One Night Deal

I'd been smiling for nine hours straight and my face felt like it was gonna crack.

My name's Carrie, I'm twenty-four, and I design museum exhibits for a living. Which sounds cool until you get sent to a tech conference in Austin to stand next to a cardboard kiosk and explain touchscreens to guys who invent touchscreens. That was my whole week. Booth babe duty. Fake lashes, forced grin, the works.

So when the museum team got invited to some startup's after-party, I said yes before my boss finished the sentence. Free beer. No lanyards. Nobody asking me if the exhibit comes in a smaller size.

The party was at a twenty-four hour startup office in east Austin. Old warehouse, converted. Mismatched couches, whiteboards covering every wall floor to ceiling, and the whole place smelled like cold brew and somebody's burnt popcorn. There was supposed to be a hackathon still going in the back but honestly it looked like forty adults losing a fight with caffeine.

I grabbed a beer and found a spot near the espresso machine, because if there's one universal truth in tech it's that the espresso machine area has the least boring people.

That's where I saw him.

I knew him. Pete. I'd met him once at a dinner party three years ago, some mutual friend of a friend, back when I was twenty-one and he was forty-three. Freelance software guy. Funny in a dry way. I remembered thinking he was easy to talk to and then I never saw him again, which is how most dinner party people go.

He was standing at the machine, poking buttons, looking mildly betrayed by it.

"Pete, right?" I said.

He turned. Took a second. Then his face lit up. "Carrie. Museum girl. You came to the dark side."

"I'm visiting the dark side. I live on the boring side." I stuck out my hand like a dork and he laughed and shook it. "What are you even doing here?"

"Consulting. The hackathon kids are building on an API my client owns and it caught fire twice today, so they flew me in to babysit." He gestured at the back room with his cup. "Mostly I stand near the espresso machine and answer questions nobody asks."

"That tracks. I stand near a cardboard kiosk and answer questions about touchscreens."

"Touchscreens. The irony is thick."

"Right? I told a man today that yes, the screen is touch sensitive, while he was touching it."

Pete laughed for real at that, head back a little. God, I'd forgotten he was cute. Older than me by a good chunk, sure, but he had that whole calm thing going. Silver coming in at the temples. Hands that looked like they knew what keyboards were for and not much else.

"What brings you to this particular circle of hell?" he asked.

"My boss needed someone to staff the booth and I said yes like an idiot. Nine hours of smiling. My face hurts. My feet hurt. My soul hurts a little."

"So you fled."

"I fled hard. I saw free beer and I ran."

He nodded like this was the most reasonable life plan he'd heard all year. "Smart woman. I've been fleeing conferences since before you legally could."

"Oh wow, thanks, grandpa!"

"Hey, you started it with the grandpa thing. I was being gracious."

We bickered like that for a while and it was nice. It was so, so nice to talk to somebody who wasn't asking me about the exhibit. He asked actual questions. What do I design, what's the weirdest thing I've built, did I really once mount a fake bat colony on a ceiling for six weeks. Yes. Yes I did. It was for a cave ecology thing and it was great and I will die on that hill.

In exchange I learned he'd been freelancing for approximately fifteen years, he was forty-six now, he had a side project he described as "an app that nobody wants, which I keep building anyway, like a hobby farm for code." He was divorced, had been for years, no kids, lived south of the river with a cat who hated him.

"The cat hates you?"

"Passionately. She's eighteen and she's been mad at me since 2019."

"That's a long grudge."

"She's committed. I respect it."

You should know this about me, since you're reading this. I've been single-ish for two years. Short hookups, nothing that stuck, nothing I wanted to stick. The last real relationship ended when I was twenty-two and since then I've mostly just wanted the fun parts without the homework. No strings. That's my whole deal and I'm not shy about it. Some girls want the wedding. I want the good night and a clean exit.

And looking at Pete there by the espresso machine, tired and funny and not trying to impress anybody, I got an idea forming. A very specific idea.

"Okay, real talk," I said. "Is there anywhere in this building to sit that isn't a beanbag?"

"Conference room. The startup bought forty nice chairs and then made everyone hot desk, so the chairs are just sitting in there orphaned."

"Lead the way, orphan chair guy."

He grabbed two more beers and we claimed the little glass conference room. A hackathon team had left whiteboard scrawl all over it, arrows and swear words and something that just said WHY in huge letters. We sat on the table edge instead of the chairs, which felt appropriately lawless.

"So the API thing," I said. "Explain it to me like I'm five."

"Can't. Explaining it like you're five would take an hour and you'd still ask about the bat ceiling."

"I do love the bat ceiling."

He gave me the short version anyway, and honestly about forty percent went in one ear and out the other, but I liked listening to him. He had that teacher energy without the condescension. He asked about my work too, and not in a fake way. He wanted to know how you make a kid care about sedimentary rock. I told him you don't, you make the kid care about dinosaurs and sneak the rock in sideways.

"That's exactly what I do with APIs," he said, pointing his beer at me. "You never sell the rock. You sell the dinosaur."

