Chapter 6
Three weeks ago
I have a grand total of zero superstitious rituals centered around dating.
And I promise I’m not saying this to brag. There is a simple reason I haven’t convinced myself that I need to chug down a Capri Sun or do seven jumping jacks before going out with someone, which is: I do not date. Ever. I used to, of course. Once upon a time. With Oscar, the Love of My Life.
Like Hannah often points out, it’s a little misleading for me to refer to the guy who met another woman at a data science corporate bonding retreat and two weeks later called me in tears to tell me that he was falling for her as the “Love of My Life.” And I swear, I do get the irony. But Oscar and I go way back. He gave me my first kiss (with tongue) when we were sophomores in high school. He was my date to the senior prom, the first nonfamily person I went on vacation with, the one whose shoulder I bawled on when he got accepted to his dream school in the Midwest, exactly seven states away from me.
We actually made it work pretty well during four years of long distance for college. And we did get to spend summers together, except when I was on internships, which was . . . well, yes, every summer but junior year, and I had that coding boot camp at UCSB then, so . . . yup, every summer. So maybe there were no summers together, but I did end up with a killer CV, and that was nice. Better, even.
When we graduated college, Oscar was offered a job in Portland, and I was going to follow him and find something there, but I got into Caltech’s Ph.D. program, which was too good an opportunity to pass up. I really thought we could do five more years of long distance, because Oscar was a great guy and so, so patient and understanding—till the beginning of my third year. Till the day he FaceTimed me, crying because he’d met someone else and had no choice but to break up with me.
I wept. I stalked his new girlfriend on Instagram. I ate my weight in Talenti gelato (salted caramel truffle, black raspberry vanilla parfait, and, on a particularly shameful night, mango sherbet melted into a pot of Midori sour; I am filled with regrets). I cut my hair short, to what my hairdresser dubbed the longest bob in the history of bobs. I couldn’t bear to be alone, so I slept in Mara’s bed for a week, because Hannah tosses around way too much and I’m pretty sure she changed the sheets twice in the five years we lived together. For about ten days I was utterly, soul-smashingly heartbroken. And then . . .
Then I was more or less fine.
Seriously, considering that Oscar and I had been together for almost a decade, my reaction to being one-sidedly broken up with was nothing short of miraculous. I aced all my classes and my lab work, spent the summer touring Europe by train with Mara and Hannah, and a couple of months later I found myself shocked to realize that I hadn’t checked Oscar’s girlfriend’s Twitter in weeks. Huh.
“Could it be that it wasn’t real love?” I found myself asking my friends over Midori sours (sans mango sherbet; I had regained my dignity by then).
“I think that there are lots of kinds of love,” Hannah said. She was nestled next to me at our favorite booth at Joe’s, the grad student bar closest to our apartment. “Maybe yours with Oscar was closer to the sibling variety than to anything resembling a passionate affair between soul mates? And you’re still in touch. You know that you still love each other as friends, so your brain knows that there’s no need to mourn him.”
“But initially I was really, really devastated.”
“Well, I don’t want to armchair-psychologize you . . .”
“You totally want to armchair-psychologize me.”
Hannah smiled, pleased. “Okay, if you insist. I wonder if maybe you were more devastated at the idea of losing your safe harbor—the person who was there for you since you were kids and promised to be there for you forever—than at the idea of losing Oscar himself. Could it be that he was a crutch of sorts?”
“I don’t know.” I poked at my garnish cherry. “I liked being his girlfriend. He was so . . . there, you know? And when we were apart I missed him, but not too much. It was . . . easy, I guess.”
“Could it be that it was too easy?” Mara asked before stealing my lime.
I’ve been pondering her question ever since.
