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“Bill me,” he said.
We both laughed, and I thought to myself,this is going so much better than I expected.
3
Amber
“You do seem like an expert in big investment meetings,” Jude said. “Who do you work for?”
“I’m… kind of in between jobs right now,” I said carefully. “I mostly do freelance work.”
“Freelance?” He frowned. “Most of the good coders in this town work for companies that pay part of their salary in stock options.”
“Nice of you to assume I’m agoodcoder,” I said.
“I was underselling it. I bet you’re a bad-ass coder,” he said. “So why the freelance work? You prefer the flexibility that offers?”
I shrugged and searched around for an answer. “I guess I don’t want to work for a big tech company. I like being my own boss. I’m not good at taking orders from micro-managing middle-managers.”
“Micro-managing middle-managers. Try saying that five times fast.” Jude snorted and added, “What if a big company like Amazon or Facebook came knocking? You wouldn’t take a job with them?”
“Nope.”
“Even if they offered you an obscene amount of money?”
“Well, shoot. Every girl has a number,” I said with a chuckle. “But I probably wouldn’t last very long. I’m not good at keeping my opinions to myself.”
“I can see that.”
“If I was a coder at Facebook and happened to see The Zuck in the break room or something, I wouldn’t be able to stop myself from giving him a piece of my mind. I’d be fired within the first week.”
I glanced over at the rooftop patio. Michelle and Phil were talking to one of the bouncers about something. It seemed calm, though. I hoped one of her college friends hadn’t thrown a glass over the railing or something.
“Calling Zuckerberg a money-hoarding treasure goblin would definitely be a career-limiting move,” Jude said, pulling my attention back to the charming programmer.
“Oh, that’s not my name for him. I would call him a feudal dystopian doom-robot.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought,” he said with another chuckle.
There’s plenty of time to think about this while being unemployed,I thought.
“Insults are one thing that are always worth a healthy amount of consideration,” I said philosophically.
Jude made me laugh by pulling out his phone and jotting that down on his notes app.
“Seriously. Life coach,” he said. “Give it some thought.”
“Maybe I will.”
Jude was smiling at me like I was the best part of his day. And in spite of myself, I felt the same way. When I came out tonight, I expected to be the tab-paying older sister slash babysitter for Michelle and her friends. I had resigned myself to being out of my element and not having much fun.
But meeting Jude changed my perspective on everything. He was smart; that was obvious. He wasreallycute, in an awkward nerdy kind of way. It was endearing. And it had been a very long time since I met someone like myself. Someone who I felt like I could actuallybemyself around, rather than what I thought they wanted me to be.
This is what I want for my birthday, I heard my sister saying.For you to meet a guy. To hook up with a guy.
And right then? I wanted the exact same thing.
“Hey,” I said. “I’m going to be here a while. We’ve got the rooftop rented until midnight. When your work meeting with the investor is over, come find me so we can get a night cap.”
