Page 23 of It's Only Make Believe

“I can’t imagine why you have that impression of me,” I reply.

Louisa laughs softly and takes a drink. I watch her throat work as she swallows it. She sees me watching her and smiles self-consciously.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” she says.

I shake my head. I force myself to look away. Flirting is one thing, but I don’t want to make her uncomfortable or come across as a creep.

“What made you decide to go into web development?” I ask.

“I was always quite creative growing up, but I wasn’t a good drawer or painter or anything like that. I tried graphic design, but again, I wasn’t a great drawer, and my stuff never came out like how I saw it my head. I discovered web development as an accidental side line to that really. I discovered I liked playing around with other people’s graphics and fonts and putting them together in new ways. From there, I learned to code so I could do it without it looking like a bad photoshop job. I hadseveral friends ask me to work on websites for them and word of mouth reached a few local businesses and they paid me to design websites for them and that’s when I realized there was a potential career in it.”

“I suppose I could have left college and started my own business doing that kind of thing, but I felt like that wasn’t what I wanted. I think running a business is great if that’s your thing, but for me, it would mean that I had to do a thousand and one tasks I didn’t want to do and less and less hands-on work. So, I decided to get my degree and go down that route, but with the aim of working for a company.”

She finishes up and takes another sip of her drink.

“How about you? What made you start Sold?” she asks.

“I was the opposite to you,” I say with a smile. “I knew from quite early on that I wanted to run my own business. I didn’t know what I would do at first, but I knew I didn’t want to work for someone else. I got the idea for Sold when I started to use eBay as part of a retail business I tried. I found it to be a good tool for the most part – certainly the best available at the time - but there were lots of things I felt would work better a different way and the more I used the site, the more strongly I felt about it and so I decided to start Sold. I talked to potential investors, and they believed in me and my ideas, and I got enough money together to make it happen. I hired people to build a website that worked faster and smarter than the alternatives, and one that had more focus on the sellers. After all, they are our clients really, and I find that eBay in particular put way too much focus on siding with buyers, even when the seller can prove the buyer is lying. I was lucky – I got into the market at just the right time and Sold just took off.”

“I think it was likely more than luck,” Louisa says. “The timing obviously was right which helped, but it sounds like ahell of a lot of work at the beginning and that’s not luck, that’s determination and a damned good idea.”

“Maybe a bit of that too,” I say.

“So, you’re the sort of man who sees what he wants and goes for it then?” Louisa says, not meeting my eye.

“Yes and no,” I say. “I like to bide my time. When the right moment comes along, then I will go after what I want, but sometimes, I have found myself wanting something and the time isn’t right, so I hold back.”

“Is that why you’ve never gotten married?” Louisa asks me.

It’s a jump to the personal and I’m a little bit surprised by it, but I have nothing to hide, and I am quite open to answering her.

“I haven’t purposely avoided marriage, I just haven’t found the right person yet,” I say. “I guess I will when the time is right for that too. But how do you know I’m not married or haven’t been divorced?”

“I looked you up online,” Louisa says.

I expect her to blush or at least look a bit sheepish at this confession, but she’s completely unfazed by the admission. Because I like her, I suppose I don’t mind the idea of her looking me up, but if I didn’t, would I find it weird? Maybe a little bit.

“Stalker much,” I say, making light of it but letting her know she’s very close to crossing a line.

“Hardly,” she says. “Don’t tell me you never look potential employees up online. Or if not you personally, then your HR department?”

“Sure,” I say. “We look for red flags, but not their relationship status.”

“And people who are about to start working for someone generally do the same thing. Look them up, find out a bit about them, see if they are someone they can work well with. But you have to be the awkward one and not be on LinkedIn, so I had to resort to looking you up on Facebook, where your relationshipstatus is at the top of your profile and pretty hard to miss,” she says.

“Ok, fair enough,” I say. “So do you think I should set myself up a LinkedIn profile, even though I’m not looking for a career change or anything like that?”

Louisa shrugs one shoulder.

“It won’t hurt,” she says. “If nothing else, it means that anyone who is considering a role at the company will have somewhere to look you up without seeming like a stalker.”

We both laugh and I file that idea away for another day. Maybe I will make myself a profile, but at the very least, I am going to tighten my privacy settings on Facebook. Louisa is one thing, but I don’t like the idea of any random person being about to find out details about me and my life so easily.

“Same again,” I say, nodding to Louisa’s almost empty glass.

“Let me get these,” she says.

“Stop it,” I say. “What sort of a welcome to the company would that be?”

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