Twinkle Fiddles

Chapter Twenty-One

Dylan was running late. A week after the governors' press sessions, corporate conference calls and emails were no longer adequate. The assembly room in Charlotte was the site for a morning meeting. The entire team of buyers, and the group from Carolina Harvest, were tasked with blending ideas generated since the launch announcement.

Dylan grabbed his bag from his Jeep passenger floorboard. He took a quick glance to his broken, front windshield, then jogged across the parking lot, and up two flights of stairs.

The conference room door was still open as he waddled into the meeting, slightly out of breath and breathing hard. Side conversations slowed as he saw the standard issue, office, wall clock showed "10:10."

"Sorry I'm late," he explained to no one in particular. "So, I'm near the middle of nowhere, early this morning, right? Fog's thick. I see these two buzzards eating something squashed near a bridge. This one bird is slow to leave, then flies low and flapping down the road, straight toward me. I keep thinking he'll gain altitude, but SMACK! Right into me. Black feathers everywhere; windshield smashed! The wipers just smeared it all over, so I had to pull to the side and clean buzzard off my Jeep this morning."

Dylan had the total attention of the room as he continued to weave his story. Laughter only egged him on to elaborate further and seemed to enhance his Southern drawl. "So, I have this plastic spork thing I grabbed with my fast food, right? And I'm digging out buzzard parts from my windshield on the side of the road. It's all in the grill, Buzzard everywhere!"

"What's a buzzard?" Julie asked.

Until that point Dylan was so involved in his story, he hadn't noticed Julie in the room. She was seated between Bill on one side, one of the Harvest boys on her other flank. "Those big black birds, you know, they eat dead things on the road, like deer and possum," he answered.

"Oh, you mean a vulture," she corrected him.

"You're such a city girl!" Jeff reacted, this time, nudging her elbow as they sat next to each other.

"You're such a country boy!" She came back to him with her own elbow poke to his side.

Dylan lost his place in his smashed bird tale. He took a moment to realize an emotion he had not felt since, well, since he didn't know when. Was he jealous? Were they flirting with each other? Thoughts blew through his mind like a Carolina tropical storm. Jeff wasn't even her type. He was rough and such a redneck. Julie was trendy, and knew fashion, and she was smart, and beautiful and. Dylan knew his feelings were stronger than simple jealousy.

He declined to finish his bird story. He took a seat on the opposite side of the table, several chairs from being directly across from either of them.

Dylan tried not to look their direction as the integration of Carolina Harvest into the stores shaped the morning strategy session. Despite his determination not to stare their direction, Dylan caught Jeff nudging Julie to show her a note he scratched on his pad. She privately laughed with him, before writing something in reply. It was as if Dylan had dropped into some sort of middle school, biology, lab class, with the teacher's attention focused elsewhere.

Despite his jovial spirit when he had arrived in the room, Dylan was in no mood to contribute. He tried unsuccessfully not to look at Julie and Jeff. The legal pad notes, the private smiles to each other continued. He sat silently until the time for lunch. Any appetite he had was lost. His stomach turned with anxiety of what he would say to Julie, or worse yet what she would say about who was sitting next to her.

When the lunch break was announced, several attendees made direct paths to the restrooms. Office coffee in long morning meetings has that effect. Others looked through the pyramid of white boxed meals for the best combination of ham, turkey, and cheese selections.