Chapter 23
Danni
The first day of Chai World lives up to my expectations. Lots of techies wandering around wearing lanyards and carrying goodie bags from various onsite vendors. Informative, but dry discussions about templating, browser compatibility, consolidating the view layer for a lightweight architecture. Chance would be all over that one.
I eat lunch at a tech crunch-and-munch about Latte, a new templating framework that promises to take Chai development to the next level. I’m unimpressed. I’ll stick with JetAero’s in-house, tried and true, templating engine, FLUB. It’s as good as it sounds, but I am not refactoring our applications to use something new. Not happening. Doing so would be heavy on expenditures, light on profits, and that’s what JetAero is all about. Profit. Which is fine. It’s how they pay me.
At six o’clock, I’m hungry and my hands are numb from typing so many notes into my laptop. As I hobble out of my last session, my phone dings. It’s our group text. Morgan wants to know where we’re going to meet. We decide on a place and then we all agree to eat dinner back at the hotel.
Drew entertains us during the ride home with little known facts about qubits. Turns out, he didn’t know all there is to know about quantum computing. I’m okay letting him jabber. It means Chance and I don’t have to talk.
I’m not upset about Bedhead Becky anymore. Being upset would mean that I care, and while I was falling asleep against a feather pillow last night, I decided I don’t care. So why should I be upset that he slept with some woman in a tight red dress the day after he kissed me?
Does this mean I want to get all nice-y nice with Chance? No, because he still wields my kryptonite. A simple, sultry “Danni” and I’ll be swimming in a pile of swoon all over again, and I do not want to tread those waters. Not with a player.
Chance can do Chance. He can surround himself with his Chancelings. I’ll be over here preserving my integrity.
Back at the hotel, Morgan and I stop in our room to unload our conference goodies and then we head straight to Toasties. Drew is already there holding down a U-shaped booth.
The low light in Toasties gives the modern space a cozier vibe and the moderate rumble of conversation adds to its liveliness. A bar stretches down one side of the room. Along the back wall, a brightly lit stage offers a microphone and karaoke setup. A techie girl is at the mic, still wearing her lanyard while singing “Careless Whispers” in a breathy, nearly nonexistent voice.
Morgan slides right up to Drew. I sit beside him, leaving plenty of room between us. Across from me is an empty space where Chance should be.
“Is Chance not coming down?” I ask.
“You look like Azura in Delta Droids Wear Pink,” Drew says, his gaze fixed on Morgan.
She side-eyes him. “Um. Okay.”
“It’s anime. I like anime.”
Morgan’s confusion melts into a grin. She giggles. “We’ll have to watch it sometime.”
“It is only in book form.”
“Well, maybe you could read it to me.”
“Would that excite your feminine hormones?”
“Maybe,” she answers demurely.
“So Chance isn’t coming down?” I ask to break through whatever weirdness is happening between Morgan and Drew.
“I can pull up a picture on my phone.” He grabs his phone from his pocket and jabs his index finger against the screen. Seconds later, he hands the phone to Morgan. Her grin turns into a full-fledged smile. I guess Chance isn’t eating with us.
Morgan snuggles closer to Drew.
“Can we order?” I try again.
“Can I see more?” Morgan asks. They become engrossed in his phone as he flips through pictures of Azura the Pink Delta Droid.
While they’re oblivious, a waitress approaches. She’s wearing a Toasties T-shirt featuring a toaster and two wine glasses. Her short hair is pulled back in a ponytail, but the strands around her face have escaped. Rough night I guess. Chai World attendees are a tough crowd.
“I’m Elaine. I’ll be taking your orders today. Can I start you off with something to drink?”
Neither Drew nor Morgan acknowledge her, so I order everyone water and three “The Works” nacho appetizer plates. Moments later, she returns with our waters, which I sip while feeling like a third wheel.
And then my heart stops. I take a drink of water to restart it, which works. Minimally.
Chance is headed this way wearing a black cowboy hat, dark wash jeans, and alligator skin boots, looking mysterious and statuesque and so perfectly clean-shaven that the bar lights reflect on his angular jaw. I’m like one of the water droplets on my glass, except I try my level best to hold on rather than slide into a puddle.
He stops beside me, takes off his hat, bows, and says, “Hello ma’am.” What should be goofy and awkward is the sexiest thing anyone’s ever said to me. Never dropping my gaze, he glides into the booth and sets his hat well away from any dripping water glasses. I prop my elbow on the table to hold up my jaw. Despite being smooshed by a hat, his hair looks perfectly styled, curls twisting expertly throughout. Chance may be a little extra, but he sure knows how to put himself together.
I look down, unable to bear his smoldering gaze.
“Yay, everyone is here.” Morgan pulls the sampler box of teas out of her bag, unfolds the lid, and hands it to Drew. “I decided to share.”
Drew lifts the box up to his nose and sucks in a breath.
“There’s twenty-four individually wrapped tea bags,” Morgan adds. “Everyone gets six.”
Drew starts shuffling through the offerings.
“I don’t drink stale tea,” Chance says.
