The Knocked Up Plan(32)

“You’d have to try pretty hard to sound like a gigantic douche with me. Trust me—you’ve no idea the level of douchery I’ve heard in my job.”

He smiles faintly. “Here’s the deal. I don’t know how to tell if a woman is into me for my huge dick or my huge wallet.”

I nod. “Ah, the dilemma of the twenty-seven-year-old tech millionaire.”

He shrugs. “Told you. It sounds douchey. Except the dick part. That’s just true.”

I laugh as we stop at the door. “I don’t want to talk about your dick. But the rest is fair game, and I get it. You want to know if a woman likes you for you and not because your company is the hottest shit around.”

“Yeah,” he says, vulnerability etched in his green eyes. “It’s not like I have a problem meeting ladies or scoring dates. But once I sit down with a woman and she finds out what I do, her interest shoots up exponentially. And I don’t know if it’s me or my money. Dylan has the same issue, so he’s going to use a matchmaker. But that’s not my bag.”

“You’ve got a date tonight, you said?”

He nods.

I clap his shoulder. “You’re good at assessing risk and opportunity in business, right?”

He nods, giving me a duh look. He didn’t get to where he is now without being fucking awesome at it. “I rock at that.”

“Think of her like some new tech app or algorithm.”

He blinks, confused. “A woman is like an algorithm?”

I nod. “I honestly have no idea what an algorithm truly is. No one does except tech geniuses like you. The rest of us use algorithm as this catch-all term to refer to something behind-the-scenes that makes the Internet do its magic.” I pretend to type numbers into a keypad as I make beeping sounds. “The point is,” I say, rapping my knuckles on his forehead, “use that portion of your head. Try to analyze her interest in you like it’s a business problem someone brought to you. If one of your engineers came to you and said, ‘Boss, does this algorithm make my app run faster?’ you could tell, right?”

“Of course.”

“Tonight, when the woman says, ‘That’s so interesting that you graduated summa cum laude from Yale,’ or ‘So you say you live in a brownstone in the Village?’ as she bats her eyes, ask yourself if those questions make the algorithm work better, or if they tell you a Trojan horse virus is trying to fry the whole fucking system.”

Flynn laughs. “Now you’re talking my language.”

“And if all else fails, just take it slow.”

“Because if she wants my money then she also wants to ride my ride?” he asks, pretending to grab his crotch, as he does a dirty grind.

I shake my head. “No. What I’m saying is if you take it slow, then you can make sure she likes you for you. I know that might sound contrary to every piece of advice given to men these days. But for you, since you want to make sure the woman wants your heart,” I say, tapping his chest, “you take it nice and easy.”

“Nice and easy,” he repeats, as if he’s hearing the words for the first time. “I can do that. Riding my ride can wait.”

“Exactly. Romance her. Get to know her. Let her get to know you. Think of it more like a courtship.” Funny, Cal would be proud of me, since I gave advice that’s love-related. And I actually enjoyed it, too. I didn’t feel quite the same bitter aftertaste I experienced at the session with the Tinder-loving dickheads a few weeks ago. More than that, the advice feels spot-on for my friend.

“What about you?” Flynn asks, raising his chin. “You taking it slow tonight?”

I scoff. “Not in the motherfucking least. But my situation is completely different.”

“Because you’re not looking to settle down?”

I tap my nose. “Bingo.”

It’s close enough to the truth, I reason, as I head home to shower before I see Nicole. I’ve got to smell nice so she’ll want to ride this ride tonight, even if I’m a sure thing.





Seventeen





Nicole

Ryder grabs his hair. He’s so worked up I’m surprised he doesn’t yank it out.

“Are you crazy? That was totally a foul!” he barks into the sea of screaming fans as he reprimands the refs. Along with nearly twenty thousand others doing the same at this preseason game.

Ryder is one of those obsessive sports guys who get riled up, and I can completely relate.

“Are you kidding me?” I shout down to the court. “That was so foul it should be in the garbage.”

He snaps his gaze to me and raises his eyebrows approvingly. “Excellent trash talk. I had no idea you had it in you.”

I suppose that’s the point of dating—to learn these things. Or, in our case, let’s call it practical dating. He parks himself in his seat, and I plop down next to him as the game resumes with an ear-splitting whistle.

“That was highway robbery,” he says over the stomping of feet in the stands as the Knicks run up the court.

“It was a bald-faced crime.”

“Theft, I tell you.” He holds up a hand and we high-five. “By the way, when you said something on my list, I thought you meant the list of dates for the dating guide. But this is way better.”