Page 29 of Pick Me
I shook my head sadly. “You make it sound so easy, but sourcing an army of trained stingrays is harder than you think.”
He threw back his head and laughed in delight, which made my stomach clench pleasantly.
“You know, it’s funny to me that a man can get so pissed off when I suggest empirically proven methods for efficient dishwashing—”
“Efficient,” he snorted.
“—yet can have such nonsensical opinions about sandwich shapes.”
“They’re not nonsensical. It’s about the ratio of bread to filling to crust, combined with the shapely aesthetic magnificence of the right triangle.” He sketched a triangle in the air with a Twizzler, like maybe I’d forgotten what triangles looked like. “The secret to happiness has been sitting right in front of you all this time.”
I shook my head. “It’s clear that our parents named the wrong one of us after philosophers, Goodman.”
“Maybe so.” Goodman grinned. “But I’m stillway coolerthan you,” he said in an Aiden-voice. “So, what time’s your appointment tomorrow?”
I blinked at this topic change. “Uh… I dunno. Probably early, but we haven’t set a time yet.”
He nodded. “Oh, so not like a doctor,then.”
“No.” My occasional calls with Dr. Travers were plenty, thank you. “An appointment with a… colleague. Why do you want to know?”
I worked hard not to sound guilty.
Apparently, I failed.
Goodman laughed. “Oh my God, why are you so squirrelly? Are you and your colleague robbing a bank? Murdering someone? Soliciting a prostitute?”
“Please,” I scoffed. “I’m stopping by my office, and we’re going to grab coffee whenever he can squeeze me in, okay, Nancy Drew?”
“Yeah, I have no idea who that is,” he said with a happy grin, and I couldn’t tell whether he was lying. “You mean yourformeroffice, right? The investment place?”
“Obviously. Yes. My former office.” The lie tasted like sawdust. “Bormon Klein Jacovic.”
Goodman nodded. “Do you miss it?”
“Can we go back to talking about sandwiches?”
“Nope. We’re getting to know each other. It’s this or the BuzzFeed quiz.”
I rubbed my neck. “That’s… a big question,” I deflected, but when he stayed silent—because of course,thatwas the one moment Goodman didn’t have a million thoughts and opinions to share—I found myself saying, “There are parts about it that I miss. Lots of parts. I started working there fifteen years ago, and I’m really good at what I do. I turned my position into what it is today,” I said proudly. “I literally wrote the training manual the company uses. I supervise a whole team of auditors, and I’m responsible for some really crucial, high-level decisions. So.”
“Sounds boring, but okay.”
“Boring?” I snorted. “No way. I love working in finance. I like risk analysis.”
“But you just said you weren’t really doing that,” he pointed out. “You were watching other people do it.”
I floundered for half a second. “Well, yes, but that’s how corporate hierarchy works. If you want to make good money, you have to stretch and supervise. Maybe it’s not thrilling, and maybe it’s a little more demanding—” Ora lotmoredemanding, I mentally revised. “—but that’s how careers work.”
“Yeah, I dunno.” He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t think it’s supposed to work like that. And hey! You wipe that ‘because you’re a naive child, Goodman,’ look right off your face, Edwin Knox.”
I shut my mouth because Ihadbeen thinking exactly that.
“I’mnota child,” he went on. “I just don’t understand why people associate maturity with getting the soul sucked out of your body on a daily basis. I know life is full of hard days, hard seasons, difficult clients, and all that, and you have to work hard to get rewards. But when the majority of what you do every single day is a total slog, I just don’t get why anyone would think it was more mature to keep slogging than to put yourself on a better path, even if that means you don’t end up having a fancy title or a corner office. Not to say that’s how you felt about your job at all,” he added quickly. “If you enjoyed supervising, then that’s cool. I just… I keep hoping I won’t have to compromise like that.”
“What did I do to deserve three and a half hours stuck in the car with this youthful idealist who refuses to compromise yet somehow landed his ass working at an orchard in rural Vermont?” I asked the roof of the car.
“Hey! I like the orchard. As first jobs go, it could be way worse. Webb’s giving me a ton of freedom in the way I structure things. Way more than I’d get at most other places. And it’s fun.”
