8. Colin
COLIN
I jolt awake to the phantom whine of server fans and the smell of ozone that isn’t really there.
Moonlight has faded, and a lavender dawn sneaks through the drapes to paint my suite the color of eye strain.
I’ve slept—if you can call it sleep—in useless ten-minute bursts, each one spitting me back into consciousness with a fresh angle on last night’s outage.
The glitch itself was tiny. A memory-leak hamster wheel in the archaic POS middleware, which Marcus refuses to retire because, quote, it works fine when you patch it regularly.
Fine? Sure. If you like spontaneous reboot roulette at peak dinner service across three time zones.
I offered to mothball that system three years ago.
Brought him a cost-benefit deck, migration road map, and case studies from chains half our size.
He shook my hand, congratulated my “initiative,” then kicked the proposal straight into a vault labeled Maybe Next Fiscal.
The next fiscal has come and gone three times.
I punch my pillow, then sit up. The suite’s thermostat says it’s cold in here, but I crank it lower, like cold can freeze the frustration before it curdles into more resentment.
Marcus Burgh has been Copeland Restaurants’ CFO since Atari Pong.
Boardrooms treat him like sacred mahogany furniture—scratched, squeaky, but impossible to replace because the company’s origin story is carved somewhere in his grain.
Firing him would feel like banning grandma from carving the Thanksgiving turkey.
Still, part of me wants to pry the carving knife out of his eighty-year-old fingers before he slices another artery in our infrastructure budget.
My phone’s lock screen glows. Twenty-seven new messages in the DevOps channel—Asia team benchmarking the patch I pushed after midnight.
Stable for now. I toss the phone on the mattress and flop face-down, inhaling hotel laundry detergent, telling myself to rest with my eyes closed for twenty minutes.
It won’t meet the criteria for real sleep, but it’s something.
But I’m on vacation. I should at least get to sleep in. Or in my case, nap in.
A soft knock taps on my door. Twice. Pause. Twice again.
Not housekeeping. They’d ring. And someone else would have stopped them from bothering me.
I roll, swing my feet to the carpet, shuffle over, and crack the door.
Thalassa stands there in leggings and an oversized college hoodie, braid tucked under a beanie patterned with cartoon rabbits. Her eyes scan my bedhead. “Sorry if I woke you.”
I rouse a weary half grin. “Technically, you rescued me from the world’s most boring fake nap.”
She bites her lip. “Breakfast?”
My stomach answers with a whale song. I haven’t eaten since the protein bar at two this morning.
She’s about to apologize for interrupting when I realize my answer is a hundred percent yes, so I tug the door open wider. “Give me ninety seconds to look human.”
We sneak out like teenagers skipping curfew. Atticus is still hibernating. Dean’s door is closed, but I clock soft shower sounds—a tell that Mr. Schedule has already completed morning cardio and half a dozen emails. Good. Let him.
The elevator whooshes us to the lobby, and Thalassa rocks on her heels, hands in hoodie pocket. “There’s a diner in Grant Park—old school, open all night, pancakes bigger than Frisbees. You okay leaving the downtown bubble?”
“Diner pancakes used to be my nocturnal fuel.” Nostalgia pokes my ribs. “Before every line cook in the city learned my face.”
“This place won’t care.” She flashes a conspiratorial smile. “Cash only. Yelp page last updated 2011.”
My pulse slows its anxious tap dance. “Shit. Let’s go.”
Outside, the November air is crisp, brightening with that peculiar sweet quality Atlanta gets before traffic heat haze sets in. I summon a rideshare, and a dented silver Corolla slides to the curb. The driver doesn’t glance back beyond a half-hearted greeting. Perfect.
We cruise south. Office towers shrink to two-story brick, murals peeling, sidewalk oaks shedding gold confetti. Thalassa narrates local lore—apparently, the diner’s owner once halted service mid-Saturday rush to defend a stray kitten from a hawk. “So, you know, solid moral compass.”
