He chuckled as he sat down. “Is that your usual first date strategy? Telling people how gigantic they are?”
A soft blush crept over my cheeks. Dammit. I was being so rude. I always got like this when I was meeting new people; so anxious that just about anything would come tumbling out of my mouth.
“Sorry,” I said, dropping my gaze to the table. “This is the first blind date I’ve been on in a while. I’m kinda nervous.”
He held his hands up. “Don’t be sorry. It’s funny. And yeah, I guess I’m pretty tall. Danielle was probably just messing with you by telling you I was short.”
“You mean Dana?” I asked, eyebrows crinkling together in confusion.
“Uh, yes. Sorry, I thought I said that. Anyway…what do you do, Rory? Dana didn’t say all that much about you, other than that you were damn gorgeous. She wasn’t wrong about that, by the way,” he replied with a wink.
My blush intensified, and I averted my gaze from Ben’s, almost unable to believe that such a sexy man actually thought I was gorgeous. Surely a guy like him could get any woman in the world? I wasn’t going to complain, though. Hell no.
I really owed Dana for this.
“I work at a little startup software company,” I replied. “I just do all the admin and secretarial kind of stuff, but I’m also learning how to code whenever there’s spare time.”
“Nice. You mean coding as in that programming sorta stuff?” he replied, sounding genuinely interested.
I nodded. I’d always been interested in software development, and growing up in Northern California had given me ample opportunity to find internships and other positions related to programming, considering how many software startups there were here. I hadn’t gone to college after graduating high school two years ago, because there simply hadn’t been enough money for me to do so, but learning on the job was just as good. My bosses had even told me that it was better this way, because a lot of the programming and computer science stuff they taught at colleges was outdated by the time a student graduated from their degree anyway. That was just how quickly the technological world worked.#p#分页标题#e#
“Yes,” I said. “I know it sounds kinda boring, but I like it.”
Ben arched an eyebrow as if to tell me to stop being so self-deprecating. “It doesn’t sound boring at all. Sounds awesome. I’ve always been jealous of people who understand that kinda stuff. I’m fucking useless with computers.”
I wasn’t used to guys dropping F-bombs on first dates, but then again, I hadn’t even been on a date in over a year now. Maybe this was the new normal.
Oh well, I wasn’t going to be nitpicky. So what if the guy had a dirty mouth? His face and body more than made up for it, and if he talked dirty in one way, I was sure he’d be able to do a good job of talking dirty in other ways…
Good Lord, when had I become such a perv?
I took a small sip of my drink and then smiled. “So what about you?”
“This and that,” he replied. “I’m managing a nightclub at the moment, and I also help out with of my father’s business.”
“Oh? I thought Dana told me you were studying English Literature.”
He excused himself for a second and coughed. “Sorry about that. And…uh, yeah, I was studying for a while, but I got sick of it, I guess.”
Weird. Dana had made it sound like Ben was practically already a famous writer who’d never get sick of studying and talking about literature, and I could have sworn she’d said he was still in the process of completing a Master’s degree. I didn’t know many people who simply ‘got sick’ of studying and dropped out after getting all the way up to a Master’s. Then again, Dana could have been wrong, or I may have misheard her when she told me about him, and besides, it was none of my business what people chose to do with their lives as long as it made them happy.
“Well, managing a club sounds interesting,” I said. “I bet you see a lot of crazy things.”
He grinned and nodded. “Yeah. It has its ups and downs, but it’s a pretty cool gig. Sometimes I even DJ there,” he said. “We actually host a pretty big Christmas party there every year as well, and that’s coming up in a few weeks.”
“Oh, wow. That’s cool.”
“I’ll have to bring you along with me one night,” he said, leaning closer to me. “We can dance, have a few drinks…see what happens.”
His hungry eyes focused right on mine, and I gulped as I felt his hand creeping onto my knee underneath the table. Jeez, he was forward. Then again, I didn’t mind. He was so hot that I probably wouldn’t have minded if he started tearing my clothes off right in the middle of Clancy’s in front of everyone...as long as he took his clothes off too.