But there hasn’t been anyone after Oscar. Which means that he still technically retains the title of Love of My Life, even if two months ago I got an invite to his wedding—pretty glaring clue that I’m not the Love of His. I could have gotten out more, I guess, especially in grad school. I could have tried harder. “When one door shuts, another opens,” Hannah and Mara would say. “Now you can date around. You missed out on so many hot dudes in the past few years—remember the guy we met in Tucson? Or the one who always asks you out at conferences? Oh my God, the guy in fluid dynamics who was clearly in love with you? You should hit him up!”
Of course, whenever the topic of my love life comes up, and because dragging is a sacrosanct part of the covenant of friendship, I never hesitate to point out that even though both Hannah and Mara have been mostly single ever since starting grad school, they barely take advantage of their amazing dating opportunities. It usually ends with Mara defensively muttering that she’s busy, and Hannah rebutting that she’s on a break from hooking up with people, because her last two fuck buddies were Can I Jizz in Your Hair and Human Skull on the Nightstand Girl, and they would put anyone off sex. It usually ends with us collectively deciding that no relationship could ever compete with our jobs, guinea pigs, or . . . Netflix, maybe? If the idea of staring at blueprints is more appealing to me than hitting the club (whatever that even means; what even is a club, really?) then maybe I should just hang out with the blueprints. Not that things cannot change, since Mara is now embarrassingly, fantastically in love with her Formerly Asshole Roommate.
Maybe the blueprints and I will common law–tie the knot. Who’s to say?
Anyhoo. All of this to say: I haven’t really dated a whole lot, which is the sole reason I haven’t developed weird, ritualist habits around the process. Or, I hadn’t. Till right now.
Because I am about fifteen minutes into the night, and I’m thinking that I’ll have to keep these black jeans for the rest of my life. The lightweight green sweater I put on? Can’t throw it away. Ever. This is now my lucky-date outfit. Because the second we sit down at the bistro, where everything smells delicious and our narrow window table has the cutest little succulent in its center, Erik’s phone pings.
“Sorry. I’ll mute it.” He does, but not before rolling his eyes. Which is such a far cry from his usual stoic, nonplussed vibe, I cannot help but burst into laughter. “Please, do not mock my pain,” he deadpans, taking the seat across from mine. I’m not sure how, but I know that he’s joking. Maybe I’m developing telepathic powers.
“Work?” I ask.
“I wish.” He shakes his head, resigned. “Way more important stuff.”
Oh. Maybe he wasn’t joking. “Is everything okay?”
“No.” He slides his phone in his pocket and leans back in his seat. “My brother texted that my football team just traded one of our best players. We’re never going to win a game again.”
I smile into my water. I never really got into American football. It seems kind of boring—a bunch of overgrown dudes standing around in ’80s shoulder pads and bashing their heads toward chronic traumatic encephalopathy—but I’m way too soccer mad to judge fans of other sports. Maybe Erik used to play. He’s big enough, I guess. “Then they should really invest in lucky underwear.”
He gives me a lingering look. “Purple.”
“Lavender.”
“Right. Yes.” He glances away, and I think that this is nice. I’m sitting across from someone who’s not Oscar, and I’m not feeling too nervous, or too much weirder than usual. For all that he’s a blond steely mountain of muscles, Erik is surprisingly easy to be around.
“What’s your team? Giants? Jets?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not that kind of football.”
I cock my head. “Is it, like, a minor league?”
“No, it’s European football. Soccer, you’d call it. But we don’t need to talk about—”
I nearly do a spit take. “You follow soccer?”
“An intervention-worthy amount, according to my family and friends. But don’t worry, I do have other topics of conversation. Like pastries. Or the practical implementation of smart factory technology. Or . . . that’s about it.”
“No! No, I—” I don’t even know where to start. “I love soccer. Like, love love. I stay up till ridiculous hours to watch games in Europe. My parents always get me fancy jerseys for my birthday because that’s literally my only interest. I went to college on a soccer scholarship.”
He frowns. “So did I.”
“No way.” We stare at each other for a long moment, a million and one words running through the eye contact. Impossible. Amazing. Really? Really, for real? “You used to play?”
