Chapter Nine
Nine
Phoebe was packing up her desk when Danuwoa and I got back to the twelfth floor to pick up the printer.
“Guess who has a date?” She sang her question as she twirled on her foot.
“Ember, do you have a date?” Danuwoa asked me, and I caught on.
“No, Dan, do you have a date?”
“Afraid not.” He shoved his hands in his jean pockets and turned to face me, Phoebe completely forgotten as we locked eyes.
“You guys are the worst.” Phoebe slammed her lunch bag into her backpack and continued, “I have a date with someone with a real career path. My plan is already coming together.”
“You can’t plan to marry a guy just based on his salary and title,” Danuwoa lectured. “He could be abusive, or a serial cheater.”
“Who cares? I need a starter husband.” She winked and headed to the elevator.
“How about you focus on just having fun on this date?” I asked her.
“Oh, making men fall in love with me is the fun part.”
“You’re ruthless and would really get along with my best friend.” I laughed. If Phoebe and Joanna were ever together, the world would combust with all the badass feminine energy.
“Bring her to our next happy hour,” Phoebe said.
The door to the elevator opened, and I went to the cart with the printer and started pushing it toward the door.
“Hold up—the cart doesn’t leave the building.” Danuwoa picked up the bulky printer and entered the waiting elevator.
I followed.
“Can I help? I can carry that.”
“Nah, it’s fine. You park in the employee lot, right?”
“I do,” I answered as I fidgeted with a stray thread on my tote bag. Oh, crap on a cracker. He was going to see my car.
Danuwoa walked to the back of the elevator and balanced the edge of the printer on the gold handrail. I watched his look of concentration in his brassy reflection out of the corner of my eye. Phoebe caught me looking and smirked.
“Who’s the lucky guy?” I asked to change the subject. In my experience, getting people to talk about themselves was easy, and I had no desire for her to make assumptions about Danuwoa and me. I wanted no trouble for either of us. We were here to work.
“That’s a secret for now. I don’t want to jinx it.”
We all fell silent going down. Once the elevator made it past floor five, Danuwoa asked me, “Do you have any fun plans this weekend?”
“Joanna and I are going to celebrate getting my first paycheck.” And the fact that I was just promoted and given a raise. I could not wait to tell her when I got home. I looked at Phoebe, who appeared to be in la-la land. Probably planning her starter wedding. My gut told me not to mention the promotion to her; I didn’t want to kill her buzz before her big date, and I hoped it wouldn’t ruin our budding friendship. She had really wanted the job. Danuwoa must have caught my hesitation and lack of mention of the promotion, because he flashed me a reassuring smile that awoke the butterflies in the pit of my stomach.
I’d never had a serious boyfriend or anything. I usually just had elaborate crushes on guys I had hardly ever talked to and created a false reality in my head about why the relationship never worked out. It was safer that way. Easier. I didn’t experience the heartbreak and headache of someone letting me down. If I never depended on anyone or opened up to anyone, then I never had my expectations squashed.
The beginning of one of these crushes was exciting for me. The anticipation of not knowing when a brief interaction would be. Me in my head daydreaming of that interaction later and letting my imagination play out different what-if scenarios. What if I said something flirty after I said hi? What if I was bold and just kissed him in the elevator? The last one had just popped into my head, and my cheeks felt hot. Phoebe was here, for god’s sake, but my romantic imagination couldn’t care less.
What was great about these what-if scenarios was that they weren’t real. I was safe. But right then in that elevator, my heart lurched, and this fake scenario was starting to feel not so fake. My brain did a what-if scenario of its own. What if I let someone in? What would it be like to have romantic plans on a weekend? My palms grew slick as my mind spiraled in a panic. I was not ready for any of this, and Danuwoa was completely off-limits. I basically had my dream job at Technix. Nothing could jeopardize that. Not even Danuwoa.
I hoped Joanna remembered we had plans later tonight. She was always going on spontaneous dates or hooking up with someone from an app. Some mornings I’d find an older guy in our bathroom, and others I’d find a younger woman. Joanna had no specific type. She loved love. She was addicted to the rush of it. She had more heartbreaks than I could count, and I lived through each one with her.
I was the stable one. I made sure our apartment was clean. I made sure there was food in the refrigerator, and I was always there to pick up the pieces of Joanna’s broken heart. It was the same way with Sage and me. I was always there to fix whatever Sage broke and help Auntie move on from whatever disappointment Sage dealt her.
There was no one to help them if I ever broke down. I had to be everything for everyone, and as exhausting as that was, it also defined me. I wasn’t an artist. I wasn’t a great cook. But I was dependable, and I showed up for those I loved. That had to count for something in this life.
Sometimes I just wished I could be the one to try and fail. The type of person to take risks. I mean, I did lie on my job application, and now I had more money in a single paycheck than I got for a month working at the bowling alley. Maybe there was something to this risk-taking adventure. At least there was with the little fibs that helped me along the way.
“What do you have planned for the weekend?” I asked Danuwoa.
