Alexei studied him. Like those summer blue eyes could see straight into Ben’s childish insecurities. Which was mortifying.
He was saved, thankfully, by the waitress delivering their food.
Alexei broke his stare and casually ordered a second margarita.
“I’ll have one of those, too,” Ben said before the waitress left. “Except, uh, just a house one. On the rocks.”
“With salt,” Alexei supplied. Ben grinned, sheepish.
“Of course.” The waitress flashed a smile.
“What about you?” Ben asked as he picked up his fork, more than ready to turn the conversation back to Alexei and away from how Tiago spent his twenties building a respectable career instead of working in coffee shops and dating people who always broke his heart. “You do something with business, right? Or finance? Or you did. Sorry, I forgot you said you got laid off.”
“No, it’s okay. I’m a data analyst. Which is kind of a generic term, really. I worked at a company called Atlas Athletics after I graduated from UW, until I was laid off, like you said, a few months ago. Which was okay. It was a good place to work, but I’m kind of looking forward to finding something new.”
“So you like it? Being a data analyst?”
“Yeah,” Alexei said. “I made a lot of reports. Recommendations. I am really excellent at charts.”
Ben smiled.
“Did you major in math, then, in college? Or business?”
“Statistics, actually.”
Oh.Statistics.Well, that made sense. He thought about Alexei’s fastidious notes, how he studied his maps every night. Of course Alexei was smart. He was probably a genius.
The waitress brought over their margaritas. Ben took a long gulp. His brain was being annoying.
“I should have minored in computer science, though,” Alexei mused as she walked away. “My first year of work was basically a crash course in how little I actually understood coding.”
“Yeah,” Ben said, putting his glass down and shoving in a huge mouthful of food to cover for how little he had to say about fucking coding.
“Sorry,” Alexei said after a moment of silence. “I am…truly, horribly boring.”
Ben almost choked on his burrito.
“Lex,” he got out. “Trust me, you are not boring.”
Ben took a deep breath. He thought about Alexei staring up at the stars that night, telling Ben about his parents. Even if they wouldn’t always be, right nowthey were still trail family. Ben could be vulnerable, too.
“I didn’t go to college.”
Ben knew, logically, that it was okay not to go to college. He’d had other friends, like Khalil, who had gone to trade schools or apprenticeships, or straight into work.
The difference was that Ben had never had a plan. For a career, for his life. He hadn’t been smart enough for college, and then he’d spent a decade being a fuckup. He wondered sometimes. What his twenties would have been like if he’d gone.
Alexei frowned.
“But…don’t nurses have to go to college?”
“Yeah, no.” Ben ran an anxious hand through his hair. “I mean, I did. But I didn’t go to college right away, like after high school. I wasn’t a stellar student in school, and then I spent a while just…fucking around. Doing whatever, watching time go by. It wasn’t until my aunt got sick and I spent a lot of time in doctors’ offices and nursing homes that I started thinking about nursing. And even when I decided that was a thing I wanted to do, I didn’t have the academic background, or the money, to get into a four-year nursing program. They’re pretty competitive.” Ben’s knee bounced under the table. “I went to Nashville State instead, this local community college, and honestly, it was a miracle I even got intotheirprogram, which is competitive, too. So anyway, I only have an associate’s. And most RNs these days have a bachelor’s. Fuck, a lot of them have amaster’s.”
Ben took an agitated sip of margarita.
“But you passed that test, right?” Alexei’s brow was furrowed, that line on his forehead deeper than Ben had ever seen it.
“The NCLEX.” Ben said it on this big woosh of air. Even though it was over, it still stressed him out. “Yes. Thank fucking God. By the skin of my teeth somehow.”
