Page 28 of Debugging Love

I roll back to my desk. A moment later, Danni returns. She didn’t see me gawking at her purse. But she does seemebased on her pronounced frown.

She drops into her chair, rolls it forward until her ribs touch the desktop, leans onto her right elbow, and uses her hand as a shield.

This is worse than my school days. Everyone crammed into one room. No privacy. Sitting next to Sachi who thought she was somebody’s gift to the old guy at the switchboard in the sky because her dad was the municipal minister of Karnataka.

“General contractor?” I say.

Danni lifts her hand and peeks at me. “Blond, White guy?” She’s in full snark mode. I hope. What if she’s only in half-snark mode? If so, I’m in trouble.

“Do you supervise your builders in the evenings then?” I probably shouldn’t talk to her at all. Really. Why am I talking?

“You...” She can’t think of a retort. I smile. “I’m not a general contractor.” Danni lowers her hand. “I’ve never painted a wall in my life. Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“What you did is a lot worse.”

I’ve had time to think about not telling Danni over text that I’m not actually Thor. (She should haveknownsomething was up.) In my quest to find a soulmate, I got sloppy. I’m man enough to admit it to myself. But not to Danni.

Her right eyelid is twitching like she wants to spout a curse word. She blinks to stop the spasm. “We can just sit here and not look at each other and not talk. Okay?”

“We’re three feet from each other.” I’m not sure I like the never-looking, never-talking idea. The execution would be difficult when we’re crammed together like this. And I might want to bother her sometimes to see if I can make her eyelid twitch.

“Hey guys.” Christopher walks up and splits the distance between our desks. “Are you two getting along okay over here? This corner is pretty cozy.”

Danni has enough control in the presence of our boss not to roll her eyes.

“We’re getting along great,” I say, my eyes fixed on hers.

She wants to roll them so bad, I can tell.

“Great,” Christopher says. He has no idea Danni wants to rip out my throat. “Danni, Chance doesn’t get his computer until tomorrow. Once he’s logged in, can you help him load the development environment and give him an overview of our apps?”

“Sure,” Danni says with a stiff smile.

Christopher leans toward me. “She’s one of our best,” he whispers, “but I can’t say that too loud.”

I lean back in my chair and tuck my thumbs into my pockets. “Good to know.”

“She’ll show you around.” Christopher turns to leave and then pauses. He rests his hand on the back of Danni’s chair. “How did your MatchAI date go? That was Saturday, wasn’t it?”

Danni clears her throat and opens her mouth to speak.

Christopher’s phone buzzes. He grabs it from his pocket. While he’s checking the notification, Danni narrows her eyes at me.

“Spam,” Christopher says. He chucks the phone back into his pocket.

“What’s this about a MatchAI date?” I ask, my eyes as innocent as Puss in Boot’s when he’s making sad-cat-face.

“Danni ended up with my gift at our Christmas in July party. I know the owner of MatchAI, so I scored a coupon, and I threw in two showboat tickets. Danni used them on Saturday.”

So, she wasn’t lying when she said MatchAI was a one-time thing.

“Did Cupid choose your perfect match?” Christopher asks.

“Actually, no. She didn’t,” Danni says. “My date was self-centered, stuck-up, and arrogant.”

I open my mouth to say something, a natural defense mechanism, but I quickly close it.

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