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Charlotte smiles at a woman stepping aside to give her a spot to stand, then looks up at me.
The meeting of our eyes jolts my heart back to life, like one thousand volts from a defibrillator.
She came.
But she said she wouldn’t.
So why has she come?
She’s even wearing a First Byte T-shirt.
My stomach does a backflip, then a forward one, and then a series of cartwheels.
I’ve been staring at her for such an uncomfortable amount of time that, one by one, the other eyes in the room follow my gaze and look at her too.
Off to the side, Owen coughs, snapping me back to reality like a smack in the face and providing the kiss of life my brain needed.
Now I really must save this. It would be bad enough to look like a loser in front of Owen, the staff and volunteers, the kids, and, Lord forbid, the Netto execs. But I certainly can’t let Charlotte see me fail.
Everyone else blurs and fades into the distance, and suddenly I have an audience of one.
I need to show her I can do this.
Screw this up, and any remote chance I might have with her will be shot forever.
One corner of her mouth curls up into a lopsided, encouraging smile.
I’m seized by the urge to jump off this platform, skip between the tables, scoop her into my arms, and press my lips against those adorably sexy curled ones.
But even more than that, I want to make her proud of me. So what if I’ve built an almost billion-dollar company? So what if I’ve developed internationally renowned software? So what if I could walk into any boardroom in Silicon Valley and command their attention? All that matters to me right now is that, in the next five minutes, Charlotte thinks I do a good job.
I might have tried to dismiss the Presentation 101 lesson she gave me as a joke, but there isn’t a second of it I don’t remember.
Five things, she said. Five things.
Number one. Confidence.
I pull my shoulders back, lift my chin, and loosen my white-knuckle grip on the lectern. I’d have thought Charlotte’s presence would have made me even more nervous, but the opposite seems to be the case—my hands aren’t shaking any more.
I clear my throat again, this time not through nerves, but through a desire to project to the back of the room.
“Sorry, folks. There was a technical glitch with my script.” I realize the irony. “Hopefully before too long one of our new friends here”—I gesture to the children—“will be able to fix those kinds of things for me.”
The kids smile, a couple point at themselves, and an affectionate chuckle runs through the room.
I’ve unintentionally checked off another of Charlotte’s points—start with a joke and get everyone on your side.
And I might just be winning them back as quickly as I lost them. At least everyone’s looking at me now. Under any other circumstances I would hate that. But it suddenly feels good, like it’s the right thing to have their attention. It’s still terrifying, but less terrifying than looking like a scared, incompetent fool in front of the woman I long for.
To hell with it. To hell with the fancy graphics and animations in the slick slide deck marketing put together for me. Charlotte’s right that speaking from the heart is the best thing to do. I darken the screen my script is on, and smile at the audience.
“Owen and I could not be happier to welcome you all to the opening of the first of many First Byte tech hubs for kids.”
Relatability. Charlotte said it’s vital to be relatable.
“You might look at us both now and see us as successful business owners with fancy offices in New York and San Francisco. But we didn’t start like this.”
I keep my head held high—relatable and confident, right?
