The Boyfriend Algorithm, page 8
You’re thinking you want to spend time alone with him.
Lord, she was an idiot.
“I don’t know if I can do this, G.” Charlie wished the late afternoon sunlight wasn’t quite so unforgiving. Tonight’s camisole was even skimpier than yesterday’s tank top. With all the bare flesh of her upper chest and arms exposed, she felt as conspicuous as a bioluminescent fungus.
“You managed fine yesterday.”
“Only because I unleashed a little Bertha.”
“So do it again.”
Charlie stared at him. “At dinner? I couldn’t. The likelihood of an unfortunate food-flinging event is too great.”
“You’re overthinking this. You’re not asking him to pledge his undying love. Just remain on speaking terms for the next month.”
“I know.” She plucked at the hem of the micro-shirt. “But it’s all so… so artificial.”
“Nonsense. Like I tell my clients, a beautiful web design doesn’t compensate for lack of content, but content alone can’t attract customers to your site. You, my darling, are chock full of content. Your presentation layer needs a little adjusting, that’s all.” He snapped his fingers. “I almost forgot. The overshirt.”
Reprieve. “There’s an overshirt?”
He heaved a sigh. “Of course there’s an overshirt. That blue with the black pants screams bruise. Not the effect we’re going for.” Gideon ducked into Lindsay’s room and returned with a wisp of chiffon.
She held the object between a finger and thumb. “Why even bother? I might as well show up naked.” She slipped it over her head.
He squinted at her with one eye as if he were considering naked as a valid option. “No. Too distracting. You need him to pay enough attention to engage in the next scrimmage.” He stood back and studied her, his hands clasped under his chin. “Fabulous. What I wouldn’t give to see his face when he gets his first look at you.”
“Looking wasn’t the problem. It was talking that got us both into trouble. I’m not sure I can manage a conversation without another freakazoid episode.” The odds were even whether the freak would be her or Daniel. “And it’s so stupid. I mean, we used to talk all the time. Just not, you know, date stuff.”
“Oh please.” He fluffed her curls. “You can natter on about entity-relationship diagrams for hours.”
“So?”
“Sooo.” Gideon hit her with his don't-be-a-doofus expression. “He's an entity. You're an entity. Relate. Just relax. Enjoy yourself. Go for the zing.”
“The zing, huh?”
“Yes. Right here.” He thumped his sternum. “Possibly other places as well, but I can’t speak for girl parts.”
Charlie’s midsection contracted as if she were about to absorb a roundhouse kick. It won’t come to that. It’s only a fake Stage Two. But some rebellious part of her brain whispered, Go for the zing. You know you want to. Experience it at least once.
For statistical purposes only, of course.
“You’re assuming I’ll get beyond hello.”
“Seriously, Charles, do I need to come with you and hold your feet to the conversational fire?”
She cringed at the thought of Gideon in battle mode. “Oh lord, please no.”
“Then put your game face on and deal.” He checked his manicure. “I’m off. Clubbing awaits.” He kissed her cheek. “I shall drink an extra margarita in your honor.”
“You’d drink an extra margarita anyway,” Charlie grumbled.
He paused in the doorway and looked back over his shoulder. “A point. Ah, well. Don’t wait up for me.” He disappeared down the hallway.
Charlie pressed her hands against her middle where a dozen centipedes had suddenly started break dancing.
The outfit—the shirt, the open-toed shoes, the alleged overshirt—all of it was designed to expose. To flaunt. Ironic, considering how the revealing clothes concealed her real self. She needed something of her own. Something hidden. A tether to tie her to her life while she ventured out on this month-long EVA into virtual reality.
She opened her underwear drawer and unearthed the box with her silver and lapis TARDIS earrings, a present to herself when she’d gotten her statistics Master’s. She put them on and tugged a few curls forward, hiding the earrings in the thicket of her hair. When she shook her head experimentally, the little police boxes swung, tugging on her earlobes with unfamiliar weight.
