“Mm, nice,” the bro said. “Top me up.”
“Would you like me to decant it?” David asked automatically. It could certainly use it. He could smell the soul of France wafting out of the open bottle in his hands, but he knew with a decanting it would open up beautifully.
The bro’s date looked up at that, but he shook his head. “We’re good. You can just leave the bottle.”
He left the finance bro and his clearly bored date to their wine, dropped off two plates of fries when he spotted Andi caught answering questions about dessert at table 11, then swung back to the office.
“Any luck?”
Jeri shook her head. “They can’t come until tomorrow morning. I’ve got an appointment; any chance you can be in by eight?”
“Sure.”
She sighed and slumped back in the mother of all ergonomic chairs, a huge red and black thing that was probably designed for people who gamed nonstop. Sometimes David missed his own gaming days—time spent staring into the tiny TV in his college dorm room, playing the latestFinal FantasyorTalesgame—but he was way too busy now. He’d spotted a PlayStation in Farzan’s apartment, had nearly asked about what games he played, but there’d been the sex and the wine, the movie and the revelation that Farzan was Farzan and not Frank Allen.
“I meant to ask, how’d things go with Frank Allen? Kyra said he came in Tuesday. Did he say when the review would go up?”
David’s stomach sank. Was Jeri a mind-reader?
“Funny story,” he said.
“Oh?” Jeri arched an eyebrow.
“It wasn’t actually Frank Allen.”
By the time he finished telling the story—omitting a few details, like how he spent the night—Jeri was in stitches, slapping her knee.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“I wish I was. That was a lot of wine.”
Jeri waved it off; truth was, they wasted plenty of wine every night, and what David had opened for Farzan had been drunk and appreciated by the staff.
“So. When are you seeing him again?”
“Who?”
“This Farzan guy. Clearly you clicked.”
But David waved her off. “I’m not. It was just a hookup.”
Jeri frowned. “You’re ghosting him?”
“Not ghosting! I told him I didn’t have time for anything serious right now.”
But Jeri crossed her arms. “Are you telling me you wasted a perfectlynice first date—and a great lay—because you’re too uptight about your test?”
“It has to be my focus,” David said simply.
“There’s more to life than that damn test of yours. If you don’t want romance, fine, but you’re not even making friends.”
“I have plenty of friends!”
“Name one person you hung out with for nothing but fun in the last month.”
“Well…” David wracked his brain. Surely he’d done things. He had friends.
But he came up blank.