“I still play. Tuesday nights and weekends, mostly. There are lots of amateur clubs here.”
“I know! On Wednesdays I go to this gym near my place, and . . . Soccer was my first career choice. The engineering Ph.D. was definitely my plan B. I really, really wanted to go pro.”
“But?”
“I wasn’t quite good enough.”
He nods. “I’d have loved to go pro, too.”
“What stopped you?”
He chuckles. It sounds like a hug. “I wasn’t nearly good enough.”
I laugh. “So, what’s your team and who did they trade?”
“F.C. Copenhagen. And they got rid of—”
“Don’t say Halvorsen.”
He closes his eyes. “Halvorsen.”
I wince. “Yeah, you’re never gonna win another game, not for all the purple underwear in the world. But you weren’t gonna win much with him, anyway. You need a better coach, honestly. No offense.”
“Plenty of offense.” He’s glaring.
“You follow women’s soccer, too?” I ask.
He nods. “Proud OL Reign supporter since 2012.”
“Me, too!” I beam. “So you don’t always have terrible taste.”
“What’s your men’s team?” A cute, charming vertical line has appeared between his brows.
I rest my chin on my hands. “Guess. I’ll give you three tries.”
“Honestly, I can accept any club except for Real Madrid.”
I continue with my chin hands, unperturbed.
“It’s Real Madrid, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
“Outrageous.”
“You’re just jelly because we can afford to buy decent players.”
“Right.” He sighs and hands me one of the menus I never even noticed the waiter dropped off. “I’m going to need food for this conversation. And so will you.”
We spend the rest of the night arguing, and it’s . . . fantastic. The best. I suspect the food is as good as he promised, but I don’t pay very much attention, because Erik has incredibly incorrect opinions on the way Orlando Pride is using Alex Morgan and on the Premier League trajectory of Liverpool, and I must dedicate all my efforts to talking him out of them.
I fail. He stands by his wrong ideas and systematically makes his way through the bread, then an appetizer, then an entrée, like a man who is used to comfortably consuming seven large meals a day. At the end, when our plates are clean and I’m too full to bicker with him over the offside sanctions rules, we both lean back in our chairs and are silent for a moment.
I’m smiling. He’s . . . not smiling, but close, and it makes me smile even more.
I think this might have been the most fun I’ve had in years. Okay, false: I know it is.
“How did it go, by the way?” he asks quietly.
“What?”
“Your pitch.”
“Oh. Good, I think.”
“Thanks to Faye’s croissant?”
I grin. “Undoubtedly. And my lavender underwear.”
He lowers his eyes and clears his throat. “Who’s the client?”
“A cooperative. They’re building a rec center based in New Jersey and are shopping around for consultants. It’s a second location for them, so they bought an old grocery store to turn into a gym of sorts. They’re looking for someone who’ll help them design it.”
“You?”
“And my boss, yes. Though two of her kids have been colicky, so for now mostly me.”
“What did you tell them?”
“I talked them through my plans for energy independence, green building standards, smart water management, minimizing off-gas chemicals . . . that stuff. They were going for a green edge, they said.”
“And what are your plans?”
I hesitate. I really don’t want to bore Erik, and I’ve gotten feedback from . . . literally everyone that when I start talking about engineering stuff, I go on for way too long. But Erik seems more than a little interested, and even though I blabber about raw materials and federal limits and life-cycle assessment for over ten minutes, his attention never seems to waver. He just nods pensively, like he’s filing away the information, and asks lots of clever questions.
“So you got the project?”
I shrug. “They’re meeting with someone else tomorrow, so I don’t know yet. But they said we’re their first choice so far, so I’m optimistic.”
Erik doesn’t reply. Instead he just studies me, serious, intent, like I’m a particularly intriguing blueprint. Does it make me uncomfortable? I don’t know. It should. I’m out with a guy. For the first time in a million years. And he’s staring. Yikes, right? But . . . I kind of don’t mind.