"Write that on a whiteboard."

"There's room. Someone already wrote WHY, we can put it under there."

Somebody knocked on the glass at some point, some guy in a hackathon shirt, and asked Pete a question about rate limiting. Pete answered it in like ninety seconds flat and the guy looked relieved and left. Then Pete turned back to me like nothing happened.

"Sorry. On call tonight, sort of."

"No, that was weirdly hot, watching you fix a stranger's problem in under two minutes."

He raised an eyebrow. "Weirdly hot."

"I said what I said."

He laughed and shook his head, and I watched him decide not to push on that. Good. I wasn't ready to push on it either. Yet. But the idea was fully formed now, sitting in my head like a proposal waiting for a vote.

We talked another hour. The party thinned out. At some point somebody turned the music down and a girl came around collecting empty cans. Pete checked his phone, checked the hackathon room, checked his phone again.

"So how long are you in town?" he asked.

"Through Sunday. Booth closes tomorrow at five, then I'm free until my flight Monday morning."

"Any plans?"

"Sleep. Then whatever happens."

He nodded slow. I could tell he was doing the same math I was doing. I decided to stop making us both guess.

"Okay, I'm just gonna say it," I told him. "Three years ago at that dinner party, I thought you were cute. Tonight I think you're cuter. And I'm not looking for a boyfriend or a pen pal or a hiking partner. I'm looking for a good night and maybe a good repeat if we both feel like it. That's my whole pitch. You can say no and we drink our beers and talk about bats."

Pete set his beer down on the table. Looked at me. Not weird, just checking I was sure, I think.

"You're twenty-four," he said.

"I'm twenty-four, yes, and an adult with a fully formed strategy, thank you."

"And the strategy is no strings!"

"No strings. Both of us busy. You've got your code farm, I've got my bats. We see each other when it's easy and we don't do guilt."

"And the repeat part."

"Optional. Pending performance."

He grinned at that, and it was a real grin, the kind that crinkles. "God. Okay. Yes. For the record, I had the same thought about an hour ago and was too chicken to say it first."

"Ha! The grandpa was chicken."

"The grandpa was being respectful, thank you."

"Noted. So, your place or..."

"My place is south of the river and the cat is judgmental."

"Then I guess I'm meeting the cat."

He stood up and held out his hand, all formal, like we'd just closed a business deal. Which, in a way.

"Should we go now or..."

"Now," I said, draining my beer. "Before either of us gets smart."

* * *

We got two steps toward the door before a woman with a lanyard and a clipboard stopped Pete. Something about the coffee order for tomorrow's demos. He handled it, I drifted, and by the time he came back I'd found the coat rack and my jacket and was leaning on the wall watching the last of the party die.

"Okay," he said. "Escaped. Mostly."

"Mostly?"

"He'll be back by midnight. He always comes back by midnight."

"Charming."

He looked at me then, kind of sideways. "Actually, hold on. Before we do the whole Uber thing. You want to see the roof?"

"The roof."

"There's a balcony up top. Fire escape door, nobody stops you. It's stupid hot in this warehouse but the night air up there is good. Best view of east Austin you're gonna get from an office building."

"You had me at breaking fire code."

"It's not breaking, it's more like... gently ignoring."

"Even better."

The stairwell up was the opposite of the party. Loud downstairs, then nothing but our footsteps and the hum of some vent. Three flights. The door at the top was heavy and painted shut-looking but Pete shoved it open with his shoulder like he'd done it a hundred times, and I guess he probably had, if he worked with these people.

The balcony was small. Concrete, a rusted railing, two plastic chairs that had clearly been stolen from somebody's patio. And the air. God, the air. The whole night had been warehouse heat and beer and bodies, and up here it just cut through all of it. Cool and clean. I could feel my brain come back online.

"Oh, that's better," I said. "Why were we downstairs all night?"

"Because downstairs has beer."

"Fair."

I went to the railing. Downtown was off to the left, all lit up, and between us and it was a bunch of low warehouses with strings of patio lights and one lonely billboard for a lawyer. Pete came and stood next to me, close but not crowding, and handed me the second beer he'd apparently carried up the whole stairwell balanced like an idiot.

"You planned this," I said.

"I noticed the door on a Tuesday in March and have been waiting for an excuse."

"Liar."

"A little bit of both."

We drank for a minute. Austin at night has this sound, this low busy hum, and I just let it wash over me. This was the part I always liked, if I'm honest. The part before anything happens, when everything is still possible and nobody's ruined it by being weird yet.

"So," I said. "Question."

"Shoot."

"Are you staying the night? Or is this a thing where I find out you have a girlfriend waiting, or a bedtime, or you turn into a pumpkin?"

He laughed. "Straight to it, huh."

"I told you my strategy already. I don't do the slow reveal."

"No girlfriend. No bedtime. No pumpkin. I've got nowhere to be until some demos at ten tomorrow, and those I can do hungover, I've got plenty of practice." He shrugged. "So yeah. I'm staying. If you're asking if I'm staying."

"I was asking."

"Good. Because the answer's yes."