Morgan looks inordinately offended. “Each bag is individually wrapped,” she reiterates.
“In bleached paper that’s holding the dregs of the tea leaves.”
For some reason this offends her less. “Okay, tea snob.”
“I am a tea snob. My dadi makes all her tea using fresh, loose leaves and a stainless steel tea infuser. Once you have that, you’ll never go back.”
“You should make us some fresh tea at work sometime,” Morgan says, and then her eyes widen. “You should serve it during our book reports! Fresh chai for the Chai World debriefing.”
He grabs the bowl of his hat, lifts the rim a few inches, and then drops it back to the table. “That’s actually a good idea.”
My eyes rest on Chance’s well-sculpted hand. Morgan’s eyes rest on his cowboy hat. “How does a guy like you become a cowboy?” she asks.
“You mean a guy from California?”
“Uh…sure.”
“You work in Austin, Texas for a year and frequent the local bars.”
“To throw out a wide net,” I say.
Chance accepts my challenging stare, undeterred by my condescending tone. “No. To learn all the latest line dances.”
I smirk at him as I try to imagine him yucking it up on the dance floor in his cowboy boots. “Are those real alligator skin?”
“Caiman.”
“What’s that?”
“A big lizard. Dadi would freak if I brought home cowhide boots. She won’t like me killing lizards either, but I imagine she’ll mind it a lot less.”
“Are you planning to move back to India?” The thought unsettles me a bit, which further unsettles me.
Our waitress cuts in, holding up a huge tray. “Can I get you something to drink?” she says to Chance.
“Coke Zero,” I answer for him.
He grins at me and then flicks his eyes to Elaine. “Yeah, that.”
She rests her tray on the edge of the table and unloads our food, three plates piled high with nacho chips and all the toppings.
“Can I get you anything, hon?” she asks Chance.
He eyeballs the nacho mountains which are enough food for the four of us. “Maybe we could share?” he asks me.
“Sure,” I say.
“I’ll get ya another plate. And that Coke Zero.” She tucks the tray under her arm and sprints to another table to take their order.
We dig in unabashedly, famished from a day of learning about new tech, which burns several hundred calories an hour, I’m convinced. Nobody talks while we stuff our mouths. We’ve made a good dent by the time the waitress brings Chance’s Coke. He pauses to plunge his straw into it and take a long sip. Then he grabs his fork and knife and unloads a mound of nachos onto his plate.
“Should we talk about what we learned today?” Morgan asks, her mouth half full.
“No,” Chance and I say in unison. We lock eyes and share a grin.
My heart is warming up like a glass of water as the ice slowly melts. It’s still cold, but not as cold.
Drew and Morgan have their own conversation about anime. Morgan suddenly wants to know all about it even though she’s never so much as peeked at my Hello Kitty collection. It’s quite a leap but they have a vibe going and I’m not going to spoil it. That leaves me and Chance to do nothing but eat or find something to talk about. He’s quiet tonight, though. More reserved than usual. Maybe this is his cowboy persona. I don’t mind it.
When only a few nachos are left on the plates, we lean back, enjoy our full bellies, and watch a middle-aged woman with Karen hair struggle through “Flashdance…What a Feeling” over on the karaoke stage.
When she’s done and the unenthusiastic applause dies down, Chance grabs his hat, slides out of the booth, not saying a word, and goes over to the guy manning the karaoke equipment.
Morgan spins toward me. “Is he going to sing?”
It appears that’s exactly what he intends to do. He confers with the music guy for a few minutes and then walks over to the mic, cowboy hat firmly in place and boots gleaming under the spotlights.
The music begins softly, a fiddle rising and falling with the guitar twanging gently beneath it.
When he opens his mouth, Morgan squeals. “Oh my gosh, he can sing!”
Can he ever. Surprisingly, it’s a song I recognize. ”I Hope You Dance” by a lady with a high voice. But Chance’s version is low, the bass mesmerizing, the lilting flow from one note to the next penetrating my very bones.
He hits the chorus and I’m in Cloud Cuckoo Land and Princess Unikitty is saying “Don’t you get any ideas.” But I have lots of them. All involving Chance’s lips on mine. The thought of kissing him again after he sings me a lullaby in that rich, spine-tingling voice is almost too much to handle.
“Danni.” It’s a female voice. Not Chance’s, which is disappointing.
I open my eyes.
Morgan snickers.
“What?” I ask.
“Your eyes were closed.”
“I was sleeping. Why did you wake me up?”
“If you say so.”
“I do.” And I leave it at that because our conversation is drowning out the auditory bliss coming from the karaoke stage.
His voice swells into a repeat of the chorus. His eyes lock onto mine. It’s like he’s right beside me, his voice caressing my cheek, shapeshifting me into a Chanceling.
This can’t happen.
I tear my eyes away from him and grab my water, the smooth glass cool and sweaty beneath my touch. I press it to my cheek for a moment and then take a long drink. It needs more ice. Ice cubes. Lots of ice cubes. But our waitress is nowhere to be found.
