Sometime Soon (7 page)

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, preparing 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.

“I really don’t think he drove into
me on purpose,” I tell Katie, holding the telephone in one hand while trying to
close the cat food bag with the other. Tiger is now going to town on his
dinner.

“Well, be careful. That’s all I’m
saying.”

“I promise I won’t give him my ATM
pin number or my Social Security number--no matter how nicely he asks.”

“Aaaandy,” she drones, “you know
what I mean.”

“Yes, I know. I need to walk a fine
line between seeming friendly and open, while actually being completely
paranoid and closed off. Dating is so complicated.”

“Being engaged is pretty
complicated, too,” Katie says.

I get the cat food put away and sit
down at the kitchen table watching Tiger inhale his dinner. His life is so
simple. “Still having trouble deciding on a wedding date?” I ask.

“I’m not sure Mike really wants to
get married anymore.”

“What? Why do you say that?”

“When I started looking at dates
again, he said that he’s too busy to think about it right now. He’s got some
big meeting in Chicago that he needs to plan for. But it’s just another excuse.
He always has an excuse.”

“You don’t think they’re legitimate
excuses?”

“I don’t know. I suppose they could
be, but he doesn’t even seem to mind that we can’t settle on a date.”

The afternoon rain has lasted into
the evening. I hear the heavy drops pelting the windows. Despite the fact that
Katie is one of my best friends, I’ve only met Mike a handful of times. He is
divorced with two children, a boy in middle school and a girl in grade school.
Katie has worked hard to win them over, but she wasn’t making much progress
until they discovered Katie’s parents have a cottage in New Hampshire near the
ski slopes and right on a beach off Lake Winnipesaukee. They all spent July
fourth weekend there, and it had gone great.

“Have you asked him if he’s having
second thoughts?” I’m not a big fan of Mike’s, but I want to tread carefully. I
haven’t revealed my doubts to Katie, but I don’t like the things she’s told me.
According to her, Mike has painted his ex-wife as an ogre and himself as the
injured party. Apparently, the ex-wife is completely self-centered, has turned
all their friends against him, and often threatens to drag him back into court
to extort more money from him. I have trouble believing this one-sided account.

“No, I haven’t said anything to
him.”

“Do you think you should? Maybe
you’re worrying yourself needlessly.”

“I don’t want to seem insecure.”

“But you are--or at least he’s
making you feel that way.”

Katie is silent on the other end of
the phone.

“What about telling him that he has
to pick a date by the end of the month? It can be any date that works best for
him. Tell him that you’ll make the time work for you, but you need to make your
plans and you need a finalized date. But say it in a nice way, not like an
ultimatum.”

“Let him just pick any date?”

“If picking a wedding date is
becoming such an issue, then let him choose one and make it work for you. If he
really doesn’t want to get married, he won’t give you a date, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take all your impediments out of
his way and see what he does.”

Katie hesitates. “I suppose I could
try that. What if he wants to get married in the middle of February?”

“Then you’ll get married in
February and be a beautiful winter bride.”

“I guess it’s worth a try,” she
agrees sounding a bit less forlorn. “Maybe I’ve just been too picky about the
timing.”

“By the way, if you do have your
wedding in February, personally, I’d prefer a Caribbean location.”

“Me, too,” she laughs.

I end the conversation feeling
proud that I’ve improved Katie’s mood, but hoping I haven’t just doled out some
really bad advice. Katie is going to be devastated if Mike has changed his
mind. Of course, I’m also thinking that Katie really needs to be more
assertive. I wouldn’t stand for Mike’s wishy-washy attitude. But then again,
I’ve never really been in love. Who knows what I’d be willing to do for it. I
don’t think I’d compromise myself or let insecurity rule me. At least, I hope
not.

There is no commentary on my
arrival at work that morning. Joan’s chair is empty. It feels odd starting the
day this way. When I get to my cubicle, I see that it’s just as I left it on
Friday. Drafts of the white papers I’ve written are printed and neatly stacked.

My marketing co-worker and row cube
mate, Nate, arrives just I settle back down with my first cup of coffee of the
day. Nate is supposed to be on his second week of paternity leave.

“What are you doing here?” I ask,
happy to see him. Without Nate here this past week, I’ve had no one to roll
eyes with over Rob.

“You haven’t checked your email
yet, have you?” Nate is a freckled red head whose cheeks, much to his own
dismay, flush when he is under the slightest emotional strain.