Chapter Ten
Ten
I did what Joanna said. I put the dress on and even accessorized it with my favorite pair of fringe earrings, which Joanna had beaded for me. They were made with several different shades of green, and I was pretty sure she gifted them to me so I would stop carrying around the lizard. These were a better representation of her work and skill, but I would take that lizard with me to the grave. I shook out my hair at the roots, really getting in there with my fingers to bring some more life into it after a day at the office. Looking at myself in the mirror, I was almost ready, I just needed a little dab of blush on my cheeks to brighten my face. There. I looked great. But I couldn’t get myself to walk out my bedroom door. A part of me wanted to put my other clothes back on because this was asking for trouble. I had enough lies to keep track of, and I did not want Danuwoa to become one of them.
I had my big-girl panties on. This didn’t have to mean anything. He could say no. That would not define my night. We were celebrating me and this new job. I twisted the doorknob and stepped into the unknown. If Danuwoa had plans, who cared? So what if I thoroughly embarrassed myself? Didn’t matter. I was now an interim executive assistant to the chief executive officer of our company. I had no idea what I was supposed to do for a CEO, but I did know my bank account would be better for it. It made me untouchable to Gary, and Danuwoa got to witness this triumph. So, if he didn’t want to go out drinking, that didn’t really matter, because I was moving up.
Joanna said I had five minutes, and I had underestimated how badly a tipsy Joanna could make a mess of things. She had Danuwoa sitting on our couch, both laptops open next to him, and Joanna was modeling her wig collection.
“This one is my champagne wig. It only comes out on special occasions,” she explained as she tenderly wrapped the platinum synthetic hair in wrapping paper and placed it back in its designated ziplock bag. That was her expensive wig—it cost fifty dollars—so she refused to wear it in any dirty dive bar. She had only let me wear it once, and that was just a quick moment to see what I would look like with platinum blonde hair. It looked bad. I was a brunette for life.
Danuwoa was giving her his polite attention, but as soon as he noticed me, Joanna was forgotten. He took me in from head to toe like he wanted to devour me. After he looked his fill, his eyes met mine and he smiled. Never in my life had I been so earnestly checked out. It was silly, but I wanted him to always look at me this way. He scrambled up off the couch. “Everything is all set. I don’t want to keep you from your night out.”
“Thank you for doing that,” I said and paused, wringing my hands together. “Would you want to come out with us? I’d love to buy you a drink as a proper thank-you.”
“I had a beer,” he said and shoved his hands into his pockets and looked down.
“I promise to get you something better than Milwaukee’s Best.”
“It’s the best Milwaukee has to offer.” We smiled like dumb teenagers.
“God, I can’t listen to this. Are we going? I have our ride outside.” Joanna packed her wigs into their storage bin and closed the lid.
“I can’t stay out too late, but I could stand another drink.”
“Skoden!” Joanna marched to the front door and threw it open, disappearing into the now dusky evening.
Danuwoa sat in the passenger seat of the silver sedan Lyft while Joanna and I sat in the back. The car smelled like stale Pringles, the sour-cream-and-onion kind, and cigarettes.
It wasn’t a long drive to our favorite bar, the Moonshine Pub. It was run-down, the sign was ridiculous, and the LARPing nerds frequented the place on Thursday nights. There were no Renaissance-costumed people on Fridays. Abe, the Friday bartender, had a generous pour.
Danuwoa was silently taking it all in as Joanna and I made our way to the bar.
“My chicas are here!” Abe sang as he set down our usual orders. Joanna drank whiskey, straight, like a cowboy who had seen some shit. I was a child. I had a Dirty Shirley. I liked my cocktails so sweet that I couldn’t taste the alcohol and I had always limited myself to one.
I patted the empty bar stool to my right and yelled over the music, “Tell Abe what you want.”
“Whatever beer on tap is good.” Danuwoa sat next to me and inched his chair closer than it originally had been. I tried not to read too much into it, but those butterflies in my stomach had other plans.
Abe set the overflowing pint on the bar and was off to fulfill other orders.
Joanna raised her glass. “Cheers to Ember and her new rich-person job! Hopefully she remembers us little people when she gets a house and 401(k)!”
My red drink was still up in the air with Danuwoa’s beer when Joanna kicked back the entire contents of her whiskey and let out a “Yow!”
We were celebrating, so I didn’t warn her to slow down. It was Friday night, and I’d seen Joanna way drunker than this.
