Page 110 of Sort of Seeing Someone

“That concludes our panel this morning. I want to thank our special guests for joining us in person,” says Sam. “They’ll be sticking around after for anyone who wants to ask some additional questions one-on-one.”

“Look, mama,” Yas says. “I’ve got to get to another appointment with one of my vineyard reps. But this looks good, really good. I wrote down some numbers on this piece of paper and circled the offer I think you should present to Sam and Kathy, barring you have no additional questions that you want to stick around and ask. If you do, go with the cute Swedish meatball in the gingham button down. He seems to know what he’s talking about more than the others.”

“So you don’t think he’s a hired actor after all?” I have to ask.

“He’s most definitelynota hired actor…too nerdy and too much J. Crew.”

Yup, that about sums up the Ollie I know.

“Good. Then I might stay and ask him a few questions,” I casually mention.

“Cool, mama. Call me later.”

Yasdeparts, as do most of the busy-looking people who attended this morning’s meeting. Ollie is still sitting in his chair. His face is buried in his phone. From the screen, I can tell he’s looking for flights back.

“I would ask you the odds of meeting like this again, but I don’t see your graphing calculator anywhere. So instead, I’ll just go with: why are you here?”

“Moonie. Wow.”

Ollie becomes visibly nervous in a way I’ve not seen before. I’m tempted to call it anick, but I want to hear him out.

“This is kind of crazy, right?”

“Can you just answer my question?”

He takes a breath and regroups.

“WorldEnge got a high-priority request from these realtors looking for experts on structures built near bodies of water and it got forwarded to me. I took off from TheBrockmeier this week to clear my head and figured an impromptu, all-expense paid trip San Diego in the dead of winter was a welcomed change in scenery.” Ollie pauses and looks me up and down. “But I guess it wasn’t that big of a change in scenery after all.”

Sorry for existing?

“Are you actually considering uprooting your life?” he probes.

“I’m consideringrootingmy life. Did you see what happened with my business in Chicago?”

“Yes and I’ve been trying to check on you. You haven’t been answering my texts.”

He’s not wrong, but he should know full-well why not. I let him sit in silence a little longer.

“So what’s next for you? What do you want?”

“I want to see how this plays out,” I say, wondering if I should clarify that I’m just talking about the impending real estate deal andnothingabout us.

“Look, I’m going to come right out and say it: what happened at your sister’s house was a complete failure on my part.”

Definitely should have clarified.

“It’s okay,” I say, as I hold up a hand, the universal symbol forlet’s not do this right now.

“No, it’s not. I was just trying to rush to make sense of the unknown, which I suck at. I got frustrated when I couldn’t piece it—you, me—together fast enough, so I gave up. It’s not an excuse. It’s just another shitty part of being an engineer. I swear, sometimes the way my brain works feels like a…”

“A curse?”

Ollie pauses and stares deeply into my eyes.

“Yes. A curse.”

And with that admission, the room feels surprisingly lighter.

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