way across the Midwest until
settling on a building in downtown Pittsburgh. The move was covered
in all the Pittsburgh media outlets and was the cause for much
celebration.After the presentation was over when they moved into the
new building, David decided to take his immediate staff to a small
place near the center of town for dinner. They were quiet, not
wanting to draw too much attention to their selves and drove
individual cars to the location. David had some trouble finding place
to park and put his SUV in the lot in front of a strip mall.
As he
got out of the vehicle he looked across the lot and saw a small dance
academy in session. He stopped to watch the young girls twirl around
in the window, finding it amusing to see them guided by the motions
of the older women. He turned to walk to the restaurant when one of
the instructors caught his eye.
It was
Jada. It had to be. After all these years, he’d found her
again. He walked up to the lobby of the school and went in, drawing
deadly glares from all the mothers who had their daughters in
session. A few of them moved in front of him.
“ Is
there someone I could speak to about the school?” he asked one
lady near him.
“ Why?”
she demanded. “What do you want?”
“ I
had wanted to ask someone about instruction for my daughter,”
he lied. “Is there someone I can talk with?”
The next
moment the door opened and Jada came out with her class, dismissing
the little girls to their mothers. She made sure each one had gone to
a guardian and looked up to see David in the lobby.
“ David?”
she said to him.
“ Jada?”
he said to her.
The
entire room vanished leaving them the only occupants. It was as if a
gate had been opened in the sky and a light had poured out which
enveloped them and only them. They continued to look at each other
until David reached into his pocket and handed her a card.
“ Please
call me,” he said to her. “I need to go. I’ve
missed you.”
Then he
turned and left.
Chapter 4
Jada
hadn’t followed the rise of David’s company, Top Floor
Intersections. She had been too busy the past two years trying to
find her place in Pittsburgh. She had managed to locate a decent
apartment on the west side of the town in an area which was on the
rise. This managed to help her in her attempts to get into a graduate
program at Karski College, a small school located in the city. She
had decided on the field of physics, since this had always interested
her. But the college kept putting her on the “waiting list”
which irritated Jada to no end. She would come home every evening
from teaching young girls the basic positions and sit down with a
text book on physics to try and beef up her knowledge of the field.
When she had some free time she’d find a Go game to play on
line.
It was
two days before she pulled out David’s business card and looked
at it. She seemed to recall hearing something about his company in
the news and brought it up on the tablet. The company was doing very
well, according to the financial reports. David had found a way to
unleash a dating site that men with poor social skills, nerds, would
flock to. He’d expanded what he did to other dating systems and
was providing the framework for a whole new way for people to meet
each other.
But, as
she soon discovered, David didn’t have much going on in his own
life. He was unmarried and approaching thirty. He was often seen in
the company of fashion models and never lacked for a date to some
important media event. There were speculations he might be gay. Most
of the commentators made interesting connections between his social
awkwardness and a dating service for computer techies and engineers.
Which was interesting as David couldn’t find any steady action
on his own.
So as
Jada picked up her phone and was prepared to call him, she had some
idea what he had been doing all these years. The nervous little
computer nerd whose eyes had lit up when she kissed him had gone