Mostly, I’m wondering whether he likes what he sees, which is a bit different. I feel, sometimes, like I’ve lost the habit to wonder whether I’m pretty in favor of agonizing over other qualities. Do I look professional? Smart? Organized? Someone who should be taken seriously, whatever the hell that means? I generally find the idea of men commenting on my attractiveness, favorably or otherwise, repulsive. But tonight, right now . . . the possibility that Erik might find me beautiful uncurls warmly at the base of my stomach.
And then freezes when I consider that he might be staring for the opposite reason. Could he be staring for the opposite reason? Okay. This is—no. I need to stop with the ruminating. “What are you thinking?” I ask.
He huffs a laugh. “Just wondering something.”
“What?”
He drums his fingers on the table. “Whether you want a job.”
“Oh, I still have one. Despite my efforts this morning, I didn’t actually get fired.”
“I know. And this is very inappropriate, I am aware. But I’d love to poach you.”
“Ah. I . . .” Suddenly, I’m feeling hot and weirdly tingly. “I like my job. It pays okay. And my boss is great.”
“I’ll pay you more. Name a figure.”
“I . . . what?”
“And if there’s anything you don’t enjoy about your current job, I’d be happy to come to an agreement about your duties. I’m very open to negotiating.”
“Wait—you?”
“ProBld,” he amends.
I frown. He talks about ProBld like he has a lot of say in their administrative choices, and I wonder if he has a managerial position. It would explain the suit. And the fact that he clearly came to dinner directly from work, even though we met at eight. He’s wearing the same clothes as this morning, albeit without his tie and jacket, and with the sleeves of his button-down rolled up to his forearms. Which look strong and oddly male, and I’ve been trying hard not to ogle. I’m about to ask what exactly his job description is, but I get distracted when the waiter brings the check and hands it to Erik. Who readily accepts it.
Is he paying? I guess he’s paying. Should I politely insist that we split? Should I rudely insist that we split? Should I offer to pay for both of us? He did buy the croissant this morning. How does one dine out with company? I have no clue.
“Thank you,” the waiter says before leaving. “Always nice to see you, Erik.”
“You do come here a lot,” I tell him.
He shrugs, slipping his credit card inside the book. Okay. The paying ship has sailed. Crap. “With big clients, mostly.”
“So it’s not your default date place?” The question comes out before I can turn the words in my head. Which means that I don’t realize its implications until well after it’s lingering between us. Erik is staring, again, and I’m suddenly flustered. “I don’t know if . . . if you don’t . . . I didn’t mean to say that this is a date.”
His eyebrow lifts.
“I mean—maybe you just wanted to . . . as friends, and . . .”
The eyebrow lifts higher.
I clear my throat. “I . . . Is this a date?” I ask, my voice small, suddenly insecure.
“I don’t know,” he says carefully, after mulling it over for a second.
“Maybe it isn’t. I . . .” I didn’t want to make it weird. Maybe you just think I’m a nice girl and wanted someone to have dinner with and I totally misread the situation and I’m so, so sorry. It’s just, I think I like you a lot? More than I can remember liking anyone? It’s possible that I projected and—
The waiter comes to pick up the check, which interrupts my spiraling and gives me a chance to take a deep breath. It’s all good. So maybe it wasn’t a date. It’s fine. It was fun, anyway. Good food. Good soccer talk. I made a friend.
“Can I ask you a question?”
I look up from the hand-wringing currently going on in my lap. Is it whether I’m a needy, dangerous stalker? “Uh, sure.”
“I don’t know if this is a date,” he says, serious, “but if it isn’t, will you go on one with me?”
I smile so wide, my cheeks nearly hurt.
• • •
The pistachio gelato melts down my cone while I explain why Neuer is a much better goalkeeper than he’s made out to be. We walk around Tribeca side by side without touching even once, block after block after block, the night air balmy and the lights fuzzy. My shoes are not new, but I can feel a nasty blister slowly forming on my heel. It doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to stop.
