“Hmm,” he says, and I enjoy the guttural sound a bit too much. “Make some coffee then, and I’ll get dressed.”
“No,” I say, and Erik’s eyebrows climb his forehead in disbelief. “No coffee,” I continue. “We’re getting a beer.”
Eight
I get Erik out of the apartment.
He must have realized I’m trying to loosen him up. After all, I’m repeating my strategy from the day we met after matching on Cinder. He knows I’m up to something tricky, but I see it as a good sign that he is going along with it.
Erik is in limbo. He doesn’t talk to me, but I know he is frustrated with his fruitless job search and the fact that he doesn’t know what to do with his life. Whenever he’s not in his room, he drags his feet around the kitchen like a pale ghost sporting jogging pants and tired eyes.
He looks quite decent now, with his long hair down, untangled and still a bit wet, an unwrinkled black T-shirt, and dark blue jeans.
Whenever I’m home, I only see Erik go to the supermarket and the gym. Occasionally, he is at the dining table with his laptop. The few times I glanced at his screen when passing by, I saw him scrolling through job ads, never looking excited or engaged, just bored, frowning, or pressing his temples as if relieving a headache.
He cooks a lot, often elaborate dishes, as if cooking is the moment that gives his day meaning. He never invites me to eat, however. Never chats when we are in the same room. The last time we talked was when he helped me assemble my bed, and I haven’t started a conversation since, though I keep my door open and always say hi whenever I cross paths with him in the morning or after work.
I thought he might be annoyed at me for some reason, but he’s here with me now.
We walked to a bar near the apartment. It’s too cold to sit outside, but we watch the sunset through the windows. It has rained all day, but after five, the sun decided to make a brief appearance before retiring behind the gray clouds, tinting them with artsy orange strokes. It’s a Saturday evening, but the crowds haven’t swarmed the place yet.
“So, what is your proposition?” Erik looks down at his beer.
“I want to hear about your project,” I start, calm and slow to keep my nerves under control. “What it’s about, why you abandoned it, and what is stopping you from finishing it.”
He looks up as if seeing me for the first time since we left the apartment. It wasn’t what he expected to hear. I stay still in my seat, waiting.
Erik drinks his beer. He gulps it down in one go like a true Viking. I laugh.
“Okay, let’s do this.” I lift my glass and drink up too. It goes to my brain way too fast. I giggle, feeling dizzy. “Are we ready now?” I look at him, grinning.
He nods, surrendering a smile in return. That makes a surge of heat spread through my chest, comforting and anxiety-inducing at the same time.
“My project was an app. A mix between a game and a...” He stops himself. I lean forward, expectant. Erik clears his throat and says in a low volume, hesitant, “A dating app.”
I raise my eyebrows and smile. “So, you’re trying to make something better than Cinder, Tinder, and everything similar?”
He nods. “Yeah. I hate those dating apps.”
“Then why were you on Cinder?” I give him a teasing smile.
He glares at me as if I don’t deserve an answer. “What choice do people have nowadays?” I’m opening my mouth to reply, but he says, “It’s what devoted developers do, okay? We look for ways to make something better.”
Erik takes a break to drink and realizes that his glass is empty, so he lifts an arm to call the waiter. “Want one more?”
I shake my head. “No, no, I’m good.” I can’t drink too much tonight. I need to stay in control.
After Erik orders another beer, he resumes. “As I told you, it started as a university project. My classmate and I enjoyed working on it and agreed we would continue with the app after we graduated. I had a couple of temporary part-time jobs that allowed me to keep working on the app for a year or so, then I got employed at Scorpio.”
I nod, giving him my full attention. I try to read his eyes as he tries to read mine, and the result is a staring game with no winner.
“Was your working partner in from start to end?” I break the silence after what could be a second or a minute—I couldn’t tell, lost as I am in his unintentionally sexy stare.
The waiter puts Erik’s beer in front of him, and he starts drinking it immediately, though a little slower this time. The distraction makes us drop the staring game.
“The idea was mine,” he says as if there has been no interruption. “My partner joined the project when I had already begun and realized I needed help. I’m mainly a programmer, and I wanted someone with strong design skills.”
Erik runs his index finger over the nodes in the wooden table, lost in his past.
“I was at Scorpio for three years, and I tried to keep working on the project in my free time, but it was too hard. I didn’t have a life back then. It was all about work.” He sighs, smiling a little. “My partner was working at a tech start-up at the time, and then he quit because he wanted to make games again. While he was unemployed, he put a lot of hours into our project. It was coming together nicely, I got excited, and I just... I thought we could do this full-time, you know?”
Erik looks at me in a self-punishing way, like he expects me to say, Yes, that was a stupid thought.
But I don’t think it was. At all.
“I finally decided to quit my job at Scorpio, and we started the company, Storm Interactive. I mean, I did the whole bureaucracy.” There is a distaste for his former business partner in Erik’s tone, as if the guy didn’t just disappoint him but betrayed him.
“I think you were brave,” I say, because I suspect he needs to hear it.
Erik lets out a self-deprecating chuckle. “I was an idiot,” he corrects me.
We look at each other, my intense gaze piercing through his. I won’t let him hate himself for being a dreamer. I arch an eyebrow. “Because you followed your dream?”
“Life is not a fairy tale, Sol.” Bitterness is back in his tone, but I’m used to his defense mechanisms by now. Erik uses scorn and mockery to distance himself from the things that hurt him. Because I now know what is underneath the surface, I can raise a shield and not let any of that bother me.
“He left you, or what?”
Erik blinks as if me following his story with interest surprises him. He nods slowly, disarmed.