“I’m the Doctor,” she assured the wide-eyed stranger in the mirror. “And I can do this.”
Geekronym: I/O
Translation: Input/Output
Definition: Computer system communication. “Inputs” are signals or data received by the computer; “outputs” are the signals or data sent from it.
In the last half hour, while Daniel had worn a groove in the sidewalk in front of Cafe Niccolo, the traffic down 23rd had picked up as Portlanders trolled for dinner and drinks.
The fifth time he wiped his damp palms on the outside of his khakis, he regretted not opting for darker-colored pants. At this rate, by the time Charlie arrived, he’d look as if he’d been strolling through a car wash.
When was the last time he’d been this on-edge about a date? Even in the early days with Trisha, before the doubt had set in, he’d never felt this keyed up, as if he were poised on the brink of a life-altering event.
He had to believe neither he nor Charlie had changed so much that they couldn’t find their old connection. But after last night, no more taking shit for granted. This time, he’d get it right.
He turned from his last patrol to the corner and there she was, the floaty material of her shirt drifting around her like multi-colored smoke. She stopped a couple of yards away and made a big production out of looking around the street, up in the trees, under cars.
Holy crap. When she bent over, the view from both front and back sent his blood pounding in areas he’d prefer to keep restrained in public.
He cleared his throat and grasped his wrist in front of his crotch to avoid advertising his lack of control. Portland might be the city of the Naked Bike Ride, but he didn’t have the permits for this kind of personal display.
“Lose something?”
She checked behind a bush. “The new man I was supposed to meet. Did you see anyone with a red rose wander past?” The smile that flickered across her face was the adult version of her mischievous childhood grin. Another layer melted off his icy core and the tension in his shoulders eased.
“Sorry. Guess you’ll have to make do with me.” She chuckled, and he gestured toward the entrance. “Shall we?”
When their knuckles collided as they both reached for the handle at once, she flushed, her mouth quirking in a lopsided smile.
“Sorry. I mean, um, thanks. But you don’t have to open doors for me.”
He stood aside to let her precede him. “Maybe not in your reality.”
“My reality.” Her laugh was strangled, and she touched the side of her face under her hair before she ducked through the door.
The host met Daniel’s gaze over the top of Charlie’s head and flashed a surreptitious thumbs-up, shielded by the side of his podium. He pulled out two menus and a wine list with an unnecessary flourish. “Right this way.”
They followed him, Daniel’s hand hovering at the small of Charlie’s back, the urge to touch nearly overwhelming. No. Too intimate. Don’t assume, you ass. Instead, he dropped his hands to his sides as they trailed after the host, whose route through the restaurant seemed designed to take them past every occupied table like a foodie conga line.
“Voilá. Your table.” He posed next to the four-top in the corner as if waiting for the ooh of the crowd.
He sure wasn’t getting it from Charlie.
She couldn’t miss the two dozen roses dominating the table, the ones Daniel had trusted to the host to set up this scenario. Her lips parted and her eyes widened, and half the restaurant erupted into applause.
Daniel cleared his throat. “Roses. As promised.” Instead of the smile of appreciation he’d hoped for, he caught the sheen of tears in her eyes. “A rose. Only one. You… you promised.”
He glanced from her tight-lipped face to the giant bouquet. Shit. Wrong choice again. “I, uh, figured I had a lot of ground to make up.”
She took a deep breath and dropped into the seat furthest from him, although from the look on her face, he suspected she’d have preferred to sit at another table altogether. When she accepted the menu from the bewildered host, it shook with the trembling of her hand.
A waiter glided over and set a basket of crusty bread on the corner of the table. “My goodness. Someone certainly knows how to make a statement.”
Charlie sank lower in her chair, turning her head toward the window and holding up the menu to shield her profile. “Lord.”
Her murmur was barely as loud as the gurgle of water as the waiter filled their glasses, but he must have caught it. He cast a sharp glance at Daniel and set his pitcher down on a nearby empty table.
