by Doxer, Debra
“The florist appointment is next week. I don’t even want to go now,” she says on a sigh.
“You didn’t want to go before.”
She doesn’t reply. I hear the frustration in her silence.
“Jonathan hasn’t chosen anything for the wedding, and he doesn’t seem to mind,” I say.
“He doesn’t care about cake and flowers,” she answers, sounding defeated.
“Because it’s not a big deal,” I say. “It’s getting married to each other and making a life together that matters. You’re losing all perspective. Your cake will be terrific, and the flowers will be beautiful. Mom has great taste. You can’t deny that.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me wanting things a certain way at my own wedding.”
“Of course not, but that’s not how she operates. You need to focus on what’s important and let the rest go. She may be a control freak, but she’s not a bad person. You know she loves you.”
“Hummmph…” is all the response I hear. “What time is the honeymoon?” she asks.
I smile, knowing she’s feeling a little better and hoping that I helped.
It’s Saturday night, and I’m happy to have the entire evening to myself. Well, just me and Tiger. I think about heading to the gym to work off the cake. That might help me feel better or at least make me too tired to think. There is no sign of Jason Randall, yet. Perhaps he won’t return my call. I’m of two minds about that. Slightly annoyed--thinking that he went to the trouble of passing his business card to me, and I actually called him, and now he’s going to blow me off. Relieved--thinking that I won’t have to go through the trouble of dating him and discovering that he’s a jerk. My attitude is atrocious. I know that. To hear me, you’d think I must have had my heart broken in some terrible way to cause me to be so cynical. But that’s not the case. I’ve just had so many little disappointments built up over time, as my expectations of kindness and consideration have been dashed over and over again.
But as I’m heading out the door the next day, Jason does call.
“I figured passing my business card to you was worth a shot,” he says after the initial greetings are out of the way.
“Where did you disappear to?” I ask. “One minute you were there, the next you’d vaporized.”
“Sorry about that. I got a call I had to take. It was business, and I had to step into the hall by the restrooms to hear. By the time I returned, you were sitting down with your friend. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“According to your card, you’re a financial analyst. That sounds really impressive to me, but in reality, I have no idea what a financial analyst is.”
He laughs, deep and throaty. I like the sound. “Basically, I spend my days in meetings or with a phone attached to my ear. I write a lot of reports on the advisability of investing in companies, and the people I work for actually think I know what I’m talking about. It’s all very tedious really.”
I laugh. “I’m sure you know what you’re doing. They must do some vetting before they hire people.”
“It’s actually a pretty grueling interview process there. I’m glad I’m way past all that. And what do you do?”
“I work in product marketing for BTS Systems.” BTS Systems is a large company, traded on the Nasdaq. I generally assume people have heard of it.
“Product marketing,” he says. “What does that entail?”
“Basically, I help sell products by exaggerating what they can do.”
“Well, that must take skill.”
“You have no idea.” My stomach starts that familiar fluttering again. I am enjoying talking to him.
“So, would you be up to meeting for some dinner after work this week?”
“As long it’s not at Café Blue,” I answer.
“Not a fan?”
I entertain him with my multiple Café Blue dinner experiences, and he laughs on cue. Then he suggests another place, in the Back Bay area of the city. I’m assuming that he lives in the city like most other single folks. Although driving into and parking in the city are not all that convenient for me, I agree to a place. Dragging him out to the suburbs after work would only complicate the plans at this point. There are far more interesting places in town.
“Just one more thing,” he says. “Who’s Tiger?”
six
A smile blooms across my face as I recall the conversation. I’m driving to Waltham to get my check for the car repairs. I explained to Jason that Tiger is a most entertaining kitty. Luckily, he doesn’t seem to have a thing about cats. Cats seem to turn a lot of men off for some reason. Maybe they think cat ownership is evidence of dangerous nesting instincts. That thought rankles me, but I can’t discount the theory.
The Waltham Brew House is a local neighborhood pub with its own glass enclosed brew-house. Scratched wooden booths line a windowed wall that looks out onto the sidewalk. The brewing area, made up of several medium-sized wooden barrels surrounded by snaked silver piping, is near the entrance. The bar sits in the middle of the dining area like an oval-shaped donut. The heat wave broke overnight, and the afternoon is cool and overcast with a low leaden sky that threatens showers.
I have on shorts and sandals today despite the chill. I’ve also thrown on my favorite blue sweater, the one that matches my eyes, and my hair is loose and obedient, so far. I know we’re only meeting so he can hand me a check, but I’m wondering if maybe he has more in mind. Standing in the entrance of the Waltham Brew House, I glance around the sparsely populated place. I’m about five minutes early, and there is no sign of Ryan “the bumper denter” Miller. I’m actually not sure if I would recognize him, having only met him briefly, and under a certain amount of duress.
