I chuckled. “That I grew up on a ranch, or that I was southern?”
“Don’t all country boys grow up on ranches?”
Laughing, I shook my head. “Not at all.”
She gave me a huge, radiant smile. “Thank you for asking me to come get a drink with you. You have a nice smile and a really wholesome laugh.”
Nobody had ever said either of those things to me before. I didn’t know how to accept the compliments, so I turned them around on her. “You’re not too bad yourself, Gabi St. Clair.”
For the next half hour or so, Gabi and I talked about inconsequential things that were easier to discuss than my upbringing. She seemed more than content to talk about her favorite movies she’d watched recently, and when it was my turn to talk, I found it easier to ask her questions rather than provide answers.
She let me get away with it, too.
Either she knew she’d gotten more out of me than anyone had in years and didn’t want to keep pushing, or she didn’t care to know more.
After settling the bill, I offered to walk her back to the office building and her car in the lot. By that time the sun had gone down. A coolness had settled in the air, but heat still radiated off the asphalt. San Francisco traffic rushed past us. Impatient drivers laid on their horns as taxis cut into lanes and rolled down their windows to yell obscenities at other drivers, while their passengers bowed their heads in embarrassment.
When I’d first moved away from my small town in Texas, I’d found such noises irritating. Now it all sounded like background noise.
Gabi stopped at a small red car. A Toyota. It looked to be about fifteen years old, but she’d taken good care of it. The interior was clean, and the paint was, for the most part, unblemished.
She turned to me and twirled her keys in her hand. “I’m glad we did this tonight. It was a nice change of pace.”
“Thank you for joining me.”
“Thank you for inviting me. Now I can see you as a human, not just my scary overlord.”
I chuckled. “Is that how you see me?”
She unlocked her car door and placed one foot inside, resting her hand on the open door for balance. “It was how I used to see you, but now I’m starting to wonder if that’s who you are at all, or who you want people to think you are.” With that, she got the rest of the way into the car, gave me a warm smile, and closed her door.
I stepped back when she started the engine. She reversed out of her spot and waved goodbye. I watched her go, wondering what the hell her words meant and why they left me feeling like she’d just dropped a ton of bricks on me.