Chapter 9
SHE'S A PERFECT FIT
Thomas
Aurum is new money pretending to be old, a rooftop splurge perched atop the glassiest tower on Hennepin, trading on the lie that anyone in Minneapolis ever needs to eat above the eighth floor.
There’s a ritual to places like this: the elevator climb, the microsecond of vertigo when the doors part and the city grid appears as a magnificent vista, the silent concierge who intercepts you with the same voice they use to announce royalty or airline delays. I’m ten minutes early, by design.
The hostess leads me past the open kitchen, where tattooed men in black aprons slice hunks of steak with surgical precision, and then out onto the terrace—clear-walled, climate-controlled, arrayed with white-linen tables like an art installation.
Candles. Tiny live-edge slabs of cedar for bread plates.
A scent in the air—smoke, cold ozone, and some high-end cologne from the table over.
The skyline has already started its blue-hour fade, every window in the city flickering awake, a hundred thousand illuminated rectangles mapping out other people’s business.
I take the anchor table by the glass railing, back to the wall. From here, I can see everything: the servers moving like clockwork, the way the city is caught in the reflection of the windows, and—more importantly—the entrance.
The waiter brings me a Balvenie 21, neat, and then disappears with an efficiency I appreciate.
I turn the glass in my hand, watching the golden scotch coat the side, and allow myself the smallest shudder of anticipation.
I could say it’s the drink, or the view, or the exhaustion after a day of shuffling crises around like a hustler at a shell game. But it’s not. It’s her.
I glance at my phone once. Then again. I don’t text. I don’t need to. If she ghosts, I’ll just drink here until midnight, then drop three grand on dessert wine for the house and retreat to my apartment to lick my wounds in silence. But I don’t think she will.
She’s exactly four minutes late, and somehow the anticipation makes it better.
The elevator opens and Andie emerges—a vision who could be on a billboard in Times Square.
Golden locks down, barely any makeup, a black wrap dress that could be H me, the rarest ribeye they have, because sometimes the stereotypes are earned. The waiter bows himself away, and we are left in the little bubble of candlelight and cold city noise leaking through the glass.
For a minute, we don’t say anything. I study her, and she studies me back, neither of us willing to cede the initiative.
“You dress different than I expected,” she says finally.
“Should I have worn a suit?”
She shakes her head. “No. It’s just—I thought maybe you’d look like a CEO. This is…” She gestures at my open shirt, the blazer, the jeans. “You look like you belong here, like this is home, not like you’re trying to impress anyone.”
“That’s because I’m not,” I say, and it’s true. “Impressing people is a young man’s game.”
She tilts her head, as if weighing that, then leans in just a little. “So what do older men want?”
I smile, slow, and let the silence stretch. “Older men want what they can’t have,” I say, and I don’t look away. The connection between us is electric.
The wine arrives, breaking the moment, and the waiter pours just enough to fog the bottom of her glass. I taste mine, nod, and let him finish the job. Andie sips, then nods, approving. “That’s really good,” she says.
I run my thumb around the rim of my glass, watching her over the edge. “Do you want to ask me how this all started? The board seats, the money, the rest?”
She shrugs, but her eyes are sharp now, alert. “I assume you weren’t born in a suit. Did you always want to be wealthy, or did it just happen to you?”
I laugh, not expecting that. “Neither, really. I wanted to be in control. Money is just a way to keep score.”
She drinks, then props her chin on her hand. “So how did it begin?”
“Fan Day,” I say, and watch for her reaction.
She blinks. “The betting site? That’s you?”
“That’s me,” I say. “I started it in a Century College dorm room, except it wasn’t a prediction site back then.
I was failing out of my science requirement, but I could code, so I made a site that was like an on-line poker room for a bunch of my friends.
Then, I morphed it to let my friends bet on Vikings games without going to jail.
By my junior year, I was running a book for the entire conference.
So I was lucky - I got into electronic sports betting from the very beginning. ”
She whistles, low. “And now you’re buying Super Bowl commercials? With that movie star?”
I snort. “That’s the actor they hired, but yeah. I wrote every line in those scripts. They kept most of the jokes.”
She grins, and I feel the line between us get shorter, like a drawbridge lowering.
“Don’t get me wrong because it hasn’t been easy.
My company was nothing for the first ten years.
I worked three jobs—waiter, temp data entry, overnight shifts at a warehouse—just to keep the servers online.
But then this angel investor out of Chicago cold-called me, said he liked my ‘moxie’ or something.
He flew me out for a meeting, put a check for fifty grand on the table, told me to take it or leave it. ”
“Did you take it?”
“I would have done it for five,” I say. “But I played hardball, pretended I had a line of investors around the block. It was bullshit, of course, but he bought it.”
“Did you ever meet him again?”
“Once. At the IPO. He wore the same suit, and cried into a twenty-dollar martini.”
She laughs, and the sound gets under my skin in a way I can’t name.
I go on: “Once we went public, everything changed. Overnight, it went from a nothing to a machine that everyone knew of. They brought in compliance, HR, a layer of lawyers thicker than my arm. I didn’t mind. That was the point—building something that could run without me.”
She nods, as if she understands more than she lets on.
The waiter brings the bread and a tiny dish of salt, then vanishes. I break a piece and offer it to her, and she takes it, fingers brushing mine. A little spark. It’s not lost on her.
She sets the bread down. “So is that what the Board of Visitors wanted? Your money, or your name? Or did they want a spot in the Super Bowl commercial?”
I give her a look, part amused, part impressed.
“All three, probably. The Dean called it ‘an opportunity to give back to the place that made you,’ but what they want is donors who can show up on short notice and write a letter for the website. They call me when they need a check, or when they need someone to tell a story about how Century isn’t just for trust fund kids. ”
“Is it?”
“Not when I went there,” I say. “And not for you, either, it seems. How’s that catering job going?”
She shakes her head ruefully. “It’s going. I don’t come from much, so work-study is helping put me through school.”
I nod slowly. “Tell me about it.”
Andie shrugs. “My family’s working class.
My two younger siblings are in high school right now, but they’re both college bound, so I need to help out any way I can.
Thus, the work-study, and I also babysit on the side sometimes.
My parents can’t help. I think my dad is still mad I chose English over accounting. ”
I lean in. “But you did it anyway.”
She meets my eyes, dead-on. “Of course.”
We sit there, holding each other’s gaze, and for a moment I can see the life that made her: the long hours, the constant hustle, the stubborn refusal to quit. It makes me want to take her apart, see how she’s built.
But that’s not what tonight is about. Tonight is about honesty, about seeing each other with the lights all the way on.
The food arrives, perfectly timed. My steak is blue-rare, exactly as I ordered it; her risotto glistens under a crown of microgreens.
We eat, mostly in silence, but it’s a good silence, the kind that doesn’t demand to be filled.
It’s comfortable. Nice, and I love being in the company of an intelligent, yet beautiful woman.
Halfway through, she says, “I lied, a little.”
“About what?”