The Shape of Her Name
Copyright© 2025 by BeneathHerBraid
Chapter 3: Collision
The Calridge Group meeting room was sharp. All glass and reflection - a long table like a runway for ideas, surrounded by silent chairs that looked like they had opinions. The New York skyline glimmered behind it all, sun just beginning to tip into afternoon.
Mira sat alone at the head of the table. Her posture was relaxed, but her presence filled the room. Slate-gray silk draped perfectly over her frame. Her braid was tight today. Her earrings were thin arcs of gold that caught the light each time she turned a page in the slim report in front of her. She wasn’t reading, exactly. She already knew the content. She was waiting. Though she would never say that aloud.
The glass door opened with a soft mechanical hush. Camille brought them in. Jules entered first - steady, sharp-eyed, polite in a navy blazer. Behind her: Harper. Mid-sentence. Laughing.
“ ... and I swear the elevator music was trying to gaslight me. I think it actually looped Chopin into Coldplay—”
She looked up. Saw her. And froze.
The air shifted. Like the whole room took a breath and held it. Mira lifted her eyes. Calm. Composed. A flicker of something at the corner of her mouth. Their eyes met - and for one suspended second, neither of them was anywhere else.
Harper blinked. “Oh. Hi. It’s ... you.”
Mira’s tone was even, professional, “Ms. Quinn. Thank you for coming.”
The rest of the room caught up. Jules glanced sideways - curious. Camille, already standing against the back wall, didn’t move. But observed everything. Harper scrambled to sit, trying not to trip over the leg of the chair. Her hands fumbled at her bag, glasses - no, not there. Right. She’d forgotten them.
“Sorry, I - forgot my face again,” she muttered, then winced. “I mean my glasses. Not my face. That’s still here. I think.”
A beat of silence. Then Jules slid her coffee over without comment. Harper whispered “you’re the best” under her breath.
The meeting began.
The slides were simple. Harper’s pacing was not. She gestured more than necessary - scribbled notes upside down, talked over herself once or twice. But beneath the nerves, her brilliance glinted through like firelight.
“Behavior only makes sense in context,” she said at one point. “Nudge Engine doesn’t predict what people want — it studies why they almost do something and then don’t. That gap? That’s where the truth lives.”
Mira listened. Not just politely. Intently. She leaned forward. Asked sharp questions that sliced through fluff like wire.
“Why this structure for your data model?”
“What assumptions are you consciously avoiding?”
Harper answered - clumsily at first, then with increasing steadiness. She talked with her whole body. Her brow furrowed when she explained, her hands sketched in the air like they were trying to hold her ideas in place. Mira watched her. Not just the words - how she spoke. How her mind moved. How alive she became when she was doing something that mattered.
That pull - that strange gravity - was louder now. And confusing. Harper caught Mira’s gaze once. Lost her sentence. Laughed it off. They both felt it. But neither said a word.
In the end chairs pushed back. Pages were gathered. Jules and Camille exchanged pleasantries. There was the polite friction of bodies and paper, the rustle of controlled motion. Mira stood with the quiet grace of someone who never rushed. She gathered her tablet, her pen, one small folder. The air still smelled faintly of eucalyptus and glass. Harper lingered by the door - half turned, uncertain.
“So...” she said, voice lower now, “you’re Mira Laurent, and this is what you do.”
Mira paused, one hand on the folder. She liked how her name sounded coming from Harpers lips.
“Among other things.” A longer pause. Then, with gentler precision: “You built something remarkable, Harper.”
She said her name deliberately. Harper heard it. Felt it. It bloomed in her chest and made her forget how to stand. They both felt it - that quiet, unfolding thrill of a name once unfamiliar - now spoken aloud, reshaped by the mouth that claimed it.
“Thanks,” she said, flushed. She opened her mouth - about to ask something. Maybe about a coffee. Maybe something stupider. She didn’t know yet.
But Jules tapped her elbow, and Camille arrived, and the moment slipped away. Harper nodded, “I guess we’ll be in touch?”
Mira’s gaze didn’t waver, but it was warm, inviting. And then the door whispered shut behind them. Mira stood still. It felt to her that the reflection in the glass held Harper’s shape for one second longer than it should have.
Camille raised a brow. “So. You knew her. That might’ve been helpful to be aware of before the meeting.”
Mira didn’t turn - and then in Arabic, “Ma kāna muhimmān” It wasn’t important.
Camille gave her a long, measured look before replying in French, “Non. Bien sûr que non” No. Of course not.
A pause. Then, in English, Mira asked softly, “What did you think of the presentation?”
Camille didn’t answer right away. She walked back to the table, picked up the folder, and flipped it closed with a practiced flick. Then, “She’s sharp. Quirky. Unpolished, but sincere. You like her.”
Mira’s gaze didn’t move. “Professionally.”
