Chapter Thirteen
LACEY
The restaurant is at the top of Nob Hill, just a few blocks from me.
I pop home to drop off my bag and change into Work Dinner clothes: swap my button-down for a black top, refresh my makeup, sadly remove my sneakers and put on a pair of platform-heeled Mary Janes.
I take my top earrings out—concerned Edmund might find them too edgy and weird—and put them back in.
If the number of holes in my ears has any impact on the success of this dinner, Trevor was right and we’re fucked.
I pace my apartment while I wait for Kate to text me that she’s on her way. I vacuum. I pace. Why exactly do I have the jitters? Keith probably doesn’t. He’s just coasting through life on a wave of mediocrity, looking forward to another free dinner.
Finally, the text from Kate arrives to give me her ETA at the restaurant. One more swipe of lipstick and I’m out the door, marching up the hill in these stupid shoes that make my legs look ten feet long.
“Why did you walk?” Kate asks me when I arrive, slightly dewy from my hike.
“I thought it might settle my nerves. But now I’m sweaty and I have a blister.” I show her the raw part of my heel where my shoe has bitten me.
Before we walk in, she smooths my hair down and reminds me that Edmund is just another blowhard who’s confused money with importance.
“I don’t care what he thinks of me personally. I just want him to support what we’re building. It’s really important to me.” I tell her as I trail her into the restaurant, trying not to limp each time my shoe hits my heel.
She rolls her eyes. “My friend, you’re not just drinking the Kool-Aid these days; you’re pouring it. They’re not paying you enough for you to pour it.”
I’m not going to fight her on this. There’s nothing wrong with caring.
It’s all swanky and Art Deco inside; black and white chevron floors, brown leather banquettes, gold walls.
The type of place your uncle takes you when he’s visiting on business.
We tell the host we’re meeting our party for a drink ahead of our reservation, and he ushers us around the corner to a slightly better lit bar.
A pair of older men are at one corner of the bar, couple my parents’ age in the middle.
I see Trevor at the far end, talking to someone I don’t recognize from the back.
Wally. I think—but no, Wally is an older guy and there’s no way he has an ass like the one I’m—respectfully—looking at.
The person who is not Wally turns and waves us over with a smile.
“Holy shit,” Kate says, at the exact moment I realize it’s Jude.
He’s wearing a slim white button-down with the sleeves rolled up, a heavy watch on his wrist. The shirt’s tucked into a pair of navy trousers that fit him so well his tailor should be shortlisted for a Nobel prize.
He’s also gone a bit heavier on the hair product, and with his stubble growing back the overall effect is—
“Jesus Christ, you’re gorgeous,” Kate says, kissing him on the cheek. “Who knew?”
I opt to give him a little wave.
“Lacey,” he says. I don’t say anything in return. I’m too busy wondering if his eyebrows have always looked like this, and what it means for the data set that even Jude’s eyebrows are sexy to me right now.
“Our boy cleans up nice, right?” Trevor asks.
“I did my best,” Jude says. “Still no time for a haircut.”
Kate points a finger at his chest. “I’ve known you since your buzzcut days, so listen to me: you may trim that hair, but you may not cut it. That head of hair is a gift from God.”
He blushes, neck first as usual.
“You guys look nice too,” he says, catching my eye for a second.
“We always look nice,” Kate says. “Lacey, you’re being weird. Do you need to take a shot before this asshole gets here? Will that help you settle down?”
“I’d be up for shots,” Trevor offers.
“Shhh,” Jude says, looking beyond us. “He’s walking in now.”
We all hang back when we get to the table because Jude has warned us about Edmund’s seating preferences.
Amber and Keith have arrived, as has Wally, so we’re all loitering there until Edmund points Wally and Jude across the table and tells Trevor and I to sit on each side of him.
Kate plops down defensively to insure Keith is as far away from Edmund as possible. We’re off to a great start.
Edmund is both better and worse than Jude has described him.
Better in that he’s quite personable, asks me about my family and where I grew up, as well as where I’ve worked in the past and what led me to pursue product management.
Worse in that all of my answers seem to be inputs into a secret questionnaire with a hidden output.
We make it halfway through our entrees before he asks Wally to summarize their concerns about Lettercat for us all.
Blah blah hypergrowth blah disruption blah blah revenue, says Wally, with Edmund nodding along.
