Lucy wasn’t sure how to respond to that. She had plenty of friends who didn’t do well with alcohol, and she didn’t even like drinking all that much herself.
If he’d felt that way, though, perhaps he shouldn’t have suggested a bar for their date?
He didn’t wait for her response. “I mean, I do drink, but I tend to go too far. You know, throwing up, peeing in public, the works. I’ll save that for our second date.”
Charming. “Got it.”
He put in an order for a cherry coke, and Lucy asked for a root beer float. It was still a night out – she needed to have a little fun.
After their drinks arrived, he turned to her. “So, what do you do?”
That was always a hard question for her. “I’m sort of between jobs right now. I’ve done a lot of different things, but I’m trying to figure out what I’m really interested in.”
He shook his head. “Not me. I’ve always known what I wanted to do. My parents got me a computer when I was nine and my mom always says that was when I just blossomed.”
Lucy tried not to frown. How come she’d never blossomed? “You work with computers?”
“You could say that,” he said with a smile. “I went to school for computer engineering with a double major in computer science. Now I work at a startup.”
“Neat. I worked at startup once. It was sort of chaotic, but we had a lot of fun before it all fell apart.”
He sat back, crossing his arms. “The startup where I work isn’t going to fall apart.”
Go on.“Oh?”
He took a sip of his cherry coke. “We’re developing a proprietary technology and it’s goingverywell.”
Lucy tried to feign surprise. “That’s cool.”
He then launched into a twenty-minute story about his interests leading up to his position in the company, what he worked on in college, and that he graduated magna cum laude.
Just in case she had the audacity to think he wasn’t impressive, he explained to her that his GPA was considered phenomenal at his school, whereas at a state school it wouldn’t have been considered as impressive.
Lucy muted her thoughts. If he’d asked her, he would’ve found out that she’d gone to a state school and not graduated, honors or otherwise.
He did not ask her anything, however, and eventually steered himself back to talking about his current company.
“We have the best client on the line – the government – and it looks like our parent company might be selling, too.”
“Oh no,” she said flatly.
“No, it’ll actually be amazing. I own stock in the company and it’s going to go nuts.”
“I thought you said that the government was your buyer.”
He nodded. “Oh, I see how you could be confused. They’re going to buy the product, not the company. They’re going to license it. It’s better this way, because they’re paying every year to use it. It’s brilliant, really.”
She forced a smile. “Sounds like it.”
“We’re about to be bought out by a venture-capital firm out of New York – Steel and Steal. Have you heard of them?”
Lucy shook her head. “Can’t say that I have.”
He described, in detail, what it meant for his stock portfolio.
Lucy didn’t know how to buy stocks, nor did she have any interest in learning. Her mind began to wander, and she couldn’t believe she was actually wishing he’d talk about golf instead.
She tuned back into the conversation when he said, “I’m pretty good with money, but even I couldn’t have expected this.”
