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And yet, there was still something missing.
“Okay, it’s a toss-up between the crab cake and the fish tacos.”
Ollie pursed her lips, “So you’re a seafood person.”
“I see food and I eat it person, yeah.”
“That is terrible.” Ollie laughed. “As a rocket scientist, you should do better.”
“Once it was out of my mouth, I couldn’t take it back.”
She chuckled, “While you choose between the seafood, I think steak is calling my name.”
Joseph nodded and called the waitress back. He gave her their order, let her top up their wine and ordered another bottle. Ollie would need to sober up before she drove back if she was going to have any more to drink.
“Now that we’ve gone into detail about me and my life as a rocket scientist, let’s talk about you.”
“Oh god, let’s not.” Ollie laughed, reaching for her water before more wine came along.
“Come on, I know you studied English and got your bachelor’s degree, what came after?”
Ollie smiled down into her lap and thought about how to say this. “I worked with a magazine for a bit, but it was pretty boring and I was mostly unimpressed with the job.”
“Did you want to go into journalism?”
“At the time, I thought so, yeah. But sitting behind a desk, spending 16 hours staring at a computer screen? Not what I wanted.”
Ollie tucked her hair behind her ear as Joseph hummed before speaking, “So you quit, I’m assuming, and went on to do what?”
“I teach dance to little kids,” Ollie beamed, loving being able to talk about this with someone new. “I take classes in the mornings and I bartend in the evenings.”
Joseph went still and Ollie watched his smile twitch before fading slightly. Pierce had this same look on his face when she’d said that she wanted to teach kids how to dance and he’d been around when she first got the job at the Barrel. He looked down on her for her choices and it seemed that Joseph was doing the same thing.
“Bartending…” The word came off his tongue like an insult and he cleared his throat before continuing, “Your family didn’t mention that.”
Ollie laughed to lighten the mood, “Imagine knowing everything about a person before meeting them for the first time.”
“But why bartending?” Joseph now looked puzzled and Ollie inhaled deeply.
“Why not bartending? I get to meet some of the most interesting people, I get to be their confidante and their friend for the evening, I get to experience lots of incredible things that are unique to bars…” she explained with a wide smile, trying to hide how she was annoyed with Joseph.
“Is it something you’re doing as a temporary thing?”
And there it was.
Ollie blew out a breath and shook her head. When she opened her mouth to speak, the waitress came back with their food and the wine. Ollie turned to Joseph once she was gone, “I don’t think I should drink anymore, I have to drive back home.”
“Yeah, of course, you must remind people of that a lot in your line of work, right?”
Ollie offered him a tight smile and focused on her food. He wasn’t being rude, but there was so much he wasn’t saying and Ollie fucking hated it. While her parents had raised her to be independent and do whatever she wanted, others would never understand her life choices. Hell, Baby didn’t even understand what she was doing with her life. It irked her that Joseph brushed past her teaching kids how to dance, but he focused on her being a bartender.
Joseph kept making small talk through their meal, but Ollie was done. She should have known this would happen. Indian families had thisthingabout their kids working in minimum wage jobs. Back in India, Baby used to tell her, upper-middle-class families raised their children to become doctors and engineers, not work at coffee shops or pubs or teach dance. Those were jobs for the middle class or lower-middle-class, not families like hers. Clearly Joseph believed that too, because he was stiff and unimpressed. And compared to hisrocket scientistjob, hers probably sounded reallypatheticto him.
Wasn’t that what Pierce said to her too?
Dinner was over,the bottle of wine was returned and when Joseph asked if she wanted dessert, Olliepolitelydeclined. Her frustration and disappointment over Joseph’s behavior had helped sober her up pretty quick. Once he’d paid the bill and walked her outside, Ollie knew what she was going to tell her family. She thanked him, refusing to touch him in any way. His words hurt because she had so much faith in him being decent. While she had no plans to marry him, Ollie figured meeting one decent guy through her family wouldn’t hurt. But Joseph had let her down and now, she had to tell her parents to stop bending to Baby’s whims and fancies because she was the matriarch of the family.
“Can I walk you to your car?”
