Page 16 of Engineering a Love Story

Wade and I don’t talk as often these days as I’d like, and when we do speak, it tends to be simple chatter about our jobs, traffic, friends, baseball. Still, we share a closeness I have with no one else, given what we went through as kids and the paths we both followed: same school, same majors, similar careers. Though Wade’s road out was tougher. While my father took a gruff pride in all the time I spent in front of a computer, the same behavior from Wade irked him—everything about Wade irked my father. It was like he got a kick out of the fact that I was playing against type, but he didn’t want Wade going against what he thought a boy’s type should be. He didn’t want a nerdy son.

Unsurprisingly, when Wade finished college, he moved away, taking a software job at Honeywell. Said he hated the cold, though I don’t think escaping the weather was Wade’s primary goal. Two years ago, he met and married Melanie, a native of Alabama. I don’t expect he’ll ever return to New England now.

Before flying out here, I called Wade to tell him what happened with Ash. He didn’t say much before handing the phone to Melanie, who stated outright that she thought I was insane to give up someone like Ash when I had what she clearly saw as weak prospects.

“Didn’t you stop taking your birth control pills recently?” she asked in her slow, southern way. “Maybe you’re having some kind of hormonal imbalance?” I quickly ended that call.

I explain Melanie to Seth. “She’s straight from central casting.” I tell him how I went to Mobile for their wedding and was at the rehearsal dinner in what I thought was a perfectly lovely sundress, when Melanie, standing not two feet from me, asked Wade plaintively, “‘Why does your sister always want to look like such a damn plain Yankee girl?’”

Seth laughs. “You’re definitely not plain,” he says, and I let myself have a smile, pleased he took the bait after I fished for that compliment.

To escape the frigid wind, Seth opens the door to the first bar we see. It’s a relief to be out of the cold, but this pub is uninviting, smelling of stale beer and fried fish. Nets hang from the walls beside plastic crabs, and Led Zeppelin pounds from a jukebox in one corner.

Seth hesitates after we enter and I think he might suggest we leave, but he continues toward the bar and finds us two seats as far from the jukebox as possible.

“This a usual stop on the tour?” I ask. We climb onto stools. Reluctantly, I remove his jacket.

“Yes. I’m a regular here.” Seth folds his coat across his lap and orders beers from the young bartender, who places two pints in front of us. These glide in the wetness on the bar.

We continue to chat easily, despite our off-limits topics. The crazy start-up scene in San Francisco, the traffic, and high rents.

“Maybe it’s coming to earth now, though we still have Kozmo bringing shit to our apartment all the time.” Seth is referring to the trendy speedy-delivery service. “The other day? Manish ordered groceries from Webvan and wanted me to go out to the sidewalk with him and carry them up. We get down there and the delivery guy opens the back of his van and hands Manish a banana.” Seth holds up a finger. “One banana. Manish peeled it and ate it right there on the sidewalk, laughing his ass off. He’d had one banana delivered, just because he could.” He tells me next of their grubby apartment, the squalor they endure when no one has time to clean, their fleeting efforts at domesticity. “We’re supposed to take turns cooking dinner on Sundays. But most weeks at least one of us is out of town. So it almost never happens.” He taps a finger on the bar. “Then sometimes Manish gets into rampageous fits about—”

“I’m sorry. But did you just say rampageous?”

Seth turns his head. “What?”

“Who says rampageous? What was it in the car? Sagacity? I might have to look that one up.”

Seth spins his beer on the bar. “Sorry. Debate. Lots of big words said fast. They pop out more when I’m tired. Or out of sorts.”

I want to ask which of those he is currently, but he continues.

“I apologize if I was boorish in the car,” he says. “We had a crazy afternoon. I was meeting with a prospect.” He motions with a hand to his suit. “And negotiating with Chase. Of course I’d lost my cell, so I was in the hall, using some desk phone they’d let me borrow. Running back and forth between the two. When I got the verbal from Chase, I was so pumped, I had to find Manish. He was just leaving to meet you, so I tagged along, helped him find his car, sat in the back.” Seth sips his beer. “But I wasn’t really thinking about what he was doing. Meeting with an analyst. Or that he’d be typical Manish and start blurting things out before they’re ready. I wasn’t expecting you … not at all.” In a lower tone, he continues. “We’ve all worked so hard these past four years. Chase is huge.” He puts his eyes on my face. “But I didn’t mean to be rude—”

“You weren’t, really. I’m teasing.”

Seth looks across the bar. “Do you ever have those moments … like they’re vivid and important, and you know you’ll remember them forever? And you wish you could stop and commemorate them in some way, but then you’re also just in a moment, moving forward, living it, not wanting to miss anything—good or bad. And you simply need to grasp on?” His gaze returns to me. “Sorry. That probably doesn’t make any sense.”

I hold his eyes, which are actually a warm brown color, though I see now they’re also spiked with gold. “I’ve actually had quite a few of those moments lately. The past few months, everything’s been kind of amped up,” I say, though as soon as the words leave my mouth, I remember it hasn’t been months since The Symp, only weeks. Each week has only felt like a month, with everything changing so quickly.

But I don’t correct myself. Or provide any more details on what’s happened lately. You can pass from interesting to sordid pretty quickly, and I don’t want to do anything that might scare this man away.

“Sorry to hear it’s been a difficult time for you.” Seth’s voice is quiet and it tugs at a place low inside me.

This doesn’t make any sense. It’s probably only a few degrees up and to the right of Walter. Maybe my hormones are out of balance. But I can feel the heat of Seth beside me and his scent has got to be cinnamon and I don’t want to analyze any of it. All I want is to leave this bar and to leave it with Seth.

I ask if we can go.

He hesitates but then he stands and drains his beer. “Of course.”

Back in the wind, Seth returns his jacket to my shoulders. He motions in the direction we need to walk and we start at a brisk pace, but his hand stays on his jacket, trailing lightly on my outer arm, as if he’s escorting me. Then he slips his fingers down to where mine are just peeking out beneath the edge of his coat. I press against him, thinking that if he pulls away, I can act as if this was only an accidental bump in the street.

But Seth doesn’t pull away. He wraps his fingers around mine and holds on.

Nine

We’re kissing before we reach the hotel. Walking, touching, kissing, stopping to grab Seth’s coat as it slips off my shoulders, slowly backing into the building until I’m pushed against it just outside the glare of the entryway lights. Seth’s lips are on mine, but I feel his kiss in my chest and my back and down the front of my thighs, and I’m wondering if I’ve ever actually kissed anyone before. His mouth trails behind my ear and down my neck, and I’m vaguely aware that there are sounds in the air that are coming from me.