Excerpt: Lunch Destiny

“We’re probably going to be here for a while, so we might as well make ourselves comfortable.”

I nodded, and carefully sat down, setting my tote bag down first and sitting on it. Good thing I wasn’t wearing a skirt. Although I was wishing that I looked a little cuter.

“So, Megan. So far all I know about you is that you’re fond of musicals, find filing a tedious job that requires musical numbers to improve it, and that you work in a pharmaceutical company. What else should I know about you?”

“Um, well, there’s not a whole lot to tell, I guess. You know, the same regular boring stuff.”

“Married? Kids? Secretly afraid of chickens? Weirdly fond of hot air ballooning? Surely there is something worth knowing.”

“Single, no children, no particular opinion on chickens except I think they’re tasty, and I’ve never been in a hot air balloon. My strangest hobby is probably staging musical numbers while filing, and, well, you already know about that.”

“Touche.” He grinned at me again, and there was something about the slightly lopsided smile that sent another shiver down my spine.

“What about you? This is a decidedly one-sided relationship so far. All I know about you is that you can identify musical numbers sung in a filing room. That’s hardly a depth of character understanding.”

“Well, that does seem reasonable. Let’s see. I’m also single, I am actually weirdly fond of chickens and always thought it would be fun to have a hen as a pet, I dislike Brussels sprouts, I’m a great cook, I am actually a relatively good tap dancer, and I’m really bad at talking to girls.”

“I don’t know about that, I think you’re doing pretty well.” I smiled at him, feeling significantly more comfortable than him that I would have expected, being trapped in an elevator with a guy who is pretty much a stranger. “Tell me more about this tap dancing thing.”

“Oh, that. I don’t actually admit that very often, so I’m not sure what moved me to mention it in my introduction of myself. You seem like someone who isn’t freaked out by a guy who can dance, though.”

“Quite the opposite, actually.” Hearing that, he gave me a rather intense look, making me shiver again. Seriously, if this guy claimed to be bad at talking to girls, I wanted to know how good he was at things he actually admitted to being good at.

“Anyway, I was the youngest kid, and I have three older sisters. They all took dance, and my mother decided it was way easier to shuttle all of us to the same place on Saturday mornings. I wasn’t so interested in ballet, but I really liked the idea of getting to wear shoes that make noise. It turned out I was actually pretty decent at it.”

“Well?”

“Well what?”

I gestured at the small amount of available space in the elevator. “We’re going to be here for a while. I think this calls for a demonstration.”

He laughed, obviously thinking I was kidding, but although I smiled back, I was totally serious. If he was actually a good dancer, he was going to seriously freak me out with just how awesome a guy he was. Or at the very least, the amazing first impression he was making.

“Oh god, are you serious?” He laughed again, but he stood up and frowned at his shoes. “Well, these are more of a loafer rather than being much of a tap shoe, but I guess one has to make the best out of one’s supplies on hand. Don’t judge me too harshly; I don’t dance much these days.”

He did a few tentative steps, trying to get a feel for the elevator floor and the admittedly impractical dancing shoes. I sat up straighter, torn between bursting out laughing at the totally ludicrous situation and breaking into applause at sheer glee at a guy who was willing to tap dance for my benefit.

His repertoire was admittedly limited by the small space, but he really was a pretty good dancer. He was also somewhat limited by the fact that he was clearly totally embarrassed to be tap dancing in an elevator in front of a girl he didn’t know very well. However, his willingness to make a total idiot of himself was a seriously endearing trait, and he was winning me over in a hurry, between the dancing and the musicals. It was also very good that he had mentioned that he was straight at our very first encounter, since nothing I’d learned about him since then would really lead me to believe that it was straight.

He kept it up for a few minutes, but I took pity on him fairly quickly and told him he could stop. “Not that I wouldn’t enjoy watching you for the duration of this slightly ridiculous ordeal in an elevator, but you’re starting to look a little winded.”

He nodded, breathing hard and sinking down to the floor. “Yeah. I mentioned I’m really out of practice, right? Tap dancing is deceptively athletic, you know. It’s not all shuffling your feet around and jazz hands.”