The elevator doors opened to the main floor lobby. He let Phoebe and me out first and then followed behind with the behemoth of a printer in his arms as he answered, “Just going home to my baby.”
Phoebe cackled and said, “Bye, guys, I hope you have fun doing whatever you plan on doing with that thing.” She winked as she skipped to the front entrance.
The world stopped spinning and my brain short-circuited. I had no idea how many seconds or minutes passed, but I forced the words out of my mouth. “Oh, a baby…how nice.”
“Yup, my little rescue cat, Patches. She’s my baby.”
He was looking at me, teasing me.
A cat was worse than a baby. I hated cats.
“Oh, I love cats,” I said. I wanted to slap my palm to my forehead. There was no reason for me to lie. He wasn’t my boyfriend, so it didn’t matter. Only, I felt like it really mattered to Danuwoa, and I didn’t want to tell him that cats freaked me out and made me sneeze like crazy. “So, it’s just you and your cat hanging out all weekend?”
“I lead a pretty quiet life. I have a few things to do for my sister and that’s about it.”
“Oh.”
Danuwoa and I walked to the side door that led to our parking lot.
It was an awkward silence. I barely knew Danuwoa, and here he was carrying a heavy-ass printer for me, helping me. Were men nice for the sake of it? Or did they do things because they expected something for it? In my limited experience, it had always been the latter.
“How old is your sister?” I asked as we walked to the curb and waited for the light to allow us to cross.
“Twenty-three.”
“I have a younger brother. He’s nineteen.”
“Does he raise hell?”
“Hell is child’s play for Sage.”
Danuwoa barked a laugh, and the feeling of making him do that felt so good. I wanted to do it again. At least I could honestly relate to him in being the eldest sibling. We crossed toward the parking lot, and my nerves were having a rave in my body. I was wired and tingly, embarrassed that this guy would see that before I had this job, I was pretty much at rock bottom. At least the car was clean, not that you could tell a dirty rusted car from a clean rusted car, but the interior didn’t look like I lived in it.
“Walela is an angel,” he said, smiling to himself.
“Sisters usually are. It’s the boys that get fucked up.”
“Ha ha, very funny. Which way?”
I led him to the very far corner of the parking garage.
“Ta-da! My junker ride. I’m borrowing this car. Mine is in the shop.” It came out superfast, the lie. I don’t even know why I said this one. Danuwoa had been nothing but a sweetheart who teased me a lot. If he teased me about my poverty, I’d probably retreat into myself and never come out again.
He just looked at me with that one quirky eyebrow raised in confusion, while he balanced the ancient printer in his arms.
“I don’t think this will fit in your trunk. Does the passenger seat fold down?”
He didn’t react or care at all. If Joanna were here, she would remind me that men don’t care about things like what kind of car you drive. I rolled my eyes at the imaginary Joanna in my head. “It does, but then it won’t go back up.” I smiled sheepishly.
“Bricktown isn’t far.” He started walking away with my printer, presumably to his own car.
Oof. That. Shit.
“I’m not in Bricktown…anymore…”
This man just smiled with fire in his eyes. “Oh yeah? Move recently, did ya?”
“Yes, I did.”
“And no mention you were moving during lunch at all in these two weeks?”
“It must have just slipped my mind.”
“Where did you move to?” He knew I’d lied, but I couldn’t come clean. I wouldn’t. It would be too embarrassing.
“I’m southwest of the city, near the airport.”
Danuwoa turned swiftly on his heel, a feat that seemed impossible given the sheer weight of the printer. “I’ll follow you home and drop it off for you.”
“You really don’t have to do that. We can fold my seat down. No one ever wants to drive with me in my crap car anyway.”
He stopped and turned. “I thought you were borrowing the car.”
I forced my face to stay neutral and not give anything away, but I wanted the parking garage cement to open up beneath my feet and swallow me whole.
“I am. It’s an extended loan because I needed money to fix my car.”
“Uh-huh.” He wasn’t buying it, but he continued walking.
He was four parking spots away and stopped at the bed of an old hunter-green Chevy truck and opened the tailgate. He slid the bulky gray printer onto the bed. I stood in awe as he began strapping bungee cables to it. So we were doing this then. I was taking him to my apartment, and Joanna would never let me live it down for the rest of my days. Henceforth, this Friday shall be referred to as the day I, Ember Lee Cardinal, brought home the world’s hottest man.
He slammed the tailgate closed and said, “Let’s go.”
Safe in my car I breathed deep. “Please start. Please start. Please start,” I prayed to Creator as I turned over the key. There was a pause, and my heart sank to my stomach, but mercifully the engine turned over. I tried to calm my nerves as I inched the car to the exit, waiting for Danuwoa.
When he was behind me and the road was clear, I pressed the gas a little too fast. On a loud scream, the tires of my car burned out of the parking lot, leaving skid marks on the asphalt. I had twenty minutes to get my ass together. Immediately I dialed Joanna.
She picked up on the first ring. “You on your way, bitch? I got the pregame started, ow-ow!”
