The boyfriend algorithm, p.13
The Boyfriend Algorithm, page 13
Charlie’s heart-balloon deflated, returning her to earth with a thump.
The shirt. The flirt. The bet. Boob-stupidity. Apparently, it didn’t wear off.
Even now, he didn’t see her. He was responding to the UI that Gideon and Lindsay had created for her. To VR-Charlie. None of this is real. Not the relationship and not you.
She had to remember that. Because in a month, she’d have to learn how to live without him all over again.
Geekronym: ABEND
Translation: ABnormal END
Definition: An abnormal termination of software; a program crash. (Not to be confused with the more severe hardware system crash).
The next day at work, Daniel interspersed his mind-numbing archive duty with bouts of internet surfing to brush up on Doctor Who and all series with the word “star” in the title. He justified it by calling it research for a story he planned to pitch to Nelson on the translation of science fiction technology to current IT trends—human interest feel-good-fuzzy only, nothing sensational about it.
But he didn’t kid himself. He was stuffing his brain with techno-minutiae for one reason only—Charlie. After seeing her in her natural geek habitat over the past two nights—after the kiss—he had no doubt. He was ready to pursue a relationship. He wished he had a better handle on whether she felt the same.
With Trisha, although she’d made it seem like the path of their affair was totally his idea, in reality, he’d never had to work for a thing. She’d handed it all to him on a silver platter with a French lingerie chaser.
At the mental vision of Charlie in one or two select pieces of that lingerie, Daniel’s dick made an effort to stand up and cheer. Unfortunately, he wasn’t sure Charlie was ready to get with that particular program.
Well, it would be his pleasure and privilege to get her there, and if downloading SF trivia into his brain was the way to do it, he was on board, 110 percent.
As the afternoon wore on, he kept checking the internal clock on his computer, convinced it had stopped working, because no day had ever seemed so long. When the icon finally ticked over to six o’clock, his skin prickled as if he’d spent the day in a champagne sauna. He shut down the computer and shrugged into his sport coat, wondering how he’d manage to kill time between now and eight, when he was due to meet Charlie.
Maybe he’d head over early. Maybe he’d drop by her place and they’d walk over. Slowly. With frequent stops behind convenient bushes. Maybe—
His cell phone chimed with the double-blip of an urgent email. He checked the screen, half afraid that Charlie was about to cancel. But no. The sender was rosserx, his primary informant on the Argonne story.
Heart thumping in overdrive, he opened the message.
Breaking news. Online chatter points to an Argonne outbreak. More later. —r
His grin grew, creeping across his face until he probably resembled the Joker. Yes. He’d known all he had to do was wait it out and he’d find a way back into his old life. This could be it, a shot at redemption.
He could resurrect his career, be worthy of someone like Charlie, with her four degrees, giant brain, and determination to make the world a better place through geek power.
He could make the world better, too, damn it. By ensuring that no one ever got victimized by Argonne or his ilk again.
But that was for later. Tonight he had a different—and much more pleasurable—goal, although the potential for vindication definitely contributed to the width of his smile later as he hit the doors of Hana K’s.
The frigid air of the bar barely registered as he scanned the room. No sign of Charlie yet, and although that dimmed his mood a bit, it didn’t completely extinguish his anticipatory buzz. He made his way through the crowd to the bar where Philip sat, staring vacantly at his bottle of Corona. Daniel slapped him on the shoulder.
“Why so glum? Tough day at work?”
Philip glanced up and scowled. “Jesus, Dan. Could you dial down the cheesy grin? You look like a used car salesman.”
Daniel laughed. “That bad, eh? No wonder everyone on the street gave me the hairy eyeball.”
Philip grunted and chugged his beer.
“Going solo tonight?” Daniel signaled the bartender, pointing at Philip’s bottle. “Or have you got a potential date in the pipeline?”
“You know what? Lindsay offered to introduce me to her roommate once, and I bailed for some lame reason. If I hadn’t, I’d have had a chance with Charlie before Daniel the Destroyer muscled in.”