Fifteen minutes later, the Corolla deposits us in a parking lot cracked with weeds. The diner squats at the corner, a neon open sign buzzing even though two letters have died. I’m not sure if we’re going to get jumped when we go inside, which means the food has to be good.
The interior is straight out of the sixties. Mint-green vinyl booths, Formica counters, and a smell that knocks me directly into age fifteen—the holy trinity of butter, hot griddle, and cheap dish soap.
A waitress with a pink bouffant raises an eyebrow at our entrance. Not recognition eyebrow—more you ordering or loitering? eyebrow. We choose a booth near the jukebox (paper coated in clear plastic, no QR code), and Bouffant slides water glasses across chipped laminate. “Coffee?”
“Two, please,” Thalassa answers. The mug arrives seconds later, strong enough to ruin a normal amount of creamer. I inhale steam, and every micro stress fissure in my skull begins sealing. I needed this more than I knew.
She opens a menu, but her eyes peek over. “How’s the crisis meter?”
“Dropped from DEFCON doom to maybe an amber warning.” I stir sugar into the brew. “I, ah, tend to carry code anxiety like a weighted blanket.”
“Same. Only mine’s extinction-level event anxiety.”
We exchange a grin of mutual nerd solace. When Bouffant returns for orders, I choose the full stack—six pancakes, side of bacon, sunny-side up eggs, and hash browns. Thalassa orders the same, plus hash browns “scattered and smothered.”
When Bouffant leaves, I lean in close. “You like your hash browns like you like you, huh?”
She laughs so hard that her eyes water. “Yeah, maybe.”
Food hits the table in under four minutes.
The pancakes’ diameter is the width of my laptop, edges crisp, middles fluffy enough to qualify as foam insulation.
I drown them in syrup, carve a bite, fork it in—and halt, fork midair on the way back down.
Memory fireworks hit like lightning. Midnight hackathons, friends hunched over code, me bragging that a perfect pancake is pure algorithm—equal parts heat, rest, and patience.
Flavor bursts like brown-butter sunshine. I make an indecent noise, and I don’t even care. Fuck. Thalassa’s eyes sparkle. She waits until I swallow, then says, “Worth leaving downtown?”
Instead of words, I lean across the table and kiss her. Sticky syrup transfers. She makes a startled squeak that turns into a giggle against my mouth. When I sit back, Bouffant is tapping her order pad on the counter and smirking. But she doesn’t interfere.
We dig in. Thalassa demolishes her stack with gleeful pragmatism, drizzling ketchup on hash browns, collecting syrup runoff with bacon. At one point a dollop of ketchup lands on her cheek. I reach forward with a napkin, but she beats me to it—smears the same ketchup onto the tip of my nose.
“Saboteur,” I accuse, wiping it off.
“That means I’m dangerous, right?” she teases through a mouthful of potato.
I throw a rogue blueberry at her plate, and she counters with a syrup-soaked crumb. Bouffant sashays over, hands on hips. “Children, rein it in long enough to inhale the rest before it goes cold, huh?”
“Yes, ma’am,” Thalassa and I chorus, trying not to laugh. Bouffant tops our coffees, mumbling “young love” under her breath.
Young. Love. The words land unexpected, fizzing like baking soda in vinegar. My chest tightens—not unpleasant, but acute. I’m thirty-seven. My last long-term relationship ended when I realized she didn’t know Goku from Aang. Since then, it’s been a sugar-baby parade, emotionless and clean.
Dating is setting yourself up for disappointment.
Sugar babies are temporary fun, and that’s all I want these days. Sort of.
An alert pops up on my lock screen—Marcus. Need CapEx variance by noon. Because of course he does. I silence it, heart rate stumbling. Marcus’s ghost wedged itself beside me the moment we stepped into the hotel last night. Sixty-plus years at the company, still treats the budget as his sacrament.
I glance at Thalassa. She’s cutting pancakes into explicit hexagons, humming off-key. A weird ache mixes with the pleasant caffeine buzz. Guilt for ignoring Marcus? Or the opposite—for wishing he’d retire so I could fix what matters?