I took a sip through the black straw of my drink and announced my promotion. She slapped my arm in disbelief when I laid out the events of that afternoon. She looked to Danuwoa to corroborate.
“Shit, what the fuck? I always knew you were meant for bigger and better things.” She caught the eye of a woman leaning over the pool table in cutoff shorts and a Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. “You two good? I am going to make myself known to the hottie in the bad-girl number.”
“I’m fine, do you want me to wait for you to go home together?”
We all three stared as the girl exaggeratedly bent over, her butt cheeks peeking out from the shorts.
“I don’t think I’ll be home tonight. You make sure E gets in an Uber or something, safely. Got it?”
“You have my word,” he promised, then Joanna floated over to the hot chick. “Is she real?” Danuwoa asked me, bemused. I couldn’t blame him. Joanna had that effect on everyone.
“Joanna is one of a kind. Does her being openly bi offend you?”
“Hell nah, she is just so energetic. Sorry if I’m a boring companion in comparison.”
“Not at all.” I looked down at my drink, unsure of how to proceed. This wasn’t a date, and I didn’t want to start playing twenty questions. I doubted he would appreciate an interview. My mind was spiraling trying to come up with something to say when he broke the silence between us.
“How do you feel about your new promotion?”
“Nervous. I know it doesn’t seem like a lot of money, but I’ve never made so much before. I’m afraid I’ll screw it up and lose my job.”
“No way! Technix is easy. Great pay, benefits, and schedule. Just watch out for Mr. Stevenson and his moods.”
“I can handle old white men,” I lied. I mean, if one were being inappropriate with me right then, I would tell him off, but I was pretty sure you couldn’t just go and tell off your boss. Not when you needed the money. “What about you? Did you always want to work in IT?”
“I like computers and the pay is good.”
“You don’t have any lofty ambitions?”
“I work to live and that’s it. I like my free time. Not everyone wants to be some executive with all the stress and ego. I deal with that plenty if I can’t fix a problem fast enough.”
The beers must have loosened his lips, because he continued: “You know more than half the IT problems are their own damn fault? They never turn off or update their laptops, and then things freeze and crash. You really can tell what kind of person someone is when they are pissed about technology not working.”
“Is there anything worse than slow internet? When I was growing up, we couldn’t even afford to have the internet, but fast Wi-Fi is such a game changer.” I giggled behind my hand.
“Am I gonna have problems with you, Ember?” He leaned his upper body closer to me. I really hoped there would be absolutely zero problems from me, but if he kept looking at me like that, then we were in for a whole lot of problems at Technix.
“With a moody executive and technical problems bound to arise, I daresay you will.” My voice was husky. Emboldened by the Dirty Shirley, I twisted on my bar stool, and my legs were tangled in his. There was a warning siren going off in my head, but I didn’t care. Danuwoa was right here, and his undivided attention was more intoxicating than the alcohol.
“I’m pretty sure this is a bad idea.” He finished his beer, then angled his head within inches of mine. If I leaned forward, our lips would touch.
“What exactly?” If this was just hanging out as friends, then it wasn’t a problem. I really wanted to hear him spell out why we’d be a problem. That he felt something between us too.
“Romantic entanglements with coworkers go against the rules.”
“Is that what this is? I thought I was just buying you a thank-you drink for the printer,” I said, challenging him by licking my lips.
His heated eyes tracked the movement. No one had to know what happened in a dark bar. One kiss would scratch the itch, and if it was a bad kiss, then that would be the end of that. We could just be friends and blame the booze for a momentary lapse of judgment.
I leaned forward at the same time he did. His smooth, warm lips barely grazed mine, and it was electric. I wanted more—
“You guys!” Joanna yelled.
Danuwoa and I broke apart, the moment gone and lost.
Joanna came bouncing back, dragging the girl from the pool table by the hand. “This is Donna.”
“Hi,” Donna sang in her southern drawl.
“We’re leaving, but you two have fun, okay?” Joanna hugged me and winked, and then she was off.
Danuwoa and I sat at the bar, me nursing my red fizzy drink and him looking anywhere but at me. I knew we should not have crossed this line. Now it was awkward. We’d almost kissed. Our lips barely touched, but now he looked very much like he regretted it and was miserably stuck with me.
I slurped down my drink so I could call an Uber and die of mortification in the comfort of my own home.
“Would you lookie here, we got ourselves a real Indian,” a drunk man’s voice slurred behind me. I thought he was talking about me, but when I turned, two frat boys wearing solid-colored polos and boat shoes were staring at Danuwoa. One stood behind Danuwoa, and the other was on his right side, leaning an arm against the bar.