The bartender delivered Daniel’s beer, distracting him before his inner Hemingway could overpower his civilized F. Scott Fitzgerald veneer and urge him to beat his chest in victory. He air-toasted Philip and took a swig of his beer. “There’s always next time.”
“Except there won’t be a next time. I got a message that tonight’s the last group meet-up. Dude who runs the thing is closing up shop.”
“You could always do what men have done since the dawn of newsprint and place a personal ad.”
“Are you nuts? Too much work. That was the beauty of this setup. We didn’t have to make an effort. We just had to show up.”
Gooseflesh rose on Daniel’s arms, and he set his beer on the bar napkin with a thump. “What did you say?”
Philip aimed a befuddled stare at him. “About which?”
“The group. Your dating club. Would you call it passive dating?”
“I wouldn’t call it anything since it’s over and done with.”
“But you’ve met the guy, right? The showrunner?”
“Nope. But someone has. I heard one of the women mention him once. I think most of them are friends with him.”
“Listen, I want to talk to you about—”
The door opened, and Daniel’s focus shifted from Philip’s morose profile. He straightened, gut tightening in anticipation. Damn. Not Charlie, just a bunch of random women… wait. Toshiko lurked at the back of the brightly dressed pack like rain following an Easter parade. Surely Charlie couldn’t be far behind.
Yes. There. Charlie appeared in the doorway and the rest of the room might as well have been empty. Christ, she was wearing a skirt. A freaking mini-skirt, showcasing mile-long legs that served as a five-star endorsement for kickboxing workouts. He stood away from the bar and fumbled his beer, nearly spilling it down the front of his pants. He set the bottle down before he embarrassed himself.
Beside him, Philip muttered, “I’m going to kill you, you rat-bastard.”
Charlie saw him at the bar and nodded at a booth in the far corner of the room. Every fricking male head in the place swiveled to track her as she passed, watching her butt in that skirt, and her legs, and he was going to kill each and every one of them.
“Dude. Did you just growl?”
“Never mind. See you later.”
Charlie counted the days until Shanna’s deadline. She had fewer than three weeks to achieve a fully engaged Stage Two relationship with Daniel, which was enough to send panic sparking through her veins. However, the offset to Not enough time for results was How much longer do I have to wear these outfits?
The denim of this so-called skirt was tight enough to inhibit her stride even though it reached barely to mid-thigh, but if she took steps of her usual length, the stupid thing rode up, and Lindsay had smacked her hands whenever she tugged on the hem. Now, with the air-conditioning in the bar turned up to its usual Ice Planet Hoth levels, she displayed about five acres of goose bumps below the denim tourniquet. “Why can’t men appreciate comfortable clothing?” she muttered.
Toshiko, standing in for Lindsay and Gideon again, including the hem-tug hand slapping, said, “Why do you imagine our comfort is relevant to them?”
“Good point.” She reached for the hem of her skirt, but Toshiko’s admonitory stare stopped her. “I should never have agreed to this outfit.”
“Why? The results support the hypothesis. I estimate 79 percent of the men in the room have spent a minimum of forty-three seconds looking at your legs, with another 68 percent adding a minimum seventeen-second stare at your chest.”
Charlie’s hands jerked in a simultaneous north-south bid for coverage. But aside from the fact it would draw more attention to the areas in question, her hands were full with her tablet and the silly clutch purse Lindsay had foisted on her in place of her usual slouchy shoulder bag. “Do you have any idea how I’m supposed to sit down in this thing without mooning the entire bar?”
Toshiko studied the skirt with unshakable aplomb. “Physics would suggest that when you sit, the skirt will get effectively shorter as it accommodates your—”
“Don’t say it.”
“Perhaps you should remain standing.” Toshiko glanced at Charlie’s rear view. To someone who didn’t understand Toshiko’s clinical detachment, it might have looked as if she were checking out Charlie’s butt. “Also, I suggest you refrain from bending over.”
“Thanks for the tip.” She laid her tablet and purse on the table.
“You should have let me pick you up.” Daniel’s voice rumbling in her ear sent a shiver down Charlie’s spine that had nothing to do with her sparse clothing.
