Page 32 of The Blind Date

“And your undergrad?” He continued to probe, a dissatisfied look about him.

"Same place. I did an integrated Master's."

“An integrated Master's?” Cedric questioned with a haughty laugh. "That doesn’t count.”

“Who are you to say that it doesn’t count?” I asked, no doubt sounding offended.

Who was he to say that my Master's didn't count just because it was integrated? He was one to speak. He didn’t even have a Master's at all!

“An integrated Master's is still an undergrad. It’s just an extra year. That’s just a technicality.” He pointed out, back to being smug.

"You're one to talk," I huffed. "You don't even have a Master's. Integrated or not, I still have one."

“Let’s settle this properly.”

“Fine,” I agreed. “But we’re going to even out the playing field. We’re not talking about positions, current or in the near future.”

“Fine.” His jaw clenched. “List your languages.”

“That’s easy,” I snorted and held up my fingers, ready to count them. "Java, C, C#, C++, Python, JavaScript and Perl.”

"What? That's it?" Cedric snorted and chuckled as if I hadn't just listed off an impressive set of coding languages. "For one, Perl is a dying language, so that doesn't count, and JavaScript is so easy that even children can learn it."

“I thought we agreed to no technicalities,” I groaned, throwing his words right back at him.

“Fine. I’ll let you have JavaScript and Perl, but I still know more than you.”

“Let’s hear it then.” I sent him a pointed look, crossing my arms over my chest.

“I probably know all the ones you listed better than you do, and I’m also very experienced in Ruby, PHP, Scala and SQL.”

“I know SQL as well.”

"Everyone knows SQL, but you conveniently forgot to list it,” he dismissed, his smirk even smugger than before.

“You cannot be serious right now!” I huffed and rolled my eyes.

“Oh, I’m very serious.”

“You’re so childish.”

"You keep saying that, but for some reason, your parents love me and think we’re a perfect match. What does that say about you?"

“That my parents are desperate enough to allow themselves to be tricked by an asshole like yourself.”

“There you go talking about my ass again, darling,” Cedric chuckled and picked up his cutlery, resuming his meal as if we hadn’t been arguing for several minutes now. "Look. I'm older than you by a few years. I've been in this field longer as well. I think I know what I'm doing. I don’t need to prove to you I'm worthy of this promotion. I don’t need to prove anything to you.”

“You’re awfully defensive for someone who doesn’t have anything to prove to me.”

“You’ve just become Vice President. I bet you haven’t even taken up any responsibility for anything yet.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. I introduced hosting our components on Kubernetes to our EMEA division! I’m now helping AMRS integrate this, and APAC won’t be far behind.”

Cedric paused, staring at me with an impressed glint in his eye. He opened his mouth to say something but was interrupted by Yasmin.

"I'm sure I'm not speaking for myself here, but when I invited my adult son to join us for dinner with friends, I didn't expect this kind of childish behaviour." Yasmin pursed her lips, an unimpressed look on her face. I turned my head to spy Mum looking between us with an identical expression on her face. Our dads had even turned their attention away from the game–though I was sure it had just gone into half-time–to see what all the commotion was about.

“Saffron, honey, you know better than to behave like this," Mum tutted, sending me a pointed look. "I know the two of you didn't have the best date the other day, but neither of us knew that we would be inviting you kids to join us for dinner.”

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