“I do?” I ask so incredulously, he chuckles.
“I’m still getting the lay of the land here. I’d love to ask you a couple questions.” He gives me a high-wattage smile that should come with a health warning. “You getting lunch? Maybe we could keep talking.”
Chapter
5
The whole way down to the cafeteria—which is in another building in the corporate complex, across the green—Mark Winterson asks me questions. Where I went to school, where I lived in New York, what my favorite places were there. (“I went down on weekends a lot when I was in Cambridge—did you ever go to this restaurant…?”)
He’s walking alongside me, matching my slow pace in these heels. Leaning in when I talk, with this gentle, serious look, like whatever I’m saying is very important.
And I hate to say it, but I feel like a million bucks. Like I won a prize—the most interesting person in the meeting!Even though part of me is saying,There’s no way he just wants to hang out with you. There is probably a catch.
But then Mark Winterson gives me a sideways grin and a hidden dimple emerges on his cheek, and my brain becomes a dog hanging out a car window, tongue lolling in the breeze,wheeee.
When was the last time someone paid this much attention to me? It makes me realize how starved for human contact I amthese days. I’m like one of Erica’s neglected plants, bending toward the light.
We enter the cafeteria, and it dawns on me that they’ve completely redone it since the last time I was here—which was ages ago, probably back in high school when Mom took me once or twice. It’s brighter and more open now, sun washing over the warm wood tables.
In New York, I’d usually eat at my desk—Mom always stressed that it’s not goodopticsto be up from your seat too long. I think she started using that word because she liked watchingThe West Wing. Everyone seems so competent!she’d say.And Martin Sheen is cute.
“So! What’ll it be?” Mark Winterson clasps his hands together. “I’m buying.”
“Oh, uh…everything looks good.”
He tilts his head toward the counters where you can order and raises his eyebrows. “I heard they have pozole on Wednesdays.”
The way he put extra emphasis on that—does he think…I’m Mexican? Or does he just like pozole?
“How about chicken fingers?”
“Chicken fingers it is,” he says with a smile I’d have to rate asextremely winning.His face is too perfect; I’m still half expecting it to glitch. “Sit down, I’ll come find you.”
I take a seat by the window, and across the cafeteria, Greg catches my eye. He’s sitting with the other accountants—who, contrary to the nerdy stereotype, are kind of fratty. “The accountants like to party” is a sentence more than one person has said to me since I started here. And, for some reason, Greg—who is usually unfazed by most things—seems strangely concerned.
I check my phone for an excuse to look away. And shit, that scammer is still at it. I’ve missed some messages.
sampaguita72:
Ruby Magdalena Ocampo, how dare you talk to me that way! I’m just concerned about you.
I take some more screenshots, wondering where I might have used my middle name as a security question recently.
sampaguita72:
I’m just saying! Haven’t you moved on since high school? It’s not good, clinging to the past! Like that beat-up old Acura Greg drives.
Impersonating my dead mother is one thing, but do you have to drag me too?
Mark Winterson is paying at the register, and the lady ringing him up is giggling a lot. Thoughts likeMom would be thrilled if you dated someone like thatandBroad shouldersandWow, Harvard!kick up in my head like a swarm of bees.
Oh my God, calm down! Be professional! He’s out of your league, anyway.
Then he walks back my way with two red plastic baskets of chicken fingers, and when he notices me watching, he raises them up high, as if to say,See! Got ’em.
The sight is disarmingly wholesome. It takes the edge off how intimidating he seemed before.
“How’s it going so far?” I ask as he sits and places one of the baskets in front of me. “How do you like TKCORP?”
