Searching For His Omega - Harper B. Cole Page 0,22
working there now?” Not that there was shame in the job, but he’d seemed all in on the realty stuff, and I kind of felt bad if he already gave up on that dream.
“Him and no, he doesn’t work here. He just answered as a favor when I had to use the restroom.” Leave it to me to call the man of my dreams—at least the naughty ones—and take the conversation straight to awkwardville where we discussed needing to pee instead of happy things like coffee and television premieres.
“Why did you call work and not my phone?” Was that anger I heard or was that wishful thinking because anger meant he wanted me to call. It also meant I had grovelling to do. Which was fine with me as long as it meant I got to talk to him. Because yeah...I’d become that guy.
“Long story short, I hate rice.” I forced a chuckle.
“How about a little bit longer version?” I could almost envision his side eye, and so I told him the entire tale, including fishing my stupid phone out of the toilet, which he seemed exceedingly amused by.
“I’m glad you dropped your phone,” he said as I finished regaling him with my toilet phone adventures.
“Thanks?”
“No, I mean, it meant you hadn’t just not wanted to talk to me.”
“It very much did not mean that.”
“I’m—hold on,” he told someone, I assumed a customer, he would be right there. “Listen, I have to go.”
“Okay. Can I call you later? Maybe we can FaceTime watch the show together?” Not that I’d exclude other possible uses of FaceTime, but it wasn’t every day you got to be on television. I mean, for me it was, but not for Stan and the others.
“Yeah, I think I’d like that.” He said good-bye, and as much as I didn’t want to let him go, I got it. Work came first. At least I had that night to look forward to.
I had a date. Sure, it was a long-distance date, and it would predominantly be a television no-chill kind of evening, but gods did I feel like a schoolboy about to go on his first date. The mixture of excitement and nerves and disbelief that he would go out with me all wrapped into one.
It was fair to say I had a bonafide crush.
A bonafide crush with someone who lived hours away.
A bonafide crush with someone who lived hours away and gave no indication he wanted more than what we already had.
Dammit. This was going to end like all crushes did, with my heart stomped. Stan was totally worth it.
Fifteen
Stan
This isn’t working. I typed out the message and sent it to Chet!
He was being incredibly patient but my laptop wasn’t behaving. I’d done everything he’d listed so we could watch the program together. But I kept getting an ‘Error’ message.
The phone rang, and without glancing at the caller’s name, I picked it up and yelled, “We’re going to miss it. Fuck technology!” I could have watched it on the damn TV and talked to Chet on the phone at the same time, but we wanted to stream it and see one another’s face on the one screen. “Sorry, didn’t mean to lose it.”
“No problem. You’re anxious to view the program from the beginning. But you know, I have connections.” He tapped his nose. “I can send you the file later.”
“No, I want to see it live!” Oh, my God! All this scenario needed was for me to stamp my feet and stick a thumb in my mouth and I’d be branded as a toddler having a meltdown. I pushed away the thought that I may be dealing with exactly that in a couple of years.
Seeing himself on TV was no biggie for Chet—he’d done it many times—though he said he rarely watched the finished version once it’d been edited.
But this was a first for me. As far as he was concerned, it was going to be a fun night where we laughed, I groaned at a weird expression I’d made, and we commented on the look of the café, the coffee, and the food.
Nervous didn’t begin to describe my jumbly tummy. Talking with Chet while watching myself on the screen explain the history of Café Om and how Abrar had chosen the building should not be a big deal. But to me it was, though none of that was happening unless I could get the freaking technology to work. Fuck! Shit! Bum! “This is beyond frustrating!”
“It’s okay,