Camille’s silence stretched. Then, dryly, “Of course.”
Mira finally turned. Her composure had returned - almost. But something simmered behind her eyes now, something low and glowing. Her cheeks were flushed, lips slightly parted, breath just a fraction too shallow. She needed a moment. A cool cloth. A closed door. Her body was awake - and it was Harper’s fault.
Meanwhile - Harper and Jules were back in an Uber, crawling south through Midtown, inching their way toward Dumbo. Outside, the city blurred past - honking cabs, scaffolding, late lunchers clutching iced coffees. The driver had something mellow playing - saxophone over soft static, like an old jazz station half-lost in the signal. Harper sat sideways in the backseat, one foot tucked beneath her, sleeves of her button-down casually rolled up.
Jules sipped her smoothie. “That went better than expected.”
“Did it?” Harper tugged at her seatbelt. “Because I definitely forgot my glasses, called a data model flirtatious, and overshared about cereal.”
“Yeah,” Jules said, “it was charming. And strategic.”
Harper made a face, then laughed. “I’m just saying, I could’ve sounded more like a professional and less like an overeager TEDx speaker on espresso.”
“You’re fine.” Jules looked over. “We’re fine. You were great.” And then - “You’re not usually like this coming out of a meeting.” She offered the comment with a too-innocent face.
Harper’s fingers played with her sleeve for a moment. Then, more quietly -
“ ... What did you think of Mira Laurent?”
Jules didn’t answer right away. Just raised an eyebrow.
Harper added, too fast, “I mean, she’s intense, right? Like, so polished. You could probably bounce a coin off her schedule.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I just ... I’ve run into her before. Twice, actually.”
“That so?”
Harper gave her the full story - the bar, the art gallery, the flirting that wasn’t flirting, or maybe was, or maybe wasn’t.
The bathroom. The laugh. Her voice - “ ... it’s deeper than you expect it to be, right?”
As she talked, her own voice changed. Slowed. Softened. Her blue eyes turning inward.
“She’s just ... God, she looked so good today,” Harper murmured, more to herself. “The way she talks - it’s like everything’s measured but never dull. And the way she looks at you - like she sees right through you, but not in a bad way. In a ... don’t-look-away way.”
Jules side-eyed her. “You’re blushing.”
Harper made a noise. “No, I’m not -”
“You are.”
“I’m not - Okay maybe I am. But that doesn’t mean -”
Jules waited. Took another sip.
And Harper, staring out the window now, let out a long breath. “I kept having to cross my legs. Which is not ideal during a professional strategy meeting.”
Jules let out a startled laugh. Harper groaned and flopped backward onto the seat, covering her face with both hands. “What is wrong with me? I need to freshen up when we get back.”
Jules didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to.
“I’m straight,” Harper said, voice muffled by the cushion. “I mean - historically straight. Straight-ish. Mostly. I mean, if you ever wanted to ... I’m joking. Tom wouldn’t like that.”
Harper took a breath. “But then she shows up, and my brain just - short circuits. Every time. I walk away like some confused Victorian ghost, completely unable to process the fact that my entire internal compass is, like ... glitching.”
Jules raised an eyebrow, “Glitching?”
Harper peeked over at her. “Rebooting. Recalculating. Folding in on itself like a dying star, Jules. I don’t know how to handle this.”
Jules didn’t respond right away. Just sat there, with the kind of maddening calm only best friends and therapists ever master.
Then, “You realize she didn’t offer her name either, right?”
Harper blinked. “What?”
Jules shrugged. “You’re spiraling about how you just walked away the last times you met. But she let you. No name. No number. Not even a hey-let’s-connect-on-LinkedIn.”
She paused. “Maybe she’s glitching, too.”
Harper stared, completely thrown. Then shook her head, “Women like that don’t glitch,” she said.
Jules just smiled, “Sure they do.”
Harper lowered her hands. Her face was pink. Her eyes thoughtful. “She smelled like something expensive and dangerous. Her voice was ... I don’t even know. And that smile. Why do I think that was mine?”
Jules nodded, slowly. “Ok. So, you’re not gay but ... you liked her.”
“I liked her so much,” Harper whispered. Then caught herself and slumped down in her seat, groaning again. “I want to see her again. Just to ... figure out if this is a weird brain thing or a weird everything thing.”
Jules, “I’m not sure there’s a non-weird version of wanting someone that badly.”
Harper didn’t answer. She just looked out the window. And smiled.
Later that day, Harper sat cross-legged at her desk. Nudge Engine’s office lived on the third floor of a converted paper factory. The building was all iron beams, enormous windows, and graffiti that had somehow become permanent branding. Their sign was a barely-legible vinyl decal Jules had designed in a fugue state: Nudge Engine - Behavioral Insight Meets Chaotic Good.
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