Chapter Three How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, dir. by Donald Petrie #3
look in the man’s eyes, his cheeks flushed, like he’s running from something. Or to someone. Eli has no reason to suspect that this man is Peter, but something in his rumbling gut tells him that this is the
man who just stood him up.
Though now he has to wonder what constitutes actual standing up , and if it can still be considered being stood up if Peter still showed, no matter how late.
From a simple glance across the restaurant, Eli can tell that Peter’s taller than him, much broader too, with strong shoulders
and a rounder face with thick black hair that almost shines a maroon color in the reflection of the warm lights of the restaurant.
Eli looks away, his cheeks hot, before he dares to look up again, catching Peter talking to the waitress, who motions to Eli’s
table.
So that’s it.
This is Peter.
Eli has to figure out how he wants to handle this. In the half hour since he decided Peter had ghosted him, he’s thought of
a hundred different things to text to Peter afterward, even drafted a few choice words chosen under the influence of the strawberry
soju, leaving them unsent in his Notes app.
Any thoughts of anger or vindication are lost, though, when it hits him just how handsome Peter is.
“Are you Elijah?” Peter asks as he tiptoes up to the table, like Eli’s a caged animal and Peter’s afraid of him.
“It’s Eli,” he corrects, suddenly pulled deep in his feelings again. “You’re late.” As if Peter didn’t already know that,
based on the expression on his face.
“I know, I know. I’m extremely sorry,” he says quickly. So quickly that his words almost come out as one singular sound, just like the explanation that follows.
“I lost track of time and I missed your texts and I hadn’t showered and I didn’t know what to wear so I changed outfits like
five times, and I had to take the bus because my car didn’t have a charge. And...” Peter looks at him, taking several deep
breaths. “I’m sorry.”
Eli doesn’t really know what to say at first. He’s spent the last thirty minutes of his life angry at this man he’d never
met. And now that Peter is finally in front of him, he doesn’t really know what to feel.
“It’s okay,” he says eventually, unable to hide all of the impatience in his voice. “Have you eaten?”
Peter shakes his head fervently. “I was too nervous.”
“Okay, well, you can just order something. I’m pretty much done.” Eli stares at the nearly empty bowl.
“Sorry,” Peter says again as the waitress comes by, leaving a menu and a fresh glass of water since Eli drained both of theirs.
Suddenly he feels self-conscious about the state he’s left the table.
The two empty water glasses, the half-filled soju bottle next to the empty one, and the shot glass he’d been drinking from, empty plates.
“Uh, do you want something to drink?” Eli slowly pushes the second bottle of soju toward Peter.
“No.” Peter says, his voice still hurried. Eli wants to tell him to relax, but he’s not sure that would do much good. Then
Peter’s phone begins to buzz in his pocket, and he searches for a bit before he finds it in the pocket of his hoodie. “Hello?”
Eli sits silently, listening to the Korean folk song that plays through the speakers, tapping his foot impatiently along to
the rhythm.
“Yeah. No. You need to run the tests. I left the program running. It should be done by the morning. So check in a few hours
your time and it should be okay. If it doesn’t run, I can work on it over the weekend. Okay. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. I’ll message
him on Slack. Okay. Yes. Yeah. Bye.”
Eli perks up at the phone call finally ending.
“I’m sorry,” Peter says again. Eli’s quickly realizing that this phrase is a familiar one in Peter’s vocabulary.
“It’s okay. Was that work?”
“Yes.”
“Patricia said you work in tech.”
“Patricia?”
“My friend. Your coworker Francine’s friend? Or friend of a friend, I can’t keep track.”
“Oh, yes. I like Francine.” Peter says these words just as he takes a sip of water, almost seeming to forget that he’s doing
two things at once. Which wouldn’t be so bad if these two things weren’t at odds with each other.
Peter’s water spills right out, dribbling on his shirt.
“Ah, Jesus...” Peter yanks some napkins free of the dispenser, pulling with such force that he nearly takes the entire hunk of plastic with him as he cleans up his mess.
Eli doesn’t want to laugh, because it’s not funny, it’s more like he’s in shock.
Like he can’t believe whatever slapstick routine is playing out in front of him is actually happening.
“So... Francine?”
“Yeah. Yes.” Peter straightens, still cleaning up his mess. Eli can’t help but notice a slight twang to his voice, like a
Southern accent he’s trying to hide. “I work with her.”
Eli waits for Peter to elaborate. He imagined the answer following an explanation of some kind. There are a lot of jobs in
tech, especially in one of the—if not the— most tech-oriented cities in the country. But Peter doesn’t say another word, just turns his attention back to the menu, reading
over the dishes silently. Eli stares down at his half-empty soup bowl, pushing it away from him.
