“Hey Roger”, she said from across the floor, “you gonna cover the new Xperience?”
Roger was always struck by how out-of-place Cherise looked at the tech trade shows. She didn’t have the almost trademark black and pink hair piled on one side of her head. She also didn’t wear t-shirts and cargo pants that are the uniform of most hacker gurrlz. Her idea of casual today was a pair of tweed pants with a purple cammie. Roger always liked the purple because it was the perfect color on her.
“Roger?” she interrupted, “you hear me?”
“Oh yeah, Cherise. Sorry about that,” he lied, “I was a bit distracted. I’ll take a peek at that later. Everyone’s here talking about games. I’m more interested in MCS at the moment.”
“Ok, but Tom’s not thrilled about supercomputers like you. I hope he doesn’t mod you down on that.”
Roger frowned thinking about Tom. They used to do these trade shows together, but Tom prefers the Skybox and seeing a few celebrities these days.
“You’re right about Tom,” he said. “So,” he said to change the subject, “you want to hit the afterparty or something more personal?”
Cherise thought to herself that she really loves Roger, but his constant deferring to her was becoming annoying. “You pick,” she said crossing her arms.
“We’ll go to the Stratosphere,” he replied, “and I’ll wear a Tux. I figure that after that we can do a little dancing. Let’s get away from the tech stuff for awhile.”
Roger was glad that Cherise is a part of his life. “Tom may have celebrities,” he thought, “but I get to be with Cherise all over the country. Office romances aren’t that bad.” He smiled thinking about the phrase ‘office romance’. His office is in San Diego, hers is in Arkansas.
“You want to get any from tech?” she asked loudly. “You, Roger Tannarick want to get away from tech?”
“And I want to spend time with you,” he interrupted. “Sometimes it is all business at these things and there’s no time for just me and you.”
Cherise had a hard time speaking for a moment. On the one hand, she was thinking that he just wants to leer at her. On the other hand, it is just want she wanted to hear. She thought to herself that he actually smiled when he mentioned getting away. She thought about how different Roger had been at this conference and she hoped he would continue to be more assertive.
“Uh- yeah,”she finally said, “that sounds wonderful.” Smiling, she stretched her arms out and walked to Roger, “That was just what I wanted, Roger. Thank you so much.” They held each other a bit more than briefly and parted with a kiss. Cherise moved back towards the game section to finish her story.
Roger panicked trying to figure out how to get a table at the Stratosphere. He tapped his jaw just below his temple and said aloud, “Tom”.