Chapter 14
Chance
My eyes scan the parking lot through the slats of my mini blinds. I’m not hiding. I’m making sure Danni is on schedule, which she usually is. She’s been leaving at seven thirty, my preferred time, so we keep bumping into each other—her scowling at me, me trying to get her not to scowl. I’m a sucker for a good challenge, hence my line of work.
We could both use a break, though. Therefore, I’m letting her go first today. Except she’s not going. I have a weird hunch that she’s standing in her living room peering through her mini blinds, waiting for me to go first. Figures she’d ruin my attempt to not ruin her morning.
I imagine her snapping her blinds closed and frowning in annoyance. Our last few interactions have ended in frowns. Like the one she gives me when I accidentally kick her under the desk. Last week, she said, “Could you keep your ginormous feet away from my desk please?” To which I replied, “I can’t help my genetics.” She told me to bend my knees to make my legs shorter. I told her they were already bent.
There’s nothing wrong with my feet. They’re normal-sized feet on normal-sized legs.
I hear Danni’s apartment door slam, our face-off ending—if it was one. She clunks down the steps in a pair of thick-soled sandals with strappy ankle wraps. Her glossy hair catches the sun, makes me take notice. Before stepping into her car, she sets her pink purse on the roof and rummages through it, pulling out her phone. She taps the screen and a small smile appears on her lips.
I watch her pull out of the parking lot and allow sufficient time to pass while a bird lands on my car, takes a few steps, and then launches back into the sky. Then, I grab a frozen meal, opting for Amy’s Mattar Paneer.
No one has complained about the smell of my Indian food. That’s good because if they did, I might file a complaint with HR. After tossing a couple cans of Coke into my backpack, I grab two packs of gum, toss them in, and head to my car.
I bought my Honda Civic used with two hundred thousand miles on it and it runs great except for the AC. It’s a hot South Carolina morning, as usual, and the air conditioning works just enough to keep me from dripping sweat all the way to work. My extra dose of cologne in the mornings backs up my Old Spice deodorant, so I have dual protection. After surviving a summer in Texas, South Carolina summers are a walk in the park.
I crank the four-cylinder engine and turn the AC to the right. It doesn’t budge. I already had it maxed for my Saturday evening date with Chelse. She complained about the heat all the way to the restaurant.
We opted for Mexican. Tex-Mex to be exact, a cuisine I’m well acquainted with and will go back to any day of the week. I ordered chicken fajitas. She ordered chicken tacos. I tried to go through my list of questions to keep the conversation orderly, but she wanted to talk about her job as a retail manager at the mall.
After listening to her ramble on about women’s clothes for half an hour, I kinda zoned out. My eyes glazed over and went south. Chelse thought I was staring at her breasts but, really, I was fantasizing about escaping to my apartment and playing Call of Duty.
When the check came, I paid. She didn’t offer to pay her half. I was fine with that, and because it was only seven thirty, I felt obligated to say, “Do you want to see a movie?”
She frowned. “What’s playing?”
“I don’t know. We could go look.”
“As long as it’s not The Avengers. How many of those dumb movies does the world need?”
On the way to the theater, she told me she’s been going to the gym to work on her six-pack. At one point, she lifted her shirt and tried to show me. I kept my eyes glued to the road and said, “Oh, yeah. Those look great.”
“You didn’t even look.”
My grandma’s words echoed through my head, something about American girls being too high maintenance and that, with an arranged marriage, you don’t have to go through all the dating nonsense.
“I have a tiny waist. You probably haven’t noticed because you’ve been staring at my breasts all night.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Well, you won’t be seeing them anytime soon. I don’t put out on the first date. Or the second. Or the third.”
“I wasn’t asking you to.”
“Your body language is hinting at it.”
“No, it’s not. I’m just sitting here.”
“Right.”
By then, I wasn’t in the mood to see a movie. Unfortunately, we were at the theater. Chelse wanted to see a post-apocalyptic flick, which I was fully prepared to pay for until she ran to the bathroom and didn’t return until twenty minutes later.
“Take me home,” she said without looking at me, her face pale and sweaty. “And hurry if you don’t want me to poop all over your car.”
And that was that.
Score: 15
I pull out a chair and join Danni and Heng at the conference room table. She opens her laptop and hits a key to wake up the monitor. After entering her PIN, her screen projects onto the wall. Her design document takes up most of the viewing area.
