After trying on no less than eleven variables, I have opted for a green cotton dress that falls below my knees, and nude Mary Jane stacked heels. My hair is up in a messy bun. It is tasteful but not sexy. I sure hope Mrs. Investor Guy doesn’t feel intimidated by my toned-down awe-inspiring beauty.
John texted me when they were two minutes away to give me a heads-up, and now he’s texting me that he and the driver are out front if I’m ready. I grab my purse and overnight bag (which already happened to contain several condoms in its inner pocket from the last time it was utilized), and go down to the front door without replying to the text, expecting him to be waiting for me in the car. He stands two feet from me and turns to see me in the doorway. By the look on his face, I may not have toned down the sexy enough. He is even more handsome than he was yesterday, in a simple but expensive black T-shirt, charcoal blazer and dark jeans that may have cost more than my rent. Still no glasses. His eyes are so pretty I slam the door shut, as if that is what startles me.
He kisses me on the cheek, lingers to whisper “You look good,” then signals to the driver that he doesn’t need to open the door for us. He opens the back door and waits for me to step inside. I don’t recognize this make of car, but it’s silver and sleek and classy.
“Hi, I’m Olivia,” I say to the driver. He is middle-aged and possibly Hawaiian, very friendly-looking but serious.
“Good evening, ma’am, I’m Richard.”
“Nice to meet you.”
When John is seated next to me, he presents me with a bottle of water.
“Why thank you. What kind of car is this?”
“Tesla. Electric.”
Expensive as fuck.
“One of my few indulgences, but it’s good for the environment and I actually like Elon Musk.”
“You’ve met him?”
“Only once.”
The driver pulls away from the curb and we’re off to an upscale Zagat-rated New American restaurant in SoMa. John tells me that we’ll be dining with Phil Stanley, an investor from Houston who wants to get involved with the food tech business he’s been working on setting up in Shanghai. His new wife Elaine works in marketing.
I lower my voice. “So you have a full-time driver?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t like to drive?”
“I do very much, but I also like to multitask, and after getting pulled over twice for using my phone while driving, I realized it was unsafe, so I always use Richard if I know I’m going to be distracted.” He looks over at me. “Like now.”
I assume he means he’s distracted by me, until he pulls his phone out of his pocket and reads an email.
“I saw your Ted Talk on youtube this morning.”
“It was TedX. It’s an offshoot of Ted, not quite as prestigious. I haven’t been invited to do Ted yet.” He sounds bitter about that, which amuses me to no end.
“It was an interesting talk, nonetheless.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“You referred to me in it.”
He looks over at me and grins. “I did. I’m glad you caught that.”
“Well, it was pretty obvious to me. Has my brother seen it?”
“He has. He also got the reference.”
“Interesting that he didn’t mention anything about it to me.”
“He’s a busy guy.”
“Sure. Who isn’t. I’m curious. What, specifically, would you say is your weakness at this point in your life?”
Without hesitation, he says, “You are, Olivia.” There’s no sarcasm. Is there? I don’t think he knows how to be sarcastic. It’s not a cheesy line. He’s not being flirtatious. He wasn’t even caught off guard. He’s just being honest. He looks vulnerable for a split second, before he turns his attention back to his phone.
I have no idea how to take that. Especially because he’s so engrossed in the email that he’s typing out on his phone that it’s almost as if the exchange didn’t occur at all. I don’t know, maybe me expectations are too high. Maybe if I ask a question I should just be satisfied with the fact that he gave me an immediate honest answer and move on instead of being insulted because he’d rather look at his phone than stare at me. Oh, but I can’t. He needs to learn how to treat a lady on a date. He thinks he knows everything, but he doesn’t know how to behave socially, and this is my chance to finally teach him.
“Really? Because it seems to me that your phone addiction is your weakness.”
“I’m not addicted to my phone, I’m finishing up an email to a colleague in Boston who needs an answer tonight. You know what your weakness is?”
I steel myself. “I have a feeling you’re going to tell me.”
He blinks, slowly, and addresses my mouth. “You have no idea how important you are.”
I make a face and laugh because I haven’t processed what he’s said yet. When I have processed it I am still not sure if I should feel offended or not.
“Is that another way of telling me I’m living a life of mediocrity?”
“No. It’s the only way I could think of telling you that you’re important. To me. Even while I’m typing an email on my phone.”
Sheesh. When you put it that way.
My heart is racing. I lean towards him and lower my voice. “Well if that’s my weakness then how do you recommend I leverage it?”
He doesn’t look up from the email he has gone back to typing. “Just keep doing what you’re doing. It’s working for you.”
My mouth feels dry, all of a sudden. My hands are trembling. What the fuck is happening? This doesn’t happen to me. Johnny B. Nerdballs definitely does not do this to me. I struggle with the cap on the water bottle. It won’t budge. John holds out his hand, offering to open it for me. I jerk it away from him just as the cap opens and water spills out onto my dress and my bare legs.
“Shit.”
“I got it, I got it.” John immediately puts his phone in his blazer pocket and reaches for a box of tissues. He dabs at the wet spot on the lower part of my dress, then lifts up the hem and uses a few more wadded up tissues to dab at my bare legs, from below my knees to my thighs. I am so glad I found the time to shave and lotion up after work.
