Page 34 of Debugging Love

My sternness flusters her. She dabs the napkin to her lips and then something in her head clicks. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she says hurriedly. “You said your parents are rich—“

“I know what you meant. I know what a dryer is. We have them in India.”

She looks confused now.

“Yeah. I read your little note. I hang my clothes on the deck railing because I like them to smell like fresh air.”

“I had no idea you were Indian when I wrote that note. I thought you were a White guy with poor musical tastes and horrible manners. I only wrote the sentence about dryers and America because it sounded punchy. I was on a roll. And I wasn’t implying anything about India when I said you grew up in a pigsty. Not at all.”

“And yet, it was highly inappropriate and culturally insensitive, wasn’t it?”

The muscles in Danni’s face harden. She lets out a huff, grabs her purse, and stands. As she’s sprinting out of the bar, her friend calls her name.

“Danni! What’s wrong?”

I feel a meaty hand on my shoulder. Bruce gives me a couple of pats. “I think you made a good first impression,” he says.

I chug the rest of my Sprite, swallowing down my regret. I didn’t mean to chase her away. She just struck a reflexive nerve. Maybe I could have handled it better.

The party breaks up soon after. I’m not sure if my tiff with Danni caused it. Regardless, I’m relieved. The pleased look on Jeb’s face tells me he’s relieved too.

Once again, I drive from downtown to my apartment with visions of Danni dancing in my head. This time I relive the moment she glared at me and then ran out of the bar.

When I pull into my parking spot at Wild Oaks, her car is already there, empty. I peer up at her living room window after I cut the engine. Her vertical blinds are closed.

They’re usually open.

I slowly ease out of my car, wander up the stairs, unlock my front door, and head to the freezer for a Ham & Cheese Hot Pocket. Two minutes later, I’m holding a steaming pastry that will hold me over until I fix a proper dinner. If I fix a proper dinner.

In Austin, my after-work routine involved a couple of hours of gaming, maybe longer. It’s no different here. I fire up Call of Duty and get lost in a world of gun-toting soldiers, thoroughly corrupting my brain with digitally generated blood and violence. That’s what Mom would say.

I think she’s wrong. The game puts me on autopilot, clears my head, gives me space to think. When I’ve had enough for the day, I shut down the game and pull up JustInCase.xlsx.

Maybe Danni was telling the truth. Maybe she had no idea I was Indian when she wrote that line about America and clothes dryers. I knowInever saw her wandering around the apartment complex before our date.

I put a negative ten in the Racist column. Satisfied, I stand and stretch. In the kitchen, I pull out my rice steamer and a jar of pre-made chicken masala sauce. While the rice is cooking, I pour the sauce into a pan with some leftover chicken and let it simmer.

If she didn’t know I was Indian, then she isn’t as racist as I thought; therefore, her comment about me growing up in a sewer pipe might not have been culturally motivated. She was going for a hardcore burn, and it worked. Just not in the way she intended.

I sigh and head back to my computer.

JustInCase.xslx is still open. I bend over my keyboard and change Danni’s Racist column to negative five. It doesn’t totally absolve her. And it only takes her total to 47, which is still under my callback threshold. Nothing has changed.

As I cross to the bedroom, I notice my overflowing trash can, promptly walk over to it, stuff down the trash and remove the bag, carry the bag outside and plop it beside my door. I’ll take it down to the dumpster when I feel like it.

After brushing my palms together a few times, I hop back inside, slam the door behind me, and whistle my way to bed.

Chapter 8

Danni

“What happened?” Morgan says from my phone. We’re FaceTiming. I’m looking at the underside of her cabinets and a sliver of her ceiling as she busies herself in the kitchen. “Why was your face so red when you left? It looked like you were crying.”

“I wasn’t.” I nearly was. “Did anyone else see me?”

“A few of us did.”

“Wonderful.”

---