How was your double date?
Her reply came back, not so instantaneously:
Not so good
Smiling, he wrote back:
There are some real jerks out there, you need to be selective
I’m extremely selective now
He asked:
You are?
She replied:
To the point of not dating at all
He liked her answer, and typed:
I hope I didn’t put you off men altogether, Laronde
To which she replied:
You don’t have that much of an impact in my life, Stone
His face fell at the harshness, and the finality of her words, and then, in the next moment, when she sent him a smiley face, his spirits soared. She was joking. The meaning of the written word, especially when it came to things like texting and email, was difficult to gauge at times, but in the flick of a second, she’d shown him that she had the ability to control his moods.
He tried to make sure his texts were friendly, and sensible, with no hint of anything. It was like starting over, finding out about one another, and trying not to flirt.
The light conversation continued, one liners mostly, nothing heavy, or long, but enough.
A bridge, a stepping stone, a pathway.
A way back to her, he hoped.
They continued like this for a week or so, until the texts became longer, and soon she switched to emailing him, because, she said, it was easier for her to email during study time, than texting which took longer.
It was progress of sorts.
And soon, it became a long slow month of progress, but in the right direction.
One day, as he left the Stone Enterprises building after a meeting with Tobias to discuss investment, he stepped out into the street and saw Izzy coming out of the revolving doors, just behind him. Knowing the date she had her interview with the accounting department, a minor detail which Tobias had casually passed on to him, had helped.
They stared at one another in a combination of surprise and shock, and then she explained that she had just completed her second interview for her internship, and had just been told that she had been accepted. She would begin as soon as college ended for the summer.
“I got this thanks to you,” she said.
“I had nothing to do with it. This is Tobias’s company.”
“That’s odd,” she said, giving him a pointed stare. “Because I actually called up HR months ago and asked about internship programs, and they told me they didn’t run them. I even sent them my resume, asking for summer work, months ago, but they turned me down because there were stronger applicants than me.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I thought so, especially when Tobias asked me to apply for a new internship program the company was running. What are the chances of that?”
“That is interesting.”