I hold my breath as I stare down at him. He isn’t at all uncomfortable wiping my damp bare skin. Until he is. His eyes flick up to meet mine. He lets the wet ball of tissues drop to the floor. The tips of his fingers and his knuckles deliberately graze the smooth skin of my lower limbs as he reaches up between my legs for the hem of my dress and pulls it back down to cover my knees. His hand hovers there, while he decides if he should travel up further. I would welcome it, and he would soon find that there is another part of me that is quite moistened. He doesn’t lose eye contact with me until he picks up the discarded tissues and places them into the built-in waste receptacle, then pulls his phone back out of his pocket.
“You can use the hand dryer in the ladies room,” is all he says until we get to the restaurant.
I let out my breath as quietly as possible, hoping he doesn’t realize just how frustrated I am. Perhaps I shouldn’t have mentioned the issue of not having sex with him. Surely he isn’t going to restrain himself because of that. Surely he isn’t a gentleman.
Oh shit, he is a gentleman.
When we arrive at the restaurant, John gets out to open the car door for me and holds out his hand. I take it, and he watches my legs as they step out. We hold hands as we walk into the restaurant, his fingers comfortably entwined in mine, as if we did this all the time.
He suddenly stops in his tracks when we enter the waiting area. “Actually,” he says, letting go of my hand and reaching into his pocket for his phone. “Are you following me on Instagram and Twitter yet?”
“Uh. No.”
“You should do that now. Search my name, I’m verified. Wait, let me take a picture first.” He holds his phone up to take a picture of us leaning in, touching cheekbones. He politely shows me the shot and asks me if I sign off on i
t, before posting it on Instagram. “I follow you,” he says. “I’m tagging you. Get ready.”
“Get ready for what?”
“You’ll see.”
When I find his profile on Instagram I see that he has over two hundred thousand followers.
“By the way, Louisa Boehmer follows me on Instagram, so we’ll post a lot of good pictures of you.”
The Artistic Director of my ballet company follows him on Instagram. Geez Louisa. Who are you, and what did you do with Johnny B. Nerdballs?
Our dining companions are surprisingly pleasant. Phil is around forty, fit, mostly bald, very nice and super into Johnny (in a business-way). Elaine is under thirty, very well-groomed, fuchsia-lipped and smiley, and the first thing I said to her was: “What kind of lipstick is that, it’s perfect!” She told me it’s a Chanel lip crayon and she’s been smiling at me ever since. It is difficult for me to pay attention to these lovely people, because Johnny’s hand has either been holding mine on the tabletop, or gently resting on my thigh in a way that is intimate but not at all inappropriate given that the newlyweds across from us are also physically comfortable with each other.
He has transformed into Mr. Double Date. He is somehow always attentive to me and our hosts, smiling and chatting casually in a way that I have never witnessed before. It’s like he flipped a switch.
I suppose I’m staring at John a little too hard while he talks to Mr. Investor Guy about food tech, because Mrs. Investor Guy has to reach across the small table to tap my hand to get my attention.
She wrinkles her nose while grinning at me. “How did you two meet?”
“Oh I’ve known him pretty much my whole life, really.”
“No! You’re so lucky. I have so many single girlfriends who are dying to meet him.”
“Really? You mean women in Houston?” I look over at John, fully aware that he’s capable of listening to more than one conversation at once. He squeezes my thigh.
“Houston. Austin. Here. New York. I have friends all over. You do realize he’s famous! How long have you been dating? I didn’t realize he wasn’t single.”
“We just re-connected quite recently, actually.”
“A whirlwind romance. I love it.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s quite the whirl of wind. We grew up together, in Cleveland. He’s my brother’s best friend.”
“No! So cute! You must have had such a crush on him growing up!”
I try not to make a face. No. Wait. Did I have a crush on him? No. Definitely not. Change the subject.
“How did you and your husband meet?”
“I contacted him on Twitter.”
“Really?”
She nods.
“So it was love at first Tweet?”
“I wish. I practically stalked him. He finally agreed to meet me for a cup of coffee in between meetings, but…we’ve been together ever since. They just need to be tied down. I mean I really don’t know if you understand how lucky you are. I have girlfriends who applied to this matchmaking service in Sausalito specifically because they’re hoping to be set up with your boyfriend. But apparently he won’t even sign up for it.”
“Really? A matchmaking service?”
“Uh huh. It’s high-end. Have you ever seen Millionaire Matchmaker on Bravo? It’s like that.”
“I don’t have cable.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t been scouted. You’d be perfect. I mean, if you weren’t already taken. It’s how a lot of high caliber women meet high net worth men in the Bay Area nowadays.”
“Fascinating. I had no idea.” Silly me, wasting my life with talented artist-types.
“But I’m sure you meet men like that all the time, being a fancy dancer.”
“You’d think. I must throw off a low-class vibe.”
“Hah! Not at all.”