Neither does Erik, I don’t think. Every few words I bend my neck to look up at him, and he is so handsome in his shirtsleeves and slacks, so handsome when he shakes his head at something I said, so handsome when he gestures with his large hands to describe a play, so handsome when he almost smiles and little wrinkles appear at the corners of his eyes, so handsome that sometimes I feel it, physically, viscerally. My pulse quickens and I cannot breathe and I’m starting to think about unnerving things. Things like after. I listen to him explain why Neuer is an incredibly overrated goalkeeper and laugh, genuinely loving every minute of it.
At the ice cream place, he didn’t order anything. Because, he says, “I don’t like to eat cold things.”
“Wow. That might be the most un-Danish thing I have ever heard.”
It must be a sore spot, because his eyes narrow. “Remind me to never introduce you to my brothers.”
“Why?”
“Wouldn’t want you to form any alliances.”
“Ha. So you are a notoriously bad Dane. Do you also hate ABBA?”
He looks briefly confused. Then his expression clears. “They’re Swedish.”
“What about tulips—do you hate tulips?”
“That would be the Netherlands.”
“Damn.”
“So close, though. Want to try again? Third time’s the charm.”
I glare, licking what’s left of the sticky pistachio off my fingers. He looks at my mouth and then away, down to his feet. I want to ask him what’s wrong, but the owner of the coffee shop on the corner comes out to retrieve his sidewalk sign and I realize something.
It’s late.
Very late. Really late. End-of-the-night late. We’re standing in front of each other on a sidewalk, over twelve hours after meeting for the first time on . . . another sidewalk; Erik probably wants to go home. And I probably want to be with him a little longer.
“What train do you take?” I ask.
“I actually drove.”
I shake my head, disapproving. “Who even drives in New York?”
“People who have to visit construction sites all over the tristate. I’ll take you home,” he offers, and I beam.
“Geniuses. Kind, ride-giving geniuses. Where are you parked?”
He points somewhere behind me and I nod, knowing I should turn around and begin to walk by his side again. But we seem to be a little stuck in this here and this now. Standing in front of each other. Rooted to the ground.
“I had fun tonight,” I say.
He doesn’t answer.
“Even though we forgot to get croissants at the bistro.”
Still no answer.
“And I am seriously tempted to buy you a life-size cardboard cutout of Neuer and— Erik, are you still doing that thing where you don’t talk because I’m technically not asking you a question?”
He laughs silently and my breath hitches high in my chest. “Where do you live?” he asks softly.
“Farthest reaches of Staten Island,” I lie.
It’s supposed to be my revenge, but he just says, “Good.”
“Good?”
“Good.”
I frown. “It’s a toll of seventeen dollars, my friend.”
He shrugs.
“One-way, Erik.”
“It’s fine.”
“How is it fine?”
He shrugs again. “At least it’ll take a while to get there.”
My heart skips a beat. And then another. And then they all catch up at once, a mess of overlapping thumps, a small, wild animal caged in my chest, trying to escape.
I have no idea what I’m doing here. Not a clue. But Erik is standing right in front of me, the streetlight a soft glow behind his head, the warm spring breeze blowing softly between us, and something clicks within me.
Yes. Okay.
“Actually,” I say, and even though my cheeks are burning, even though I cannot look him in the eye, even though I’m shifting on my toes and contemplating running away, this is the bravest moment of my life. Braver than moving here without Mara and Hannah. Braver than the time I megged that midfielder from the UCLA. Just brave. “Actually, if you don’t mind, I’d rather skip Staten Island and just go to your place.”
He studies me for a long moment, and I wonder if maybe he cannot quite believe what I just said, if his brain is also struggling to catch up, if maybe this feels as extraordinary to him as it does to me. Then he nods once, decided. “Very well,” he says.
Before we start to walk, I see his throat bob.