She lowered herself gingerly onto the bench seat, keeping her back straight to avoid unintentional underwear flashing. “You didn’t need to. It’s not that far.”
Daniel crowded onto the seat next to her. With every brush of his trousers against the bare skin of her thigh, she braced herself for a repeat of last night’s traitorous zing. Was he touching her on purpose? Should she move over to give him room? She turned her head to avoid his gaze and her TARDIS earrings tapped her neck. Right. VR-Charlie. She could do this. She skootched a token inch away from Daniel’s unsettling heat. The zing had been an anomaly, surely, but no point in pushing her nonexistent luck.
“Have I told you how great your hair is?” Daniel said, twining one of her curls around his finger.
To distract herself from the frisson that skated across her skin, she borrowed from Gideon’s vast library of attitudes. “No. In fact you spent a large part of our teen years making fun of it.”
“I did?” Daniel looked honestly surprised. “Then I was an idiot.”
The hair on Charlie’s arms prickled. She woke her tablet to distract herself from the sensation. Stop it, stop it. Don’t be nice. Don’t make this harder than it is. “You weren’t the only one, if it makes you feel any better. It was pretty much a global event.”
He leaned in, his lips close enough to touch her hair. “You know,” he murmured, “I’ve been thinking about kissing you all day.”
Zing. Her heart gave an odd sideways thump, and her hands stilled on the tablet’s surface. “Oh.”
“And you look incredibly hot in that skirt. I think every guy in this place watched you walk across the room. Really pissed me off.”
Zang. She tucked in her chin and pretended to be interested in her web browser’s splash screen. Right. The clothes. The aggression. None of this was personal. It all had to do with the triggers. The ones she’d set up so carefully so she could win the stupid bet and earn the right to an AGS interview.
Charlie squeezed herself into the corner of the booth as far as she could get from Daniel before he hypnotized her with his grin and his gaze and his scent and his stupid zing. He smelled like the ocean and the forest, the signature Oregon combination. She gulped and searched the room, desperate for a neutral topic of conversation. She noticed Philip hunkered down at the bar.
“What’s wrong with Philip? He doesn’t look very happy.”
“He’s depressed. He wishes he were sitting where I am.” Daniel inched closer and tugged on her curls. “If he wasn’t such a nice guy, I think he’d punch me out.”
Toshiko slanted a look at Charlie as if to say male mating behavior. Thank God most of the men Charlie dealt with regularly got more warlike about their SQL code than their sex drive. Still… if Philip was lonely, he needed to engage, not sit by himself and mope.
One of the cardinal rules of her algorithm was that she wasn’t allowed to manipulate data to influence any pairing, but… She shot a sideways glance at Daniel from under her lashes. Yeah, that ship sailed and sank the minute she’d faked her own status and ended up here, with Daniel’s zing-potential mere inches away.
Fine. Since she’d already consigned herself to data-chick hell, Philip might as well get some good out of it. She scanned the bar, inventorying the Stage Two women, and her glance snagged on Meredith, meandering through the room with her usual approachable half smile. Charlie had always thought Meredith appeared a little vacuous, but tonight, looking a little closer, and (if she wanted to admit it) with fewer preconceived notions, she realized the almost-cheerful expression contained more hope and less absence-of-mind than she’d thought.
Lord, I can be a judgmental jerk sometimes.
Maybe… maybe she could help two people. All it would take was a little proactive data manipulation. She pulled out her phone and sent Meredith a surreptitious text.
She turned to Daniel, who’d made another sortie into her personal space, his hip practically docked with hers. “Why don’t we ask Philip to join us? We’ve got room.” Especially since you refuse to occupy your own.
Daniel’s brows flexed, and his smile lost some of its deadly wattage. “He’ll be okay. He just needs a little cheering up.”
The thrill that hit her whenever she solved a coding conundrum fired at the base of her skull. Direct hit. Nobody did uncomplicated cheer better than Meredith.
She caught Philip’s attention and beckoned. He jerked upright and checked behind himself before mouthing Who me? Charlie nodded, and he wove his way through the tables to their booth.