A young, friendly hostess approaches me, but I tell her that I’m waiting for someone. About fifteen minutes later, as I’m shifting my weight from one foot to the other and glancing at my watch for the third or fourth time, through the pub’s windows I see someone briskly round the corner and head for the entrance. The door opens behind me, and I turn to see a somewhat familiar figure enter. He looks up and I notice a flicker of recognition cross his face when he spots me. I recognize him as well, although he appears quite different. His hair, dark and wavy, is brushed to the side with some locks disobeying and hanging down over his forehead. His golden brown eyes have interesting green tinges, and they are bright and friendly--no longer bloodshot and tired. He appears comfortable and casual in olive colored shorts and a navy T-shirt.
“Andrea?” he asks, stopping in front of me.
I’m struck by how handsome he is, and suddenly I feel uneasy. It’s an unusual response, but history has taught me that guys like him are not usually very nice. They may seem nice at first, but dig a little deeper and they’re generally too self-centered to be likable. “Ryan,” I reply.
He smiles at me. “Sorry, I’m late.”
“No problem.” He is actually just under the gun of okay on the lateness scale. Tardiness is a pet peeve of mine.
“Well,” he says, “I’m relieved to see that you’re not wearing a neck brace or showing any other signs of injury.”
“I’m in perfectly good health.”
“Have you had lunch yet?” he asks.
I’m debating how to answer. If this is a quick check exchange, I can do some grocery shopping and get home to do my usual Sunday afternoon cleaning. But then I hear my sister yelling at me when I tell her that I avoided having lunch with Ryan. “No,” I finally reply, hoping I didn’t hesitate too long.
He sort of squints at me, making me believe there may have been an awkward pause before my response. But he recovers quickly. “Let me buy you lunch then,” he offers.
“Oh no, you don’t have to do that.”
“It’s the least I can do after the inconvenience I’ve caused you. Besides, I was planning on deducting it from the amount I owe you anyway.”
“Oh?” I reply, raising an eyebrow.
He grins at me. His teeth shine bright
ly against the shadow of a beard that darkens his face. “No, not really.” He glances at the hostess when she approaches again. “Lunch, then?”
I nod and Ryan requests a table for two. We’re led to one of the wooden booths by the window. As Ryan settles in across from me he asks, “Have you been here before?”
I sit down and the wood bench is cool against the summer-bare skin of my legs. “Yes, but it was years ago.”
“Well, if you like beer, I would recommend the Titan Ale.”
“You come here often then?”
He shrugs. “I only live a few blocks away, and the office is just down the street. We walk over here for lunch meetings sometimes.”
“Beer-enhanced lunch meetings?”
He nods.
“Are they very productive?”
“Probably more productive,” he answers, laughing.
“You look much more rested today,” I comment.
“Yeah, you definitely saw me at my worst. I’d been working for seventy-two hours straight trying to solve a problem for a customer. I finally solved it that day I ran into you.” He pauses as he runs a hand across his rough cheek. “And I’m afraid,” he continues, “That I was thinking about my bed and not about my driving, unfortunately for you.”
The waitress approaches then. We order the Titan Ale to start, and Ryan recommends the burgers for lunch. So we order those, too.
“What kind of business do you have?” I ask once the waitress is gone.
Ryan raises an eyebrow. “It’s a startup. We’re kind of in stealth mode.”
“Top secret, huh?”
“Yes and no. Now that we finally have a customer, it’s a little less stealthy.”
“Oh, so you were working on a problem for your only customer.”
He laughs. “Yes, our most important and only customer gets very special treatment.”
“Well, now I’m curious,” I say. “But you don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s actually not all that interesting, but people will want it, we hope. We’ve got something similar to an access control profile that companies can give their users for gaining user permission rights to information. The idea is that the profile combined with a network acceleration tool can help users access what they need more quickly, and not be able to access what they shouldn’t.” He stops talking and looks at me with a slight grin and a shrug. I realize he thinks he’s boring me.
“You’re a software developer?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he shrugs again.
“I work with lots of developers.”
This piques his interest. “Oh, really?”
“I’m in product marketing at BTS Systems.”
“Marketing, huh? A necessary evil,” he says with a challenging twinkle in his eye. This is the typical reaction of developers to marketing departments.
“I’m afraid so.” I laugh.
Our beers arrive then, and Ryan explains that he and a friend left a large local software company about a year ago to develop the prototype for an idea they had. They put up nearly all of their savings, and lived off of lots of macaroni and cheese while they visited venture capital firms seeking funding.
“And we got a small first round of funding a few months ago,” he continues. “Enough to hire a couple more engineers and a skeleton sales team. We’re running lean and mean for now, trying to raise more money.”
“That sounds promising. But it also sounds like a lot of hard work.”
He nods. “True story. We’re hoping this first customer will act as a reference for others, but once this round of money runs out, there may not be more. It’s all very shaky still.”
It’s a story I hear often from others. Every engineer talks about going to a start-up, owning a piece of the action, and making a killing. But for most, it’s just talk. The work it takes to actually make a go of a new company selling a brand new product is generally enough deterrent to prevent most people from actually making the leap.
Once our burgers arrive, I begin to feel guilty about the car repair money and about letting Ryan pay for lunch.
Ryan is right about the burgers. They are great, but a bit too messy I decide, as I demurely wipe dribbling juice from my chin with a paper napkin. Ryan seems not to notice as he asks me more about my job.
