Like a Boss - Annabelle Costa Page 0,16

just after one o’clock.

“My pleasure.” I yawn because I’ve eaten way too much. Jenna once commented that she wished this country would institute siestas. Although that probably wouldn’t help our company’s productivity.

“You’re just as sharp as you used to be,” he says. “And you work even harder—I wouldn’t have believed it was possible.”

“You’re not exactly a slacker yourself.” I shrug. “Anyway, a lot of people worked really hard in college. Insanely hard. Like, you remember Joe Singleton?”

He shakes his head.

“Roger Porter?”

“We didn’t exactly run in the same crowd,” he acknowledges. That’s true. There were about fifteen-hundred people in our graduating class, and we probably didn’t have one friend in common. “Hey, what happened to that roommate of yours? The one with the lips. Daphne?”

“Delia?” I don’t know what he’s talking about with “the lips.” Men notice the oddest things.

“That’s right.”

“She does family medicine in Idaho,” I tell him. “She’s married and has two kids.”

“Idaho?” Luke crinkles his nose, which I have to admit, is the same look I gave her when she told me she was moving there.

“I know,” I say.

“And what about that boyfriend of yours?” Luke asks.

I didn’t know Luke was even paying attention to me at the point that I started dating Neil. I met him in my complex analysis class during junior year: Neil Weinstein, God of Mathematics. Above all, I respected intelligence back then. I ogled smart men like other women ogled movie stars. If it were socially acceptable to have a pin-up of Albert Einstein, then… well, I probably still wouldn’t have, but you get the idea. In retrospect, the way Neil spouted out answers in our math section was not entirely different from the way Luke mouthed off his opinions in our expos class, but somehow I found myself in awe of Neil’s brilliance. And unlike Luke, he seemed like a good fit for me.

It was good between Neil and me in the beginning. I was his first girlfriend and he was grateful just to have me and to be getting laid. But eventually, his arrogance seeped through—he thought he was destined for greater things than little old me.

“I don’t know,” I say. “He got some scholarship in England and that’s the last I heard of him.”

“What an idiot,” Luke comments.

“He wasn’t an idiot,” I say quietly. “He was brilliant.” I’m surprised the guy hasn’t won a Field’s medal by now.

“Well, he was definitely extremely ugly,” Luke says.

I stifle a laugh. With his sticklike frame and blazing red hair and freckles, Neil wasn’t anybody’s conception of handsome, especially compared with Luke. Maybe that’s the real reason I was willing to date him—because his looks didn’t intimidate me the way Luke’s did. “Okay, he wasn’t Chris Hemsworth or anything, but…”

“Oh, come on,” Luke says. “You probably never saw him again because they captured him and put him on display in the zoo.”

I’m laughing hard enough now that there are a few tears in my eyes. “Stop…”

“Seriously, I couldn’t believe you picked that guy over me.” Luke shakes his head. “Talk about blows to the old self-esteem…”

“And what about that blond cheerleader type from Wellesley you were sucking face with through all of senior year?” I remind him, wiping my eyes.

“Margo?” He shakes his head. “She decided to believe the doctors who said I wasn’t going to walk again, and she took off.”

I stare at him, the smile gone from my face. “Oh my God, Luke, I’m so sorry…”

“Don’t be.” He shrugs. “It wasn’t true love. If she got in some disfiguring accident, I would have dumped her just as fast.”

I’m not entirely sure that’s true. Luke is nowhere near as shallow as I thought he was. After all, he liked me.

I close my eyes, remembering that night all those years ago. When I turned down the hottest guy in our class. I don’t regret it. Definitely not.

But I have always wondered what would’ve happened if I had made a different choice.

Chapter 8

That night when I get up to my floor, Sadie is standing in the hallway talking to another of my elderly neighbors, a seventy-something woman named Ethel. They’re both wearing housecoats and fuzzy slippers. I swear, nobody in my building is under retirement age.

There are times when I long to be seventy-something and retired. That way, nobody will be obsessed with me finding the perfect guy. I won’t have to worry about finding love anymore. I just have to hang in there another thirty years or so. Then my love life will be