When he’s finished, Jude asks if he may take a moment to address some of those points.
Given permission, Jude takes a pause from the tomato salad he’s settled for, and begins by agreeing with everything Wally has just said.
He goes deeper into their concerns about market share and looming competitors who would consider our entire business one simple little feature.
But then he starts talking TAM, SAM, and SOM, and how AI has created a revolution in the small business space, and how what Lettercat has done for creators might be applied to the thousands of entrepreneurs striking out on their own each day.
It’s not like Edmund starts weeping from the brilliance, but he’s certainly not fighting him.
“You make some interesting points,” Edmund tells him. “Let’s put some time on the calendar and follow up later this week.”
All of dessert—which no one wanted, but Wally insisted we have—is spent listening to Edmund and Keith discuss, across the table, their shared devotion to Guns N’ Roses and all the times they’ve each seen them live.
It’s somewhat better than the time Keith dropped by our pod and told Glenn and me a detailed summary, complete with spoilers, of a Nicole Kidman movie called The Interpreter.
At least Edmund seems to be enjoying this.
And finally we can go. Wally and Edmund valet parked, so they’re gone as soon as the check is settled. The rest of us trade murmured reviews as we get up and head for the door. The general consensus is, it went well—right?
But it’s over, and that’s something to be happy about.
“My ride’s here in three,” Kate says. “Want me to drop you, Lacey?”
My heel still hurts, but I need to decompress after so much food and stress. I tell her I’ll walk, and she heroically finds a Band-Aid in her purse for me. Trevor reluctantly accepts a ride from Keith. Amber’s husband is meeting her at the bar.
“I’ve got to get my helmet and my jacket from the coat check,” Jude says. “But Lacey, I’ll walk you home.”
It’s not phrased like a question, so I don’t have a chance to deflect. I tell him I’ll meet him outside, and I sit on the steps of this fancy-ass restaurant and try to get a Band-Aid to stick to my angry heel.
“Isn’t that just going to come off when you start walking?” Jude asks above me. I look up. God he’s tall. And those eyebrows. The motorcycle helmet in his hand and leather jacket slung over his arm are somehow making everything worse.
He extends his other hand to help me and I take it. Our eyes meet as he pulls me up, and once I’m standing he drops my hand a little too quickly. Like I have cooties.
“How’s the blister?” he asks.
“It’ll be better once we start heading downhill,” I tell him, starting slowly home.
The fog is in, making a dome above lit-up Grace Cathedral. It’s quiet and magical; we pass through Huntington Park in silence.
“How do you think that went?” he finally asks.
“He’s impossible to read,” I say. “It was like having dinner with the Sphinx.”
“A total mindfuck, every time I talk to him.”
I tell him I thought what he said seemed to connect with Edmund.
“I was doing this thing called managing up,” he says, bumping me with his arm as we walk.
We go another block in silence, while I try to figure out why this handsome version of Jude showing up tonight and walking me home has me feeling sad.
I’m confused, I think. I like consistency, I like predictability.
People who run hot then cold are bad enough; Jude somehow does both simultaneously.
Walking me home, touching my arm. Talking only about work.
“Were you in the school band?” he asks, like he can hear my thoughts.
“I was.”
“I have a borderline-magical ability to guess which instrument people played. I’m never wrong.”
“Go ahead then,” I say. We’re almost at my building.
“Clarinet. No, not just clarinet. I’m going to say first chair, first clarinet.”
He’s right, of course.
“I’m not ashamed. I was a practical girl playing a sensible instrument.”
“Not just playing it,” he says.
“Right. Playing it better than anyone else.”
“What about me?” he asks. “Want to guess?”
“Yours is obvious.”
“It is?”
“You got good grades, your teachers adored you, you had a bad haircut. Which means you played the trumpet. This is me,” I tell him. I walk up the steps to my building and pull my keys out of my bag. Jude follows, but stops two steps below the top.
“You’re correct,” he says.
I open the door and lean my back against it. “But you always wished you played the saxophone.”
He laughs and ducks his head. “Drums, actually.”
“Close enough,” I say, looking straight at him and willing him to walk up those last two stairs to me, because what I’ve come to realize on this walk is that I’m set to one temperature when it comes to Jude. And it’s hot.
He pushes a hand through his hair and looks at his feet.
“Lacey. I— I just can’t.”