West Coast East Heart Chapter 02
That line was exactly why I decided to be with him.
We were both engineers educated on the East Coast, but our hearts always longed for Silicon Valley—that land that birthed countless legends.
I thought our dreams aligned.
I didn’t realize he had stopped dreaming long ago.
The place he wanted to go was wherever Clara was.
That night, he came home very late.
I pretended to be asleep. He stood on the balcony making a call.
“Clara, sweetheart, don’t cry.”
“Yes, I’ve signed the contract…”
“Don’t worry. I’ll be there soon…”
He comforted her for a long time, using a gentleness in his voice that I had never heard before.
In the middle of the night, he turned over and mumbled something in his sleep.
“Clara, I miss you…”
I let out a bitter smile.
I used to be a heavy sleeper.
It seems I missed quite a few honest confessions.
The next day, Adrian left early.
“Don’t forget to handle our onboarding paperwork.”
His eyes darted away slightly. He didn’t linger for a second.
On the desk lay all our employment documents.
His were already gone. Only mine remained.
I organized my materials, got in the car, and drove to Nexagen’s headquarters in Palo Alto.
The HR representative who greeted me was a woman with her hair pulled back in a neat ponytail. She wore rimless glasses and looked very competent.
She glanced at my resume, then looked up at me again.
“You’re here to take over our CTO position?”
“Yes.”
“You’re the one coming back for Project Phoenix?”
“Yes.”
She fell silent for a moment. Her eyes reddened slightly.
“I’ve been in this industry for twenty years. I’ve seen countless top talents leave Silicon Valley for Europe, for Asia, for research institutions with higher salaries.”
Her voice trembled a little.
“But someone like you—holding a tenured position at MIT and still choosing to come back and join a startup—that’s truly rare.”
She stood up and took the initiative to shake my hand.
“Welcome back, Dr. Reed. We’ve been waiting for you.”
A lump formed in my throat.
When I was little, growing up in San Diego, I often heard my grandfather—who had been a Chief Engineer at Boeing—say:
“No matter how high you fly, never forget why you set out in the first place.”
My grandfather has been gone for over a decade.
His ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean, right by the coastline where he had dedicated his entire life.
I hadn’t been back for ten years.
This year, I was going back.
I would go back to see him, bringing my dreams and my research with me.
That evening, Adrian came home carrying a gift bag.
“Eve, I brought you a present.”
It was an exquisite crystal sculpture of the Matterhorn in Switzerland.
“See, you and Europe have such a connection. You even got that exchange student spot at Cambridge back then. Too bad you couldn’t go.”
My fingers tightened slowly.
Back then, I had received a two-year visiting scholar qualification to Cambridge.
It was the opportunity I had always dreamed of.
Cambridge’s aerospace engineering program was among the best in the world.
My advisor told me:
“This chance is once in a lifetime, Evelyn. After you go, your academic perspective will expand completely.”
I started preparing, full of excitement.
But one month before departure, Adrian was diagnosed with acute appendicitis.
It was a minor surgery. Hospital stay of three days. A month of rest and he would recover.
Yet he grabbed hold of me.
“Don’t go. Stay here and take care of me.”
I hesitated.
“But this opportunity…”
“You’ll have other opportunities later.”
He cut me off, a hint of impatience in his voice.
“I’m sick right now. Shouldn’t you stay and take care of me?”
In the end, I chose to stay.
And that rare opportunity went to the second-ranked student in our department—Clara Thorne.
Now that I think about it, what a convenient coincidence.
Clara wanted that spot, so he schemed to get it for her.
Clara wanted him in Switzerland, so he abandoned his original dream.