“Out,” Drew says to me after Chance clicks the mic back into the stand. “I am going next.”
The memory of Drew’s tone-deaf singing puts me on high alert. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I am going to sing a song for Morgan.”
Morgan clasps her hands and beams, oblivious. She was asleep while Drew was violating the van with his singing, so she has no idea he’s about to turn her smile upside down.
“Maybe you should have Chance sing it while you sit here far, far away from the microphone,” I say.
He looks at me steadfastly. “Move.”
Not one to argue with a determined nerd, I slide out so Drew can go make a fool out of himself in front of Morgan and everyone in Toasties. He plods over to Chance, they have a brief discussion, and then Drew takes the mic, looking far too confident for his own good. I consider warning Morgan, but she looks too pleased. I’ll let Drew do the disappointing.
The music starts with light strumming followed by heavy drums and more twangy guitar. I recognize it instantly. Who on planet Earth wouldn’t?
Drew begins the verse to “Achy Breaky Heart,” singing wildly off key but hitting the right beats. I sink down in the booth in sympathy embarrassment, only to be summoned by a tall, handsome man wearing a felt cowboy hat. Chance holds out his hand. “Want to dance?”
I staunchly refuse.
“Come on, Danni.”
There it is. And just like that, I’m butter on a hot skillet. But I still don’t want to dance.
“Come on, Danni,” Morgan encourages. It’s not as swoony when she says it. She scrambles out of the booth and takes prime groupie position in front of the stage.
“I’ll teach you,” Chance says.
Still a no from me.
He kneels down, one forearm on his thigh, his other hand outstretched, his eyes just visible beneath the brim of his hat. No man has ever kneeled for me. And in a black cowboy hat, no less. It breaks my resolve. I grab his hand and let him pull me to the dance floor where a few middle-aged diners are having an achy breaky dance break.
Chance stands shoulder to shoulder with me. “This is the first line dance I learned,” he says, and then he begins talking me through the moves. Step to the right, do the grapevine, grapevine back to the left, walk forward, then back, and turn. That’s basically it.
Hi, my name is Danni. I’m a total dork. That’s basically what my face says, but I try to keep up with Chance. I’m concentrating so hard that I barely notice how badly Drew is butchering the chorus. When the song is over, a light smattering of applause fills the room. Drew descends from the stage and Morgan jumps him, throwing her arms around his neck.
“See?” Chance says. “That wasn’t too hard.”
“That’s what people do in Austin honky-tonks?”
“Sometimes.”
“Well, I’m a little impressed.”
He taps my chin with his knuckle. “Just a little?”
Morgan plows into me. “We’re going swimming. Wanna join?”
Chance stiffens. I’m not sure why. Maybe because he thinks I’m going to decline? Well, I didn’t pack my bikini for no reason. Definitely not to make Chance regret his life choices.
“Sure,” I say.
Chance relaxes. He rests his hand on my back, guiding me to the table where Drew announces he’ll take care of the bill.
Morgan and I head back to our room without them and immediately commence Operation: Make Them Drool.
As I’m digging through my suitcase, Morgan says, “What is the deal with you and Chance?”
I glance at her over my shoulder. “Excuse me? You’re the one slobbering all over Drew.”
“Have. You. Seen. His. Abs?”
“Unfortunately.”
“And, I don’t know, he’s sorta innocent, which is cute.”
“So it’s not all about his body?”
Guilt tugs on Morgan’s shoulders. “Not totally.”
“Do not break Drew’s heart,” I say, feeling suddenly and inexplicably protective of my annoying coworker.
Morgan dashes into the bathroom, string bikini in hand. Before closing the door, she peeks her head out and says, “I won’t. But you know what they say. What happens in Atlanta stays in Atlanta.”
I raise an eyebrow. “People say that?”
“I do,” Morgan says before disappearing into the bathroom.
When we’re both suited up and covered up in sweatpants and T-shirts, we head down to the pool. The guys arrive soon after in swim trunks and shirts. I descend the steps into the shallow end and spin in lazy circles while trailing my fingertips along the surface of the water, which allows me to glance at Chance unnoticed. He ignores me while he removes his shirt.
In the bright pool lights, his upper half is on full display, every muscle strong and defined and popping. My knees give out a little, but the water catches me. I sink down and dog paddle to the deep end to have a very serious talk with myself.
What Morgan said is categorically untrue. What happens in Atlanta does not stay in Atlanta. It lingers in the memory banks for quite a long time. For instance, shirtless Chance is imprinted on my consciousness forever. It’s not going away. Not even when I’m seventy.
Thinking through this logically, if I let my physical attraction to Chance get the best of me, and I allow my lips to go anywhere near his lips, then I will feel heaps of regret come Wednesday afternoon when I’m stuck in a car with him for five hours.
Drew, looking rather well-built himself, objectively speaking, cannonballs into the water followed by Morgan in her skimpy bikini. She instantly grabs onto Drew and allows him to pull her the length of the pool, after which she climbs onto his shoulders and shouts, “Chicken!”