“Hey, Charlie. Toshiko.” He lifted one sandy eyebrow. “Dan.”
“Phil.”
Charlie rolled her eyes at the buried threat in Daniel’s voice. She tapped his forearm. “This isn’t about to turn into another macho face-off, is it?” She leaned close enough to whisper in his ear. “Because you know how well the last one turned out.”
“Sorry.” Daniel grinned at her, not in the least repentant, judging from the wicked gleam in his eye. “I’ll behave.”
Philip hesitated, but when Toshiko scooted over to make room for him, her default neutral expression neither encouraging nor discouraging, he sat on the outside edge of the bench seat.
Annoyance flickered across his face, and he gestured toward Meredith with his bottle. “That woman’s scoping you out, Dan. Jesus, you’re sitting here with two of the hottest women in the joint, and still they hit on you.”
Daniel leaned forward, checking out Philip’s line of sight. “Look again, Phil. I’m not her target.” He chuckled and flicked the base of Philip’s beer with a fingernail. “You are.”
“Me?” He blinked and straightened his spine. “Really?”
“Yep. Go on. Buy her a drink. Chill.”
“Right. A drink.” Philip tugged at his collar, his gaze darting from Meredith to Daniel. “What do you think she wants?”
Daniel smirked at him. “You’ll have to ask her that.”
Charlie peered around Daniel to check Meredith’s outfit—a sundress that morphed from a magenta skirt into an apricot halter top. Given Meredith’s propensity to dress to match her drinks… “Tequila sunrise.”
Both the men stared at her. “You're sure?” Philip croaked.
“Positive.”
Philip rose and gave a decisive nod. “Right then.” He turned and strode to the bar where he collected two tequila sunrises.
Ah. Excellent move. Matching drinks would definitely ping Meredith’s compatibility circuits. Damn. I’m good at this. Or maybe she was succumbing to code bias. She liked Philip, and she liked Meredith. She shouldn’t overlay actual data with her own wishes.
Biting her lip, she laced her fingers together in her lap and tracked Philip’s progress as if she were monitoring a wonky download.
He reached Meredith and held one of the drinks out to her. She looked up into his face and flipped her hair over her shoulder, displaying some strategic skin. But she didn’t take the glass immediately. Instead, she glanced at Charlie. For reassurance. A little glow kindled in Charlie’s middle. She trusts me. Charlie nodded, and Meredith returned her attention to Philip, beaming at him in full smiley-emoticon mode. She accepted the drink and clinked the rim of her glass against his. Philip’s face lost its last trace of anything but delight.
Ha. The zing. She could almost feel it from here, and it sent another zap to her own satisfaction receptors, pushing her grin into overdrive.
She settled against the back of the bench and caught Daniel’s expression. If she’d thought his gaze was hot before, she clearly had no concept of scale. Incendiary. She was surprised her hair didn’t frizzle in its path. She cast a quick glance down at herself. No more cleavage on display than usual, and her skirt hadn’t ridden all the way up to her waist. She met Toshiko’s gaze and nearly fell over.
Toshiko’s left eyebrow canted halfway up her forehead, generating an actual wrinkle, and she’d drawn her lower lip between her teeth. What the heck? Charlie could count the number of times she’d seen Toshiko display anything other than mild disapproval on the fingers of one… finger.
She stole another peek at Daniel. He’d turned toward her, one elbow braced on the table, his other arm on the seat behind her back, boxing her in. He leaned forward until her curls brushed his forehead.
“Christ. That was so… you’re so…” He closed his eyes and his shoulders rose with an inhale. “How did you do that? How did you know they’d click?”
Charlie cast a panicked glance at Toshiko, who still looked as if a couple of her lab rats had climbed out of their maze and engaged in Cirque du Soleil acrobatics on the drapes. No help there.
“I just, um, guessed?”
“Tell me.” He leaned closer, and some trick of the halogen lights overhead made his blue eyes glow like sapphire neon. “How do you feel about PDA?”
He’s so close. She swallowed, wishing for a glass of water, and tapped her purse. “I’ve got a smartphone. I don’t need one.”