“I’ve never eaten here before,” Peter says.
“You haven’t?” Eli can’t think quickly enough to hide his confusion. “But you picked it?”
Peter nods. “I thought it’d be good, and I scoped out the Yelp page for like two hours reading reviews and looking at pictures.”
Eli isn’t really sure what to say to that. “Well, the soup is good,” Eli tells him. He eats here pretty regularly when he
comes to Japantown, the irony of a Korean restaurant in the middle of Japantown not lost on him. “They’ve got all kinds of
tofu options, but soon is their specialty.”
“I don’t like soup,” Peter says bluntly.
“But you picked a soup place?” Eli cocks his head. “How do you not like soup?”
“The spicy pork looked really good.” Peter lowers the menu, finally giving Eli his face again. Up close he can make out the fine straight line of his nose
and the thickness of Peter’s lips. “I don’t like that it’s a liquid you’re expected to eat, the soup.”
“I... Huh?” Eli has to consider if he just didn’t hear Peter correctly, or if the alcohol is doing that much of a number on his systems.
But no, he heard exactly what Peter said.
“It’s a liquid. You can’t eat liquid. You can drink it.”
“But soup has other things in it.” Eli tips his bowl in Peter’s direction, where leftover pieces of tofu float around other
vegetables and shreds of beef. “The soup isn’t just the broth.”
Peter shakes his head slowly. “It doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Are you ready to order?” The older waitress comes by again, this time with a smile on her face, as if she’s happy that Eli
isn’t alone anymore.
“I’d like the spicy pork. Does that come with rice?”
The waitress nods.
“I’ll have that, thank you.” He hands the waitress the menu, and Eli considers asking her to stay, to sit with them, just
so he’ll have someone else to talk to. He can almost picture a wall around Peter, one that he’s expected to climb despite
being given no equipment at all. Just a prayer and a “Hope you make it!”
“So, what do you do at Zelus? Exactly?” Eli asks, sipping more of Peter’s first water glass, desperate to sober up a bit before
the night continues.
“I code.”
“Is that fun?”
“No. Not really.”
“Oh...” Eli doesn’t really know what to say to that. So instead, he just sits there, Peter looking anxious, like he wants to say something but can’t. Their eyes even meet at one point, and Eli smiles at him, but Peter turns red as a beet and looks
away, clearing his throat.
Like he’s afraid.
Eli wants to ask what’s wrong, if there’s something going on, or if Peter’s just nervous, but he has a feeling that might only make things worse.
“What do you code?” he asks instead, after a silence far too long to be considered anything other than uncomfortable.
“For stock.”
“You code stocks? Like for Wall Street? How does that work?”
“No,” Peter says. And that’s all he says.
“Okay,” Eli prompts. “So what do you mean by you code stock?”
“For warehouses? And companies.”
Eli can’t help but feel that Peter’s own answer comes out more like a question.
“What does that mean?” Eli doesn’t want to sound frustrated, but the talking in circles is starting to get to him. The nervous
act might be cute to someone else, but he’s already sick of it.
“I help design systems for warehouses, and how they stock well... their... stock.”
“You’re killing me here, Peter.”
“I run tests for customers and their databases.” Eli’s astounded that Peter actually managed to string together an answer
longer than three words.
He does have a nice voice; it’s very smooth, almost like he’s singing.
“That sounds pretty interesting?” Eli says, still pretty unsure of what it is Peter does.
“It’s not,” Peter says. “My day is mostly running tests, figuring out what went wrong, running them again. Hoping my computer
doesn’t crash while it does them.”
“What kind of tests?”
“Code tests.”
“Yeah, I figured that.” Eli doesn’t mean to snap, but his patience is wearing thin. “But what kind of tests are you running on the code?”
“Oh, I...” Peter blushes again. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize again, dude. I’m begging you.”
“Sor—” Peter stops himself, his reflexes clear. “I have to run tests to make sure everything works. So, it’s just a lot of sitting around in front of my computer. We have team members all over the world, people who rely on me knowing what to do if something goes wrong.”
“Ah, I see.” Eli doesn’t, actually. But he figures it’s best to get the spotlight off the poor man. He watches as Peter tugs
at the collar of his shirt before he pulls his arms through the sleeves of his hoodie, and Eli feels his tongue go dry. He’s
wearing a black compression shirt underneath, one that perfectly wraps around his muscles as if it were painted on him, the
fabric stretching as he moves. And there’s no missing the plump shape of Peter’s pecs.