“I know you’ve started working.” Danni glances at me. “Or, at least I think you have. But before you share your status, I want to reiterate that I spent a week writing this design document. We are following the architecture I outlined in this design document. I want our code to be consistent and coherent so a toddler could make sense of it.”
“That’s never happening,” Chance says.
“It could. If you follow this design document.”
“A toddler?”
She arches an eyebrow at me. “Have you worked with junior programmers?”
“Now that’s just mean.”
“Burn,” Heng whispers.
“Who are you burning?” Danni asks. “Me or Chance?”
“Both.”
Based on Danni’s visible unclenching, this seems like the right answer. Good enough anyway.
“I even included JetAero’s style guide at the end. We will be audited based on these standards.” She raises her eyebrow at me again. “Make sense?”
“Why are you only looking at me?”
“Because I’m not a chameleon.”
“Fair.”
For some reason, Danni insists on starting at the top of the document and reviewing every section. Although I haven’t read the document, I feel like I’ve heard it all before. Thus, my eyes glaze over, but not like they did on my date with Chelse. They descend southward and stop at Danni’s necklace, which is a dragonfly pendant with gems for eyes and intricate goldwork on the wings.
My eyes drift to her shirt–a poofy-sleeved number that looks feminine rather than extra. Danni likes plants and flowers. This shirt is no exception. It’s covered in medium-blue vines against a light-blue background. Subtle. A good complement to the blue gems in her necklace.
She continues talking about view layers and controllers and duplicate code, which should grind my gears, but I feel calm, more so when my eyes travel back to her face. Even when she’s saying goofy words like foobar and obfuscate, she looks perfectly put together. Pretty. Not just pretty. Gorgeous.
My cheeks go warm and my hands don’t know what to do with themselves. I anchor one under my chin and pan over to the wall. Danni’s blood-curdling scream snaps me back to attention. Now my heart is really pounding.
She launches from her chair and ducks under the table, screaming again.
I scoot out and peek at her. “Problem?”
She covers her mouth and points to the ceiling, her heaving breaths making it impossible to talk.
“Is the roof gonna cave in?”
She shakes her head furiously.
“That’s good.”
“Get it,” she squeaks.
“Get what?”
“Hurry!”
Heng’s eyes travel to the ceiling, his face turns white, and he runs out of the room. My eyes follow him out the door. “Dude. Heng just ran.”
“Getitbeforeitfallsonme!” Danni spits out.
“Say that again?”
Abeer pokes his head in. “What’s wrong with Danni?”
“Get the spider!” she yells.
“I’m on it!” I hear Morgan holler, her voice muffled by distance.
Violet and Juanita join Abeer at the door. They nudge him out of the way and peer into the room to see what the hubbub is all about.
“What’re you doing under there, Danni?” Violet asks in an alarmed tone. “Is it World War III or something?”
Bruce comes up behind them, towering above them both. “We doing duck-and-cover drills on top of active shooter now?” His large frame is no deterrent for Morgan. She pushes past him carrying a trashcan.
Danni looks up at me, her eyes round and pleading. “Kill it!”
I glance at the spider for the first time. Oof. I believe the word I’m looking for is “yuge.” That thing is gargantuan. They grow them big in South Carolina. Nevertheless, “I’m not going to kill a living creature that isn’t bothering me,” I tell her.
“It doesn’t deserve to live! And if you don’t kill it now, I’m gonna puke!”
“She’s not lying,” Morgan says as she drops the trashcan next to Danni.
“Geez. Someone get me a cup or something,” I say.
“I will!” Kayla announces. She sprints off and comes back with a Styrofoam coffee cup from the breakroom. I grab it and investigate the creature that’s turning Danni into an actress on the Scream 45 set. Except she’s not acting. And that makes me smile.
I wiggle the table to test its sturdiness. Not great. “You’re gonna have to move. I can’t climb up on the table with you under it.”
“I am not moving,” she growls.
“Danni,” I say gently, offering her my hand. She spins around and faces the other wall.
“Nope.”
“Danni.” I wiggle the table again and it creaks on its hinges. “I’m moving the table.” Before she can object, I drag it to the side. She scrambles and presses her back to the wall while looking up. “It’s moving!” she squeals and then gags.
