Page 49 of Engineering a Love Story

“Like, they don’t treat her well. Or stick around?” Seth looks at me. “They’re losers.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But when you toss out words like perfidious in casual conversation, I honestly can’t believe you sell software.”

“Well, I most definitely do.” He faces forward and squints. “Sometimes, especially when I’m tired, like earlier this week in New York, I lose track and use words I typically wouldn’t on sales calls.”

“What did you say?”

“This week? It was verisimilitude. Which … come on. Basically, I thought this dude wasn’t being straight about … well, that doesn’t matter. But I was trying to push him, you know, without straight-up saying he wasn’t being truthful. And that popped out. There were some blank looks.”

“I bet.”

“Then I had to talk over the fact that I used a smart-ass word, while also accusing them of lying to me. Not my finest hour.” Seth picks up a smooth-looking stone. “That’s probably where I left my power cord, now that I think about it.”

I laugh. “Sorry, that sounds rough.”

“And now I feel like an ass telling you that.” Bending an elbow, he tosses the stone into a grassy field.

“No. But say again? You mentioned some kind of best-and-brightest program. Is that something I should know about?”

“It’s not anything. Qualcomm offered internships to the top one percent of local high school seniors.”

“Top one percent? By what measure?”

“I can’t remember.”

“That’s probably not true. But I’m going to let it go, since I’m just some girl who doesn’t know what perfidious means.”

Once we arrive at my car, we drive into Lexington, get sandwiches, and eat them on the green. Then we lay back in the grass and watch puffy clouds float above us. We speak of silly things, like oddly-named teachers and first pets.

“Favorite holiday?” Seth asks.

“Fourth of July. You?”

“Thanksgiving,” he says. “Of course.” And I groan. “You can’t tell me you don’t like Thanksgiving.”

“Not if I have to contribute a side dish. And it often coincides with my birthday. So, when I was a kid, of course I hated it.”

“When’s your birthday?” he asks.

“November 22. Some years it falls exactly.” I remember my birthday cakes stationed near the pies on Thanksgiving buffets at my grandparents’ house. And Boops used to add a cupcake to the holiday menu if Ash and I were at the lake. If my birthday came on the day after Thanksgiving, she put a candle in my pancakes.

“What kind of cake was it?” Seth asks.

“What?” I’m mixing up what I’m saying out loud and what I’m only remembering.

“When you were a kid. On Thanksgiving.”

“Oh, my grandmother made maple syrup cakes.”

Seth thinks for a minute. “Maple syrup? In the cake?”

I nod. “And in the frosting. Some kind of leftover Depression thing, from when they didn’t have sugar.”

“I’m not sure that sounds good.”

“My favorite. Though I haven’t had one in years.”

Seth explains how his mother cooks elaborate Thanksgiving meals and how going home for the holiday still makes him feel like a little boy. He wonders when that might change as he confronts what he calls the imminent approach of adulthood.