He watched her walk away, mentally lambasting himself for allowing that to go as far as it had. He could barely keep his head about him just being near her. What did he think would happen when he actually touched her?

He couldn’t let himself touch her again. No matter how damn soft her hands were.

*  *  *

Scrutinizing the handwritten notes from one of the half-dozen steno pads and mountain of Post-its strewn about her living room sofa, Samiah took a swig from the bottle of elderberry kombucha she’d picked up on her last grocery store run. She still wasn’t sold on it, but the fermented tea was starting to grow on her.

She referenced a sketch of the interface she’d drawn up years ago, noting that she would now have to rework most of it because of the changes in tech design that had been made in just the few years since she’d first come up with the idea for Just Friends. Everything these days was much more streamlined, not clunky and crowded.

She tossed the notebook aside and pitched her head back against the sofa.

“What am I doing?”

She must be out of her mind to think she could develop this app to the point where someone would be willing to invest enough money in it to bring it to market. It needed too much work. She’d never be able to get it all done.

Stop it!

That pesky inner voice had been wiggling its way into her psyche all evening long, trying its best to discourage her. She wasn’t falling for it. Yes, she had some hard work ahead of her, but how was that different from every single thing she’d ever attempted? The projects she worked on day in and day out at Trendsetters weren’t a cakewalk, but she did them. She put everything she had into their work. Why in the hell would she not do the same for herself?

Samiah glanced at the sketches, notes, and research scattered around her. Hell, she was already doing the work. The throng of documents represented months of dedication.

She could do this. She owed it to herself to do this.

She had just under three months before the deadline to submit her idea to the organizers of the Future in Innovation Tech Conference, which meant she had ten weeks to get it all done so that she could devote at least a couple of weeks to testing.

“All right. Let’s do this.”

She grabbed hold of the checklists she’d created this morning. She had a master list comprising the six big items she needed to tackle, followed by six additional checklists breaking down the various tasks needed to accomplish everything on her master list. Just staring at them brought her a sense of peace. Her brain worked better when she compartmentalized her task into easily digestible chunks.