Page 44 of The One Night Dash
Vik laughs maniacally. “I bet Louie is kicking himself right now.”
Carlton scolds him. “We talked about this. Do you need to go back to the hotel with Darrin and sulk about being a millionaire?”
“Maybe I do,” he sputters.
Turns out, they weren’t just old roommates and college friends. They were the guys who stayed up coding together until sunrise, ate ramen at desks stacked with Red Bull cans, and built the skeleton of the start-up with Louie, who talked them all into selling for millions but never brought them into another project again.
They’re all smart—likesupersmart. Carlton talks quantum computing between bites of steak, Vik casually mentions consulting for a robotics firm, Adam explains the good and bad of machine learning, and Derrick … sulks.
Dash pleasantly surprises me by not needing to talk about hockey or his success. He actually fits in instantly, and when Adam squints across the table, he snaps his fingers. “We played lawn chess at your party.”
Dash laughs, full and shameless. “You meanparties? We played many games, my man.”
Adam shakes his head. “And you beat me, drunk, every time.”
Groans circle the table, everyone tossing in their own half-embarrassed stories, and I find myself laughing, too, the kind of laugh that makes your cheeks ache. Through the toast, through dinner, through round after round of banter about bad dorm food and even worse IPO pitches. I sip my wine and enjoy the conversation at our table. Honestly? It’s fun.
“Remember thetoaster app?” Carlton grins, leaning forward. “We pitched an entire concept around being able topick your exact shade of brown on your phone. Like toast was the great unsolved mystery of modern life.”
Vik groans. “Half the time, it burned; half the time, it froze the app. One investor literally asked us if we were high.”
“We were,” Adam admits.
The whole table erupts.
Dash shakes his head. “The futureisbreakfast tech.”
Derrick jumps in next, wagging his fork, “No, no—the worst one wasUber for laundry.Louie actually wrote a pitch deck with the tagline ‘Spin into the future.’”
Adam laughs. “It would’ve worked if midterms hadn’t gotten in the way of pickup and delivery.”
I nearly choke on my sip of wine.
“And don’t forget the doggie Fitbit,” Vik adds once the laughter dies down. “A heart monitor and step tracker for dogs. Except the collar was so heavy that none of the dogs would move. The beta test was just sad puppies lying down.”
The table erupts again, this time with a chorus of groans.
Adam mutters, shaking his head, “We really thought we were going to change the world with that one.”
Dash leans toward me, voice low, just for me. “I get why you had to come. Good memories.”
“Gotta hold on to them.” I glance over my shoulder at the head table. “She wasn’t all bad. She deserves to be happy.”
Adam snorts. “I remember Louie working up the courage to ask you out on a date, and Lauren answered your phone instead.”
“OG cockblocker.” Dash chuckles, shaking his head. Then he turns and looks me in the eyes. “I remember Lit class. Thought you were that natural kind of pretty you don’t see every day.” His eyes hold mine. “Couldn’t figure out if you were really that special mix of smart, sweet, and stunning, with just enough sass these geniuses couldn’t manufacture if they tried.”
Heat crawls up my face, and before I can breathe, he turns back to the table, grin cocky again.
“But she friend-zoned me by introducing me to Lauren.”
The guys howl, ribbing him with a fresh round of“ouch”and“rough break, man.”
I lift my wineglass to my lips, pretending it’s all just banter, even though my pulse is skittering like it knows better.
“Truth is,” he says, and this time it isn’t cocky; it’s plain, “back then, I wasn’t ready. Hockey was everything, but I was also grinding at school because if hockey didn’t work out, I had to make sure my family was taken care of. I didn’t think I had the time to put into anything else … not the way it deserved, so … Lauren.”
The table quiets, their laughter fading into the kind of silence that respects the weight of what he’s saying.