As we finish off our lunches, we exchange workplace stories. Most high tech companies have surprisingly similar environments. Then Ryan withdraws his checkbook, and I dig around in my black hole of a purse for the estimate. He eyes me, his lips curving upward, as I finally come up with the pink copy from the garage.
“What do you women keep in those things?” he asks.
“Oh, you know, the usual. Wallet, cell phone, kitchen sink.”
His smile widens, and then he apologizes again as he hands me the check, and I thank him. I also thank him for lunch.
“Andrea,” he says, looking down at the table, fingering a dent in the wood, before raising his eyes to mine. “I don’t know what your situation is, but maybe you’d want to have dinner with me one night.” He watches me and his hand stills.
I blink at him as I realize that he’s wondering if I’m single, and he’s asking me out. I haven’t been on a date in months, and now I have two offers in one week. When it rains, it pours. Of course, it has poured before in my life, and those downfalls came to nothing. I glance at Ryan’s hand resting on the table. His fingers are long and narrow with trim square nails. A bulky silver diving watch filled with dials encircles his wrist. I think my first impression, well second impression actually, when he walked into the restaurant, may have been wrong. I’m not getting ‘self-centered’ from him at all. I’m getting something closer to ‘unsure’ and maybe even ‘nervous’. The typical engineer has a reputation for being socially inept and less than average in the looks department. This, of course, is a stereotype. But like most stereotypes, it does hold true a certain percent of the time. Thankfully, Ryan’s appearance shatters the stereotype to pieces.
“Sure,” I reply.
“Great.” He grins and lets out a breath as though he had been holding it.
I realize that his demeanor gives me pause. His personality doesn’t match his exterior, which is disarming to me, and I’m not sure what to make of him.
“If you want to give me your number, I can give you a call. My schedule is pretty crazy this week, but maybe we could get together over the weekend if you’re free.”
“I’d like that.”
Ryan pays the bill when it arrives. When we get to the door, I realize that it’s raining in earnest. We’d been sitting by a window, but I never noticed what was happening outside. There could have been a hurricane going on, and it likely would not have registered with me during lunch.
“No umbrella?” he asks, looking down at me in the doorway.
I shake my head, noticing that he hasn’t brought one either. “It’s just water. We won’t melt.”
“I’ll be right back.” He turns and goes back inside the main room of the brewery. I see him talk to the bartender. The bartender then exits through a door in the back. He quickly returns and hands something to Ryan who has joined me again in the doorway. He starts to unfold an oversized black garbage bag. “I can hold this over us and run you to your car,” he offers.
I just look up at him as my surprise renders me speechless.
He’s staring down at me expectantly.
“Um, that’s okay,” I hear myself say. I’m too shocked by the gesture to think clearly. I know it’s not really a big deal, but no one I’m not related to has ever offered to do something this nice for me.
Ryan glances out at the rain and eyes me speculatively. “Are you sure?”
I’m getting a second chance to change my answer. “Well, if you don’t mind? I’m just down the block. Where are you?”
He points toward the same parking lot I’m in. “Whenever you’re ready,” he says, raising the bag up over our heads.
“Ready,” I state and I take a breath, pr
eparing to get soaked.
We dash outside, moving together in a slow jog. The rain plays a steady staccato rhythm on the plastic bag as we huddle underneath it. I have to stay close to Ryan in order to remain dry, and the side of my hip is bumping against his leg as we move down the sidewalk. The humid air carries the clean scent of his soap to me.
“Right there.” I direct him, pointing to my silver car by the entrance of the lot.
I have my keys in my hand, and my thumb finds the remote unlock button. “Thanks,” I say a little breathlessly, turning toward him in our rain-free bubble as I grip the door handle. “Still nice and dry,” I announce, although my feet in my sandals are pretty soggy. Then I notice that he’s kept the bag mostly over me. Damp hair hangs down over his ears and onto his wet shoulders.
“You’re soaked,” I accuse, feeling badly.
“I won’t melt.” He gives me a lopsided grin and pulls my door open, motioning for me to get in. “I’ll talk to you soon, Andrea,” he says, before dashing off. Through my rain spattered windshield, I watched him disappear to the other end of the parking lot.
“Maybe that’s how he meets women.”
“You’re saying he hit me on purpose?”
“It’s a possibility.”
Tiger rubs the top of his head against my hand as I refill his dish with food. Tiger is on a diet. He gets two small helpings of his dry food a day, one in the morning and another in the evening. His hunger drives him to rapture each time I withdraw his food from the cabinet. His nature is so gentle that it nearly brings me to tears thinking of him living with an inconsiderate owner. I rescued Tiger from a shelter when he was six weeks old. Since then, we’ve had a few mishaps. Since he is often underfoot, I have inadvertently stepped on his paws every so often. I also hit him on the head once with a closet door because I hadn’t realized he was right beside me when I pulled the door open. But he never holds a grudge. Rather he looks to me for reassurance and comfort, even as I’m the one inflicting his injuries. There is a lesson to be learned from Tiger and his ability to love unconditionally.