“You loved War Games?”
She nodded again.
I’d never told anyone about my love of that movie.
“Do you know what TTT stands for?” I asked her.
I’d never told anyone what the triple Ts I’d named my company after stood for. I’d named it after the game that Mathew Broderick’s character has the computer program play tic tac toe against itself which leads to a string of draws to prove the futility of no-win situations to prevent a war.
Not even Alex or Nick knew why I’d gone with the name. Nick, of course, thought it had to do with something sexual.
She stared at me blankly, before I saw realization dawn on her. “Are you kidding!?”
“What?” I had a pretty good idea that she’d puzzled it out, but just in case I didn’t want to tell her.
“Tic. Tac. Toe.” She said slowly at first, then her words rushed out. “It stands for tic tac toe.”
A wide smile spread on my face. “It does. And you are the only person in fifteen years that has figured that out.”
Her jaw dropped and I could see that she was genuinely shocked. I was pretty shocked myself.
“That’s so rad.”
Rad. I hadn’t heard that word in a while. I wondered if vernacular was like fashion and it came back into style every twenty or thirty years.
We talked for about ten minutes about the film before a bubble popped up on my screen from Samara telling me that it was time to go. I needed to leave now to make it to the restaurant.
I stood. “Lina, it was great meeting you.”
Her eyes widened and she blinked as if I had startled her. “Oh, that’s it?”
I realized then that my ending of the interview had probably been abrupt. That hadn’t been my intention, I was just nervous to see if Peyton was going to show up or not.
“Yep, that’s it. You will hear either way by the end of the week.”
She nodded as she stood and pushed her glasses up on her nose. “Oh okay, well, it was nice meeting you.”
“You, too.”
Instead of turning and leaving, she just stayed staring at me. A lot of people in this field could be a little awkward socially, so it didn’t surprise me. It happened quite a lot.
“Make sure Samara validates your parking before you leave.”
“Right.” She blinked as if she’d zoned out. “Parking, yeah. Got it. Thanks.”
Her head bobbed up and down and I could see as she rushed out of the room she’d thought she’d fucked up the interview.
“Lina.” I said as her hand reached for the door.
She turned and looked over her shoulder.
“See ya Monday.” I grinned.
“Monday?”
“Yep.” I nodded.
“I got it?”