At this dinner, I learn that John owns a co-work space in Sausalito, that he rents out to up-and-coming tech nerds who want to work on their laptops in a public space amongst others like them who are doing the same, but without all the annoying baristas and college students around them. I learn that he has two offices in Palo Alto—one at Brainy Biz headquarters, where he is CEO and oversees forty employees, one at his small venture capital firm, which is called General Relativity Ventures, where he employs eight. He is cautious about rapid growth and scaling too fast, he says. His ambitions are tempered by a desire to one day have a family, he says, squeezing my hand.
I have to wonder why he’s trying to impress this upon Mr. Investor Guy. It doesn’t seem like he needs any more incentive to do business with John. Surely he isn’t trying to impress me by saying that.
A well-dressed young man who’s about my age approaches our table hesitantly, to shake John’s hand and thanks him because Brainy Biz helped him score a great job.
It seems I’m the last person in the Bay Area to discover what a catch John Brandt is.
When Elaine excuses herself to go to the ladies room, I check my phone. I have over three hundred new followers on Instagram, a text from Franklin calling me a lucky slut, a text from Callie asking me if that’s her green dress that I’m wearing (it isn’t), and a recent text from my brother that says: Have you been kidnapped by my friend? WTF?!
I guess they all follow my fake boyfriend on Instagram now too.
When Elaine returns from the restroom, John stands and excuses himself. He shows me the Caller ID on his phone. My brother is calling him. “I should take this,” he says.
He doesn’t look nervous, exactly, but he doesn’t look relaxed either.
It’s cute. It makes me feel homesick again and I like him even more.
8
John
NOW
I make my way towards the front of the restaurant to take the call. “Monty. Hang on, it’s loud in here, let me get outside.”
He is already yelling, and I don’t need to make out the exact words to know what he’s saying.
“Just calm down.” I talk over him. “You told me to reach out to her.”
“Yeah, as a friend, to check on her.”
“And that is what I did.” I shake my head at the valet parking attendant and signal that I’m just talking on the phone out here. “I checked in on her, and now we’re on a friendly dinner date.”
“I just hope you’ve actually thought about what you’re doing, Johnny.”
“I can honestly say that I’ve thought about it for a very, very long time…”
He is quiet for a moment, and I hold the phone away from my ear, expecting more yelling. I hear him exhale. “About my sister?”
“I really care about her, Monty. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt her, you know that.”
“Yeah. Not on purpose.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“The fact that you don’t even know what I mean worries me more than anything.”
“I wouldn’t have gone to see her if you hadn’t said it was okay, but I like Olivia Montgomery, and I want to spend more time with her. Simple as that.”
“I feel sick to my stomach.”
“Really?”
“Kind of. But I guess you’re better than some pretentious asshole artsy guy.”
“Thank you, that means a lot…Listen, I should get back to the table. Are we good?”
Another pause. “Yeah. We’re good. For now.”
He hangs up. I realize that my free hand was balled up into a tight fist. My armpits feel damp. Despite that, the conversation went much better than it could have. Hopefully from now on, when I think of Olivia, I won’t hear my best friend’s voice calling me a ‘filthy pervert’ and describing the physics of his hand hitting my face.
When I return to the table, she leans in to ask how that went. I wink at her and smile. “We’re good to go,” I say. The way she blushes when she smirks tells me everything I need to know.
When we’re in the backseat of the car, being driven back to my house, I respond to emails on my phone but I can see in
my peripheral vision that Olivia keeps turning her head to stare at me with disbelief.
I send one last email, pocket my phone, and give my beautiful date my full attention. “Hi. What?”
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Behave like the perfect boyfriend when we were at the restaurant?”
“Oh. I’ve observed what women respond to in other men. It’s just acting.”
She winces, almost imperceptibly, but I catch it.
“Sorry,” I say. “Should I have sugarcoated that?”
Her brow furrows. “No. Painfully honest I can deal with. I guess I just don’t see why you can’t you act like that all the time.”
I laugh. It’s a surprisingly naïve thing for her to say. “Nobody acts like the perfect boyfriend all the time. I like you even when I’m not acting like that. There are plenty of guys who behave like the perfect boyfriend who are by definition terrible boyfriends in that they lie, cheat, insult their women all while putting on a public façade.”
“Sure, agreed, but why can’t you act like the perfect boyfriend even fifteen percent of the time?”
I smile and take her hand. “Fifteen percent of all time, or fifteen percent of the time I spend with you?” I kiss her hand. “It wouldn’t be feasible for me to devote fifteen percent of every waking hour acting like the perfect boyfriend, but it might be possible for me to spend ten percent of my time with you behaving in a way that’s compliant with your expectations for the mythical perfect boyfriend.”
“It’s not a negotiation. I’m giving up one hundred percent of my time to be with you for a month—you should be able to manage to be a pretend perfect boyfriend for fifteen percent of that time.” Her eyes widen and she covers her mouth, looking towards Richard. “Sorry!” she whispers.
“It’s okay. Richard has signed a non-disclosure agreement too. He overhears a lot of business calls while he’s driving me.”
“Oh.” She pulls her hand from mine and looks out the window.
“What’s wrong? I’ll agree to your demand.”
Cocky Nerd Page 6