“She’s going to spew!” Juanita announces over the ruckus.
“Good gracious, it’s just a wolf spider.” Violet tosses up her hands and pushes through the gawkers to return to her desk.
“What’s a wolf spider?” Danni says, followed by a dry heave.
I scoot the trashcan over to her.
“They’re hairy spiders indicative of a secondary pest infestation,” Violet says, her volume lessening as she walks away.
Danni looks at me with wild eyes, “What if this building has cockroaches?”
I crouch and grab her hand. “Let’s not worry about that right now.” Then I stand feeling fuzzy myself from our skin-to-skin contact–mentally, not physically. Well, yeah, physically too, but not like a wolf spider, more like a staticky balloon.
“You can’t stand on that,” Juanita says when I grab my chair.
“Why not?”
“It’s in our safety training. Gary stands on the chair to swat at a fly, falls and breaks his elbow in four places.”
“That won’t happen,” I assure her.
“It’s on wheels ,” Juanita emphasizes.
“Which makes it more fun.”
“Stoptalkingandkillit!?” Danni demands.
“I said I’m not killing it.”
She hunches into the fetal position and buries her head in her arms. I roll the chair over, one hand balancing my weight, the other holding the Styrofoam cup, and stand warily, careful not to jostle the chair.
“I’m telling Christopher!”
Juanita ducks out, replaced by Bruce’s hulking frame. “Defying the union,” he says, his big smile expressing his approval.
I coax the yuge, but harmless-looking arachnid onto the back of my hand. Spiders don’t usually bother me, but this big guy turns my stomach a little. I’m not about to let it show.
“Did you kill it?” Danni asks in a strained voice.
“He let it crawl onto his knuckle,” Bruce says.
Danni gags. I need to speed this up before she actually pukes. A quick tap sends the spider into my cup, but captivity isn’t on its menu today. While I teeter on the rolling chair, he scrambles out and takes the quickest route to the highest spot he can find–up my arm and onto my head.
Wearing a wolf spider as a hat isn’t on my menu today either. I lose my cool along with my balance. The chair rolls out from under me and I crash to the floor–my elbow taking the brunt of it. Danni screams louder than a jet engine.
“Did I squish it?” I mumble through my pain.
“It’s on the floor,” Bruce yells. “It’s running toward her! Get it!”
I ignore the pain in my elbow and roll onto my hands and knees. The spider is between me and Danni, stalking her. She trades her hiding spot under the table for a hiding spot on top of it, which doesn’t end well. The table buckles on one side, sending her sliding to the floor. Undeterred, she scales the lopsided tabletop and clings to the uppermost edge, her legs folded underneath her like a frog’s, squealing the entire time.
With one swift movement, I have the spider under my cup, still alive, still huge.
“What’s going on?” Christopher says.
I glance over my shoulder.
“Outa my way,” he says to Bruce.
Bruce steps aside and Christopher appears.
“Is anyone hurt?”
“Nope,” I say, despite my throbbing elbow. I tip the cup to peek inside. The spider has climbed to the bottom, which is now the top, so I slide my hand under the rim, and stand triumphantly. Or try to. My knee shrieks and my hip groans. I straighten through the pain. “I got it. I’m taking it outside.”
“What if it comes back inside?” Danni says, still frantic.
I hold the cup at a distance as I reassure her, “I’ll drop him off a few blocks over.”
Danni peers up at me, her face pale and covered in a sheen of sweat.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“I will be when you get that thing out of here.”
“I’m going. It’s gonna be okay.”
She nods.
As I approach the door, people scatter, including Bruce. “Coming through,” I say even though my path is clear.
In the elevator, I peek at the spider and chuckle. My mind replays the varied expressions on Danni’s face as she cowered under the table, each one new to me, and all of them, curiously, gorgeous.
Once outside, I turn right, travel two blocks and find a nice potted tree along the sidewalk to deposit my friend into. I release it on the trunk and it quickly climbs up into the leaves.
The staticky fuzz is still dancing on my arms, overriding the pain in my knee, hip, and elbow. I chuck the Styrofoam cup in the trashcan and head back to the Citizen’s Tower, light as a balloon, my chin and chest held high.
I liked saying Danni’s name today. I liked the way her hand felt when I grabbed it. I liked being her hero. And suddenly, more than anything else, I want to be her hero again.