Drunk Joanna was basically useless for the task I had for her. “Put the drink down and listen. I have our IT guy following me home—”
“Shit! Are you in trouble? What the fuck? A stalker?”
“No, I am bringing him home—”
“You’re bringing a boy home! Is this that good-looking guy, Daaannn?” She sang his name.
“Yes. His looks are irrelevant. He’s bringing a printer from the office.”
“Oh, boo.”
“Listen, please. I need you to get all the bras that are hang-drying out of the bathroom. Throw them somewhere out of sight. Then I need you to just tidy up as quickly as you can. Can you do that for me? Pretty please? And don’t make that face.”
“You can’t see my face,” she huffed.
“I know the face you make when I mention cleaning of any kind.”
“You worry too much. I’ll make sure your bras are out of sight, but know that the man has already noticed your membership in the itty-bitty titty committee.” Joanna laughed and hung up on me.
I threw my cell into my tote bag on the passenger seat and flipped it off. Joanna couldn’t see it, but it felt good anyway. My boobs were not that small.
When we pulled up to the apartment complex, I wished it weren’t daylight saving time. It was still bright out after five in the evening, and the sun illuminated everything wrong and ugly with the building. But hey, $875 a month for two bedrooms was a steal. And now with my check easily covering my portion, that new car fund was stacking!
I parked behind Joanna and rushed to the street to meet Danuwoa. My phone began ringing. He was probably confused.
Oklahoma County Detention Center popped up on my phone screen. Nope. Not today. I declined the call. Sage was probably calling to ask for more money on his commissary account or something again. He could wait a day or two. I threw my cell back in my tote and waved Danuwoa to park on the street.
Printer in tow, I led him up to our second-floor apartment. It was such a drag when hauling groceries or laundry, but at least we didn’t have to hear anyone above us.
“You can go ahead and drop it over there.” I pointed to the corner of our sparsely furnished living room. There was no way it would fit in my bedroom, and we had no desk or anything to place the printer on top of.
I heard Danuwoa’s grunt as he put it down, bending his knees and back. I felt really guilty making him lug that around for me. He opened his backpack and took out cords. “Do you know how to set this up?”
Joanna came bursting out of her room like a bat from hell. “Where’s this guy at?”
Poor Danuwoa looked absolutely terrified, frozen with the cords lifted in midair.
“ Hello again, want a drink?”
“Joanna, we are all in the six-hundred-square-foot apartment. You do not need to yell.”
“Sorry, you know when I drink I can’t gauge my volume at all. Is this better?” Her whisper was over-the-top.
“Much.” I rolled my eyes and gave my attention back to the ever-helpful and ridiculously patient Danuwoa. “I have no idea how to set it up, but I can probably find a video online. You have done more than enough for me today.”
“I’ll take a beer,” he said over my head to a waiting Joanna.
“My kinda man,” she said, her tone appreciative and seductive. That bothered me. My body reacted as if I had heard nails on a chalkboard. I’d have to examine my reaction to that later, because Danuwoa was sitting on our old nasty brown carpet and plugging in wires.
“How many computers need to be hooked up to this?” he asked.
“Just two laptops, but if you don’t mind showing me how on one, I can figure out the other.”
He paused what he was doing and leveled a look at me. I was fairly certain I couldn’t read minds, but with Danuwoa, his eyes were so open. I could see exactly what he was thinking without him having to say a word.
His eyes said, Shut up already.
I narrowed mine in response. Don’t tell me what to do. I’m trying to be nice and respectful of your time.
He curled up a single eyebrow and won the silent exchange. You think you could make me do anything I didn’t want to do?
The hiss of the cracked beer can cleared the mounting tension.
“Order up!” Joanna handed the beer to Danuwoa. “E, can I steal you for a moment?” She overexaggerated her blinks. I thought she was trying to wink. She was three sheets to the wind, and Danuwoa chuckled.
I walked to my room, Joanna on my heels.
“I remember him being good-looking.”
“He is good-looking.” I threw my hands up.
“Wrong. He is the Native Daddy of our girly fantasies,” Joanna said, then burped.
“You are being so loud right now.” My index fingers were drilling holes into my temples with how much I was rubbing them out of mortification.
“Pfft, he can’t hear us.” She pushed me aside and headed straight to my closet. “We need to get you into something cute. You’re inviting him out, aren’t you?”
“I’m sure he has better things to do.” And he would probably say no since it wasn’t allowed. This would not be a company-sanctioned outing.
“Right now, he is in our living room hooking up the oldest fucking piece of machinery I’ve ever seen—voluntarily. I think he would be down to go out.”
“Joanna,” I warned.
“What’s the problem? You like him.”
“I could get fired and I just got this job.”
“It’s not a date and nobody has to know.”
She threw my best sundress onto my perfectly made bed. It was white with a square neckline, fitted waist, and a slight flair to the A-line skirt that went just below my knees.
“Put it on and shake out your hair. We’ll see you out there in five minutes. I need to get laid tonight, and I can’t do that if I am worrying about you being alone in a bar. So, entice him to say yes.”