Page 105 of Debugging Love

She rests her tray on the edge of the table and unloads our food, three plates piled high with nacho chips and all the toppings.

“Can I get you anything, hon?” she asks Chance.

He eyeballs the nacho mountains which are enough food for the four of us. “Maybe we could share?” he asks me.

“Sure,” I say.

“I’ll get ya another plate. And that Coke Zero.” She tucks the tray under her arm and sprints to another table to take their order.

We dig in unabashedly, famished from a day of learning about new tech, which burns several hundred calories an hour, I’m convinced. Nobody talks while we stuff our mouths. We’ve made a good dent by the time the waitress brings Chance’s Coke. He pauses to plunge his straw into it and take a long sip. Then he grabs his fork and knife and unloads a mound of nachos onto his plate.

“Should we talk about what we learned today?” Morgan asks, her mouth half full.

“No,” Chance and I say in unison. We lock eyes and share a grin.

My heart is warming up like a glass of water as the ice slowly melts. It’s still cold, but not as cold.

Drew and Morgan have their own conversation about anime. Morgan suddenly wants to know all about it even though she’s never so much as peeked at my Hello Kitty collection. It’s quite a leap but they have a vibe going and I’m not going to spoil it. That leaves me and Chance to do nothing but eat or find something to talk about. He’s quiet tonight, though. More reserved than usual. Maybe this is his cowboy persona. I don’t mind it.

When only a few nachos are left on the plates, we lean back, enjoy our full bellies, and watch a middle-aged woman with Karen hair struggle through “Flashdance…What a Feeling” over on the karaoke stage.

When she’s done and the unenthusiastic applause dies down, Chance grabs his hat, slides out of the booth, not saying a word, and goes over to the guy manning the karaoke equipment.

Morgan spins toward me. “Is he going to sing?”

It appears that’s exactly what he intends to do. He confers with the music guy for a few minutes and then walks over to the mic, cowboy hat firmly in place and boots gleaming under the spotlights.

The music begins softly, a fiddle rising and falling with the guitar twanging gently beneath it.

When he opens his mouth, Morgan squeals. “Oh my gosh, he can sing!”

Can he ever. Surprisingly, it’s a song I recognize. ”I Hope You Dance” by a lady with a high voice. But Chance’s version is low, the bass mesmerizing, the lilting flow from one note to the next penetrating my very bones.

He hits the chorus and I’m in Cloud Cuckoo Land and Princess Unikitty is saying “Don’t you get any ideas.” But I have lots of them. All involving Chance’s lips on mine. The thought of kissing him again after he sings me a lullaby in that rich, spine-tingling voice is almost too much to handle.

“Danni.” It’s a female voice. Not Chance’s, which is disappointing.

I open my eyes.

Morgan snickers.

“What?” I ask.

“Your eyes were closed.”

“I was sleeping. Why did you wake me up?”

“If you say so.”

“I do.” And I leave it at that because our conversation is drowning out the auditory bliss coming from the karaoke stage.

His voice swells into a repeat of the chorus. His eyes lock onto mine. It’s like he’s right beside me, his voice caressing my cheek, shapeshifting me into a Chanceling.

This can’t happen.

I tear my eyes away from him and grab my water, the smooth glass cool and sweaty beneath my touch. I press it to my cheek for a moment and then take a long drink. It needs more ice. Ice cubes. Lots of ice cubes. But our waitress is nowhere to be found.

“Out,” Drew says to me after Chance clicks the mic back into the stand. “I am going next.”

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