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“You must go to a ton of them. How do you stand it?”
“Practice,” he says. But then he looks over, and there’s a teasing glint in his eyes. “I’ve had a few approaches over the years.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Well, I’ll admit that when I was young and green, I abused the open bar.”
“You did?”
“I’ll take your surprise as a compliment,” he says. “But yes. I was young and asked to go to dinners and parties that were… well. Not very engaging.”
“They bored you to death.”
“Yes,” he says. “The open bar was the only thing that made them tolerable.”
“I imagine your parents weren’t too happy about that?”
He snorts. “They didn’t mind, but my grandfather did. He put a stop to it.”
“So, you had to move on to tactic number two.”
“Yes, which was to network as aggressively as possible.”
“You threw yourself into the game?”
“No,” he says, eyes teasing. “I mastered it.”
“Wow. The confidence!”
He chuckles. “I did that for almost a decade. It opened a lot of doors.”
“Oh, because so many of them were closed before?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Are you implying that I was born with privilege?”
“No,” I say. “I would never.”
“Good.” But then he leans his head back against the seat and sighs. “I was, though, and I’m aware of how fortunate I’ve been. But I still needed to… makemememorable. Many of the people I spoke to in my early twenties knew my grandfather, my aunt, or my dad. Not me.”
“You needed to establish yourself,” I say.
He nods. “But networking that aggressively is… tedious.”
“Oh, I know. I did the same thing when I first arrived in New York, and then when I got married.”
“Did your ex help?”
“A bit,” I say, and my stomach gives a nervous lurch at the reminder. I’d almost forgotten we’re heading somewhere he’ll be, too. “I take it you moved on from that tactic? What do you do now?”
“Now, I wait for people to come to me,” he says. It’s not said with arrogance. It’s just a matter-of-fact statement made by a man who knows his worth. “And I never stay past midnight.”
“Like Cinderella,” I murmur.
“Exactly like her,” he says. “Expect I make it a point to keep my shoes on.”
The seriousness in his voice makes me laugh. His humor and sarcasm is surprising, so at odds with the man he presents as. “Does that make me the pumpkin?” I ask. “In this analogy?”
“I think the car is,” he says. “But considering the other options are mice and barnyard animals, I think it’s best we end the analogy here.”