She notices my jaw tighten. “Work?”
“Dinosaurs.” The word slips out. Her eyebrow arches. So I explain, “Our CFO is sweet, stubborn, and allergic to upgrades. Last night’s outage was absolutely preventable.”
“He’s been CFO since the dinosaurs?”
“At least since before Reagan.” I stab bacon. “Replacing him would be mutiny.”
“Sometimes mutiny saves the ship.” She shrugs, matter-of-fact.
I chuckle. “You’ve clearly never seen the Marcus glare. He glares entire P&L statements into submission.”
She tilts her head. “I bet you can build a case strong enough to retire one treacherous budget line item.”
Her simple faith floors me more than any corporate pep talk. “I hope you’re right.”
My plate is a graveyard of syrup stains and bacon crumbs. I lean back, stretch. Thalassa licks her fork—no pretense—and catches me staring. The grin she offers is equal parts shy and wicked.
Bouffant leaves the check with a single eyebrow raised.
I drop too many fifties and slide out of the booth.
Thalassa stands, and I catch her waist, pull her flush.
Over her shoulder, I see the neon sign flicker.
The sunrise glare washes the booths gold.
She rests a hand on my chest, kisses me softly, syrup-sweet.
The kiss deepens, and the world narrows.
Behind us, Bouffant clears her throat, louder this time. “Save room for dessert, kids, but eat it somewhere without a health code.”
We laugh, break apart. Thalassa wipes her rosy mouth. “Yes, ma’am.”
Out front, the wind picks up, riffling her braid. She hooks her arm through mine while I call a ride. “Best pancakes ever?”
“Without question.” The warmth of her tucked elbow feels like a secret. “Thank you for remembering the thing I said about diners.”
She shrugs, cheeks pink. “It was important to you.”
Simple. True. Someone listened and did something with the data, no strings. My chest pinches again. Dangerous territory.
Our ride arrives. We slide into the sun-warmed backseat silence—hands laced, thumbs tracing idle loops.
As we merge onto the highway, the skyline glittering ahead, Thalassa leans her head on my shoulder, and I let the promise of what-if hum louder than the fear.
Silly fantasies built on a fantasy weekend.
At the hotel’s curb, the doorman opens our car door with ceremony.
Thalassa whispers thanks, tucks stray hair behind her ear.
I palm a folded bill for the driver, then hold the lobby door wide for her.
Under the chandelier, she pauses, turns, and presses a quick, chaste kiss to my cheek—like it’s the most natural thing the marble has ever witnessed.
“Full-stack success,” she says, eyes laughing.
“All thanks to you.” I fake-bow.
The elevator whooshes. Inside, she hits the button for our floor, then lays her head back on the wall, eyes closed.
I study our reflection in stainless-steel panels.
Me—a tech gremlin in last night’s T-shirt, hair still chaos.
Her—morning glow, hoodie, flannel pajama pants peeking under the hem.
We look like…us. Not a billionaire playboy and a sugar baby.
Just two people who found a diner and forgot the world.
The elevator dings. The doors part. She squeezes my hand once, then pads toward her room to shower. I watch until her door latches, pulse echoing the click.
My phone buzzes again—Marcus. I sigh, click Ignore , then reopen DevOps Slack. Everyone’s applauding stable metrics. Small victories. I owe the team cronuts.
Inside my suite, I shrug off my hoodie and boot up my laptop.
Before budgets, I open a blank doc and start a proposal about Starconnector.
I save it. The file name autofills default Untitled 1 .
I rename it MutinyPlan_v1 . My finger hovers, thinking of Thalassa’s half smile covered in syrup.
What was I doing again? Right. The proposal. I save it and make coffee.
Once the nectar of the gods is in hand, I begin writing the case strong enough to retire a dinosaur. Hopefully. If Marcus hates it, so be it. Some revolutions start with syrup on your cheek.
I laugh under my breath, a sound lighter than I’ve heard from myself in months, and let the keys clack into morning.