Page 3 of Finance Bros

I continue staring at him.

“In case you’re hungry.”

“No.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Have a good workout.” I slip out of the living room and lock myself in my bedroom. I need to hit the gym at some point today, too, but I’m trying to chill my brain out before Monday. Step one was the date, which—while I won’t be marrying Ruby or anything—ended as well as it could have. Step two is to bank some sleep before my first day at work so I don’t look like some burnout they dragged off the street and put into a nice suit. Step three is to memorize some talking points, which I figure I can do on a treadmill.

I suck at small talkandstrangers. I’m awkward and sour on a good day and rude as fuck on a bad one. I have this issue with keeping my mouth shut when I don’t agree with something. It’s a byproduct of deciding a while back that I needed to stop giving a shit what anyone thinks of me. The problem is I need to make a good impression Monday. I need to build a filter, put it in place, and make it work.

Using my small shaving mirror, I practice facial expressions in the shower. A huge smile looks terrifying, but it’s a starting point. I’m going for bland but interested. Even that, though, is a stretch. It feels like smiling, too. In its resting position, my mouth is moody and pouty, like I just got grounded for three weeks. In order to make it not look like that, I have to activate my cheek muscles, which not only feels unnatural, it makes me look like an idiot.

Even when I smile small, it looks like I’m disapproving of something.

Fuck my mouth, Jesus. I’m gonna have to make this work with my eyes and forehead. A slight widening of my eyes smooths out the perma-line between my brows and opens up my expression a little. The muscle strain is minimal, and I look sort of pleasant that way.

I try to build some muscle memory by forcing myself to maintain the expression while I finish up in the shower. It’s not easy. My mouth keeps wanting to get involved, and every time I catch a glimpse of myself, it feels fucking hopeless.

Afterward, I lotion up my two sleeves of tattoos, the ink on my torso, and the intricate design on my thigh. It’s been about six months since I got a tattoo, and I’m feeling the itch again. I’ve been wanting to get started on my back, but until I’m making some serious coin, it seems dumb to spend so much money on something I’ll only see when I twist around to look in the mirror. Still, the burn of the needle is a craving—an addiction I can’t quit.

My stomach growls as I’m getting into bed, and I think about Deacon’s bananas, but in the end, I don’t have the energy to get up and grab one.

I’m like—completelyin love with you.

I wake up coughing, like I’m trying to choke the words back into my throat the way I wasn’t able to when I said them ten years ago. The worst fucking mistake I ever made and not—I repeat—not—the thing I need to be thinking about when I’m headed to the most important opportunity of my life. But that’s the problem with recurring dreams—they tend to pop up in times of stress.

It doesn’t take a psychoanalyst to decipher what the dreammeans. It was my most embarrassing moment, and I’m afraid of embarrassing myself today. It makes sense, but still, I have to pat my body down to remind myself I’m not fourteen anymore. Kids are stupid, and they fuck up bad sometimes, and I’m not that kid. The hair on my legs proves it. I didn’t get that until I was sixteen and had already learned my lesson. Over and over again, I learned the damn lesson.

I get out of bed as quick as I can in case I start to dwell on stupid shit I can’t change, and head for the shower. After an hour of painstaking self-care—hair styling, a close shave, a nail trim, and a lot of expression training, I’m on my way to the Marks & Baker building in downtown San Francisco. I’m wearing my nicest gray suit, brown leather shoes polished to a fine gleam, and my late father’s watch fit snugly over my wrist.

My phone rings, and a small smile makes its way onto my face when I see it’sher. She can say what she wants about boundaries and student-teacher relationships, but she and I both know we’d work. “Hey,” I answer.

“Hey! Are you excited? Nervous?” Norah’s voice is on the lower side of feminine without being husky.

“Yes,” I tell her, catching a reflection of myself in the window of a building I pass.

“It’ll be great. You’ll see. I’mstillfriends with the people who were in my internship.”

“Did you forget I don’t have friends?”

“You have me, don’t you?”

“Ouch,” I say, smiling again.

“Ugh…you’rekilling me, Ryan.”

“Me? I’m not the one with all the prissy rules.”

“Prissy? You could have just as easily gotten a job in Seattle.”

“You told me not to,” I don’t hesitate to remind her.

“Well, I was stupid.”

I laugh, and she does, too. Then, with a sigh, she says, “One day…”

“Maybe…”

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