only because of your connections. Clearly you have spreadsheet skills.”
His eyes sparkled under the hanging dome light above our table. “And you forgive me for breaking your mug?”
“Nope.” I took the wine out of his hand and took a large sip. “Hey, I like yours better.”
Nolan leaned back into his booth seat and laughed. When the waiter came by, we ordered our food. “Do you like beer?” he asked me.
“Nah, I hate it.”
“A beer for me then.” He glanced at me as he talked with the server. “That way she won’t steal that drink, too.”
The waiter winked. “I do the same thing with my wife. You two are cute together.”
My stomach did that fluttery thing again. “We’re work friends,” I clarified.
He nodded. “Ah, gotcha. But just so you know, my wife and I were work friends, too.” He took away our empty wineglasses and walked away humming an unfamiliar tune.
The food came quickly. I handed over my twenty bucks to Nolan while shrimp lo mein dangled from my mouth. I thought about it, but couldn’t bear ordering Korean cuisine there, that’s where I drew the line. It was already shameful that I sometimes bought kimchi from Safeway. Getting my Korean food fix at P.F. Chang’s would make me a full-blown sellout. I’d need a seventy-five-dollar wager to even consider it.
Conversation flowed easily. I even admitted to Nolan that I googled him when he joined the company. “Why do you have so many elitist photos of you online?”
He coughed into his drink. “Elitist? What the hell?”
“You know, photos of you with all those politicians. All those fancy and exotic places you traveled.”
He furrowed his brow. “You mean the ones where I was doing a microfinancing project in Lima and Harare for a nonprofit?”
I slowed my wine to small sips. “Uh . . . yeah. And how about those photos where you cropped out that girl?”
His eyebrows drew into a deep V. “I think I know what photos you’re talking about. She’s a friend who is good at taking selfies with fancy filters. You know, you almost sound a little bit jealous.”
“Oh yeah, my photo filter game is pathetic,” I cut in, hoping to divert attention from his accusation.
We laughed about the weirdos in the office, especially Asher. I told him about my old advertising jobs, and he told me he had finished his first year of business school at UW but wasn’t sure he’d go back next semester.
“There are a lot of shark types in my MBA class. I’m not like them.” We hit a dialogue lull when he bit his lip and picked the label off his beer bottle. Something big weighed on his mind.
“Okay, you look terrified. Spill it.”
He sighed. “My parents are coming to visit soon, and I have to tell them I don’t know if I’m going to go back to school. It’s just not the thing for me. But I also don’t know what I want to do careerwise. Isn’t that dumb? I’m twenty-eight and have no clue what I want to do with my life.”
I lifted up my wine and toasted him again. It was all about tipsy toasts that night. “Twenty-eight? You’re my age! Well, almost my age. I’m twenty-seven. I assumed by now I’d know what I wanted to be when I grew up too. When does the growing-up part of life end? When do we have to make final life decisions?”
He looked at me like I just told him I believed in Santa Claus. “Really? You look like you know what you want in life. You seem like it, anyway.”
I coughed some wine out my nose. “Sorry, I’d never heard that before. Ever.”
We both laughed. It felt so good to laugh. This all felt so good. Thank you, wine number two!
The restaurant became much noisier when a bus let off dozens of European tourists at the bar. He leaned forward so I could hear him. “My parents stress me out. They’re cool in some ways. They work hard and want me to make something of myself. And they talk about money all the time. It’s all they think about, and it’s kind of embarrassing. It’s hard to explain.”
My parents embarrassed me all the time and were focused on money too. Well, at least my mom was. She tried to manage their cash flow down to the penny. Contrast this to my dad, who stuck to a “looser” fiscal approach. He bought lawnmowers and golf clubs every other month without telling my mother,