As Nakul walks my dad through the adjustments I’ve made to the algorithm, I catch my dad’s eye. Pride radiates from him so strongly, I can feel it.

“You really came up with this all on your own?” he asks.

I shuffle my feet. “Yeah. It wasn’t too hard once I figured out the problem had to do with time, not quantity. The new algorithm takes both into consideration so it can be applied more broadly.”

Dad beams. “Well, isn’t that just the dog’s bollocks.” The warmth I feel at his pride manages to temporarily counteract the meat-lockerish temperature of our office. “Sammy, why don’t you leave a few minutes early and get us a table before the rush? Buy yourself a pint and the rest of us will finish up here and be along shortly.” He hands me a twenty-pound note.

Ed and Nakul high-five at the prospect of starting their Friday night early, and I grin. The engineers are my kind of people. They make math jokes that it takes calculus to understand, and I never miss the punch line. I fit in better than I ever did back home, and working with the engineers gives me room to speak up instead of trying to make myself disappear.

I pack up my things and take the lift down, then head out into the chilly afternoon. It’s not raining, for once. The days finally feel like they’re getting a bit longer, and it’s nice. Somehow the passing of a season makes my presence here feel less like a vacation and more like something real, even if I don’t intend to stay forever.

Halfway to the pub, my phone buzzes in my pocket with an email notification. I pull it out and am not surprised to see it’s from Mom. We usually talk on the phone every weekend and email a few times during the week, and I find that the distance helps us communicate with more honesty. I smile at the article she sent me a link to — the formal announcement of the new VPs at her company. She told me a few weeks ago that she got her promotion, but somehow this makes it that much more real.