“Tell us, Indian man, can you go outside and do a rain dance? It’s getting hot out there,” the one wearing the blue polo said as his friend in the white polo snickered. They looked the same, like generic rich white boys from OU. Their buddies at a high-top behind us were egging them on.
“You had your laugh. Can you please leave me alone?” Danuwoa rolled his eyes and turned toward me.
The blue polo guy behind us started talking in that Hollywood Injun speak, deep with broken English. “The stoic Indian, me wise man, leave alone.” I still hadn’t forgiven Johnny Depp for doing it in The Lone Ranger .
“Just ignore them and hopefully they’ll go away.” I threw the last part over my shoulder, making sure the frat twins heard me.
“How long did it take you to grow this braid?” Blue Shirt held Danuwoa’s braid in his disgustingly racist hands. I felt incensed. No one—and I mean no one—but family touched our hair. Danuwoa saw the steam coming from my ears as I stood up, ready to engage these dicks.
Before I could move more than an inch, Danuwoa’s arm snaked around my waist, and he pulled me in close. I was practically in his lap. “It’s not worth it.” His whisper sent a shiver down my neck.
“Can we go?” I whispered back, my mouth inches from his. I couldn’t be here anymore. These assholes had violated our safest bar. As single women, Joanna and I didn’t have many safe places. This was the first time I’d ever encountered anything like this here.
Danuwoa stood and our bodies were pressed together. His hulking form blocked me from the drunk idiots, and he placed his hand on the small of my back, steering me toward the exit.
“What? We were just having fun! Didn’t know you were on a date with an Indian princess.” They started chanting and moving their hands to their mouths. Sometimes, I really hated Oklahoma.
I lost control of my body. I whirled on the idiots and launched a fat loogie at the leader of the pack in the blue shirt, who dared touch Danuwoa’s hair. It flew in an arc and landed right in the center of his forehead.
“Fuck! Nasty bitch.”
Danuwoa stalked over to the blue shirt guy and socked him in the gut. The man keeled over. “Time to go,” Danuwoa said. He tucked me under his arm and whisked me to the door.
“Get him,” I heard from behind us.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you. If you want to keep drinking, settle the fuck down,” Abe yelled over the noise.
The frat guys stopped following us.
Outside, Danuwoa had his phone out, ordering a ride home. His shoulders were tightly wound, like he was ready for a fight if those jerks came out looking for one.
We didn’t say anything for several moments; he just showed me his phone, and our ride was three minutes away.
“I’m so sorry, Danuwoa. Joanna and I have never experienced anything like that here. Had I known, I would never have suggested it.”
“You can’t protect us from shit like that. Racist assholes will always make themselves known. I had fun.”
I looked at him skeptically and crossed my arms.
“I had fun up until that point. Your spitting skills are…impressive.”
“I shouldn’t have done that. It was impulsive.”
“I probably shouldn’t have punched the guy. I don’t feel bad about it.”
“What a pair we make. Escalating a situation with our rash decisions.”
“We’re friends, Ember. I’m not going to let drunk assholes get away with calling you names. Let’s get you home and you can forget all about it.”
Friends. He didn’t mention the almost kiss, and I wasn’t going to bring it up. Being friends with Danuwoa was better than being nothing to him. I didn’t want to forget everything about this evening, especially not the half second when his lips brushed mine. That I wanted to replay in my head a few times before I slept.
The car ride was quiet, both of us subdued after a long day at work and dealing with jerks at the bar. We had become friends. My heart fluttered as I recalled the feel of his muscular arms around me for those brief moments.
Danuwoa broke the silence. “So, uh…Native Daddy, huh?”
“You heard?!” I was beyond mortified.
“Every word,” he said with a laugh.
“For the record, I don’t have daddy issues.”
It was dark, but the streetlights illuminated him enough. He wiggled his eyebrows. “Wanna start?”
I pushed his chest, laughing at his dumb bravado. “Shut up before I jump out of this car.”
This was bad. A romance with a coworker was doomed. I wanted to keep my job, and I really wanted to spend more time with Danuwoa. There was a way I could have both, but it would mean more lies, and I wasn’t sure if Danuwoa would be open to starting a fling and having to hide it. He wasn’t a dirty thing. I didn’t want to hide him. I was starting to think that he might be the coolest person I had ever met. This was tricky and messy and exhilarating.
We parted ways outside my apartment complex. He waited in his truck and watched me until I got in my front door. Then I heard his old truck drive off.