clips along the bottom.
“Oh.” Guilt seeped into your insides, even though you didn’t do anything wrong. “Is there anything I can do?”
After a thoughtful pause, Sara leaned in for a kiss on the lips. “No,” she sighed, then lowered her arm to drape over you. “You’re doing just fine.” Her fingers trailed up and down your shoulder, rubbing the fabric of your shirt in sweeping strokes. “It’s just this fucking… program. I hate it.”
“I want to help,” you urged, reaching for her laptop. She pulled it away, but not in anger.
“No, I can do this by myself,” she insisted. “I’m gonna use my problem-solving skills.” Sarah tugged on the band around her wrist, then leaned forward and twisted her hair into a ponytail. “I just gotta focus.” She flexed her fingers again.
You watched Sara drag the clips across the screen, cropping them and arranging them into the correct order. Her last Encounter had been a college student who needed to loft a dorm bed, which wasn’t prime entertainment, but a few mishaps during the episode had provided drops of amusement. On the ride home, she had been disappointed by the dullness of the Encounter, but changed her mind when you suggested playing with the editing to make it look more interesting than it was.
However, with this program, editing was near-impossible. Every time Sara dragged a clip to the end of the chain, the software glitched and placed it in the middle. “That’s not what I want,” she seethed, and you felt her hand clench around your shoulder.
You sat in silence, feeling your girlfriend’s anger seep into the air. You hated seeing her upset like this. “We could go do something,” you offered with a tremor in your voice. “We have those zoo passes we haven’t used yet. They expire soon, don’t they?” Your eyes darted toward her, gauging her reaction.
Sara paused for a moment and debated the two options: stay at home, ignore the stress, and finish the episode, or put the project on hold and drive to the zoo with her partner. Her fingers drummed against the palm rest for what felt like hours. Slowly, her eyes softened.
Sara sighed and reached for the lid of her laptop. “Yeah, sure.” The screen lowered, lowered, and lowered until the screen went black and it had made its way toward the coffee table. “I guess I could take a break.” She turned her head away from you. “Could you…?”
“Yeah.” You reached for the band in her shaggy, violet hair and pulled it out. Her hair fell against your hand, so you fluffed it to remove the indent.
“You don’t have to– Don’t worry about that,” said Sara. “I’m putting on a hat anyway.” Your girlfriend stood from the couch and walked toward the bedroom, coming out with her satchel on her shoulder, keys in her hand, and a plain black cap on her head. “Tickets are in your wallet, right?”
You nodded, holding your billfold at eye-level. “They expire at the end of the month, so I figured—”
“Yeah, I know.” Sara grabbed sunscreen and bugspray from the linen closet and stuffed them into her bag. “Could you get the camera? I think I left it up–”
“On it,” you beamed, then ran up the stairs to grab the camera from her closet. When you came back down, you filled two water bottles and clipped one to each of your bags.
Sara locked your fingers together, raising your knuckles for a kiss. “You ready?”
After another glance around the house, you nodded and kissed her knuckles in return. “Ready.”
Sara twisted the doorknob and led you into the garage. “Zoo time.”