“As gorgeous as these are, if we keep them here, you won’t have any room for your plates, especially if you order the appetizer special, which, by the way, I highly recommend.” He picked up the vase. “How about I put them behind the host’s stand and you can pick them up on the way out?”
The look of relief and gratitude on Charlie’s face when he removed the bouquet had Daniel grinding his molars. He’d wanted that my-hero look directed at him, although with less of a thank-you-for-saving-me-from-certain-death flavor and more of a where-have-you-been-for-the-last-half-of-my-life.
“Charlie?” Daniel said. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
She peeked at him from behind her menu shield. “Nothing that a really deep hole or a plus-seven cloak of invisibility wouldn’t cure.”
If Daniel didn't know better, he'd think she was shy. But Charlie had never been shy, fearlessly pursuing science and math throughout grade school in defiance of the not-so-subtle cues that girls belonged with books and dolls, not calculators and test tubes.
He leaned toward her, keeping his voice low. “Sorry. Guess I went a little over the top.”
Charlie heaved a sigh that fluttered the flame of the candle in the middle of the table and lowered her menu. “It’s not you. It’s me. Never mind. I’ll recover.”
The waiter reappeared sans roses. “All set. Now, can I tell you about the specials? Get you something to drink while you decide?”
“Do you have any hemlock on tap?” Charlie muttered.
He winked at her. “Not tonight. Only on Mondays. You like red wine?” Charlie nodded and scooted up in her chair. “Then trust me, I’ve got just the thing.”
“Make it two,” Daniel said.
The misery on her face socked him right in the solar plexus. You’ve ruined another evening for her. Fucking brilliant. He was about to offer to take her home when her expression changed. She sat up straight, her attention focused on the dessert case near the entrance. The militant gleam in her eye was reminiscent of the time she’d caught one of their classmates tormenting a stray kitten.
“Excuse me for a minute, please?” She got up and hurried over to a slender, dark-haired man dressed in a fusion of GQ style and Portland hipster chic. Daniel couldn’t hear what she said, but she punctuated her words with quick jabs of her finger at the man’s face. He put one hand on his chest and made a who-me face that wouldn’t fool a toddler. Charlie’s hands fell to her sides and her shoulders drooped.
Apparently, Daniel wasn’t the only one in her disappointment crosshairs tonight. The knowledge wasn’t as reassuring as he’d expected.
Charlie crowded close enough to Gideon to avoid being overheard by the host. “What the hell are you doing here? I thought you were going clubbing.”
“I was. But just as I was about to hit the dance floor with a perfectly adorable guy, I was consumed by an insatiable desire for bread pudding.”
“Uh-huh.”
He widened his eyes in faux innocence. “What? It could happen to anyone. But since I’m here…” He leaned closer, lowering his voice to a stage whisper. “How’s it going?”
Charlie heaved a mega-sigh. “Not well. Another direct hit by the humiliation torpedoes.” She glanced back at the table where Daniel chatted with the waiter who had returned with the wine. “Shields at 17 percent and falling. I think we’re running incompatible operating systems.”
“Then stop mixing your geek metaphors and build an interface, for pity’s sake.” He marched across the restaurant, chin high.
An interface. I wish. If only she could, she’d boot up a VR-Charlie, the native life form of this Virtual Reality, the place where a VR-Daniel hadn’t abandoned her. Where he magically knew better than to subject her to public scrutiny.
She caught sight of the enormous bunch of roses in back of the host's podium, the very definition of inappropriate magnitude.
The last time someone had made this extravagant a gesture had been during that stupid entrepreneurial development class at UO. The professor loved to promote cut-throat competition. Grades were based partly on who won the skirmishes, with the highest grade going to the last geek standing.
Her own teammates had colluded with the enemy, forming alliances to expressly exclude her. They'd tried to distract her with a too-convivial celebration and a humongous balloon bouquet, which she'd been forced to carry all the way across campus. While she liberated the balloons behind her dorm, her entire semester's code base had mysteriously disappeared from the computer lab's servers only to mysteriously reappear the next day in the rival team's presentation.
