Stuck with You (The STEMinist Novellas, #2)(11)

“What’s your team? Giants? Jets?”

He shakes his head. “It’s not that kind of football.”

I cock my head. “Is it, like, a minor league?”

“No, it’s European football. Soccer, you’d call it. But we don’t need to talk about—”

I nearly do a spit take. “You follow soccer?”

“An intervention-worthy amount, according to my family and friends. But don’t worry, I do have other topics of conversation. Like pastries. Or the practical implementation of smart factory technology. Or . . . that’s about it.”

“No! No, I—” I don’t even know where to start. “I love soccer. Like, love love. I stay up till ridiculous hours to watch games in Europe. My parents always get me fancy jerseys for my birthday because that’s literally my only interest. I went to college on a soccer scholarship.”

He frowns. “So did I.”

“No way.” We stare at each other for a long moment, a million and one words running through the eye contact. Impossible. Amazing. Really? Really, for real? “You used to play?”

“I still play. Tuesday nights and weekends, mostly. There are lots of amateur clubs here.”

“I know! On Wednesdays I go to this gym near my place, and . . . Soccer was my first career choice. The engineering Ph.D. was definitely my plan B. I really, really wanted to go pro.”

“But?”

“I wasn’t quite good enough.”

He nods. “I’d have loved to go pro, too.”

“What stopped you?”

He chuckles. It sounds like a hug. “I wasn’t nearly good enough.”

I laugh. “So, what’s your team and who did they trade?”

“F.C. Copenhagen. And they got rid of—”

“Don’t say Halvorsen.”

He closes his eyes. “Halvorsen.”

I wince. “Yeah, you’re never gonna win another game, not for all the purple underwear in the world. But you weren’t gonna win much with him, anyway. You need a better coach, honestly. No offense.”

“Plenty of offense.” He’s glaring.

“You follow women’s soccer, too?” I ask.

He nods. “Proud OL Reign supporter since 2012.”

“Me, too!” I beam. “So you don’t always have terrible taste.”

“What’s your men’s team?” A cute, charming vertical line has appeared between his brows.

I rest my chin on my hands. “Guess. I’ll give you three tries.”

“Honestly, I can accept any club except for Real Madrid.”

I continue with my chin hands, unperturbed.

“It’s Real Madrid, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

“Outrageous.”

“You’re just jelly because we can afford to buy decent players.”

“Right.” He sighs and hands me one of the menus I never even noticed the waiter dropped off. “I’m going to need food for this conversation. And so will you.”

We spend the rest of the night arguing, and it’s . . . fantastic. The best. I suspect the food is as good as he promised, but I don’t pay very much attention, because Erik has incredibly incorrect opinions on the way Orlando Pride is using Alex Morgan and on the Premier League trajectory of Liverpool, and I must dedicate all my efforts to talking him out of them.

I fail. He stands by his wrong ideas and systematically makes his way through the bread, then an appetizer, then an entrée, like a man who is used to comfortably consuming seven large meals a day. At the end, when our plates are clean and I’m too full to bicker with him over the offside sanctions rules, we both lean back in our chairs and are silent for a moment.

I’m smiling. He’s . . . not smiling, but close, and it makes me smile even more.

I think this might have been the most fun I’ve had in years. Okay, false: I know it is.

“How did it go, by the way?” he asks quietly.

“What?”

“Your pitch.”

“Oh. Good, I think.”

“Thanks to Faye’s croissant?”

I grin. “Undoubtedly. And my lavender underwear.”

He lowers his eyes and clears his throat. “Who’s the client?”

“A cooperative. They’re building a rec center based in New Jersey and are shopping around for consultants. It’s a second location for them, so they bought an old grocery store to turn into a gym of sorts. They’re looking for someone who’ll help them design it.”

“You?”

“And my boss, yes. Though two of her kids have been colicky, so for now mostly me.”

“What did you tell them?”

“I talked them through my plans for energy independence, green building standards, smart water management, minimizing off-gas chemicals . . . that stuff. They were going for a green edge, they said.”

“And what are your plans?”

I hesitate. I really don’t want to bore Erik, and I’ve gotten feedback from . . . literally everyone that when I start talking about engineering stuff, I go on for way too long. But Erik seems more than a little interested, and even though I blabber about raw materials and federal limits and life-cycle assessment for over ten minutes, his attention never seems to waver. He just nods pensively, like he’s filing away the information, and asks lots of clever questions.