Within the parameters of the class, her team tossing her under the bus had been perfectly legal, even admirable.
Good thing she always kept backups.
Good thing she'd booby-trapped her code.
Because if Charlie understood anything, she understood that the only person she could truly count on was herself. Well, Lindsay and Toshiko and Gideon, maybe. Although as she stumbled across the restaurant in Gideon's wake, she was seriously wondering whether Gideon had gone over to the Dark Side.
She slid into her seat as Gideon draped himself in the chair opposite her, next to Daniel, daring her with a double arch of his brows over his turquoise frames
“Planning to introduce me to your friend?”
Charlie held her breath. This was one of her tests for adding candidates to her data matrix. If they reacted badly to Gideon—even when he deliberately provoked them by donning his exaggerated flame disguise—they were out. Despite Daniel’s continued obtuseness, she didn’t want him to be that kind of guy.
Daniel smiled, a glint in his eye that spoke of amusement, not disgust, and held out his hand. “Daniel Shawn.”
“Gideon Wallace. I’m sure Charles has mentioned me.”
“As a matter of fact, no.”
Gideon turned to her in mock outrage. “I’m crushed. Are you hiding me, darling? Ashamed of our love?”
She couldn’t prevent a grin. “Shut up, idiot. Believe it or not, the subject hasn’t come up.”
“Well, we’d best remedy that. I’m the other roommate. The good-looking one.”
The waiter materialized next to the table, another menu in his hand. “A third for dinner?”
“No,” Charlie said at the same time Gideon said, “Yes.”
Daniel grinned. “Why not?”
“I’ll have the seafood risotto, my pet, and a glass of the Semillon.”
“You’ve got it, G.” He and Gideon shared a smirk. Seriously? Do all the waiters in Portland know Gideon? “How about the two of you?”
Charlie winced. She still hadn’t read the menu. “I’ll have, um, the same. Except, you know, not the wine because—” She picked up her glass, the fruity aroma heady enough to intoxicate on its own. Better not indulge. She was already functionally impaired by Daniel’s proximity. She set the glass down again.
“The rib eye for me.” Daniel collected Charlie’s discarded menu and handed it back, along with his own.
Gideon waited until the waiter retreated before wiggling his butt in his chair, scooting closer Daniel. “So tell me, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Devastating, what’s a bad boy like you doing in a place like this?”
Daniel’s eyes widened, and his head drew back as if Gideon had threatened him with his salad fork. “Who says I’m bad?”
“Please,” Gideon scoffed. “An unattached man of your age who looks like you? You’re either gay, sociopathic, or bad, aka commitment-averse. I can tell you’re not gay, more’s the pity. As I understand, you groveled nicely last night after dickhead behavior, so not sociopathic. Hence, bad.” He leaned his chin on his fingers. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
“You’re wrong.” Daniel held up his wineglass in an air toast and took a sip.
Gideon pressed one hand over his heart. “You’re gay?”
Daniel laughed. “No, sorry to disappoint.”
“Sociopathic? God, psychopathic?” Gideon turned and clutched Charlie’s arm. “Charles, hide the steak knives or this could turn into a bloodbath worthy of a Grimm season finale.”
“Gideon.” Charlie eyed Daniel, checking for signs of disgust or horror, but his mouth curled in a grin and the corners of his eyes crinkled.
“Maybe I’m just a late bloomer,” Daniel said.
“Hmmm.” Gideon tapped his chin, eyes narrowing. “I’ll grant you that, conditionally. When was your last relationship?”
“Gideon!” Lord, that awful video. That dreadful woman. No matter what Daniel had done last night or tonight, he didn’t deserve to be reminded of that. But Daniel only chuckled and shook his head.
“Not much to report.” He swirled the wine in his glass and took another sip. “If you want to get technical, my last real relationship was with Charlie.”
Charlie stopped giving Gideon the stink-eye to goggle at Daniel. “Me? Since when?”
“There’s no deeper connection than the one between a boy and his science partner.”
