“Yeah…” I put down my wine and took another bite of my spaghetti. “This is really good.”
Crap, I already said that—I’m spinning in circles here.
I felt like the date was going in every direction except for the right one. I soured the mood by bringing up his family’s company, which was the one topic I thought would be safe. I had no idea how to get things back on track. I filled the holes in the conversation by talking about school—projects I had worked on—basically trying to avoid anything that could take a serious turn. Damien talked about Alcott Inc. and his job there as the manager of the Distribution Marketing department. There were plenty of things I wanted to ask him, but I was scared to bring up something else that could possibly steer the conversation in the wrong direction.
The strangest thing was that although the date felt like it was turning into a mild disaster, the flutter in my stomach simply didn’t go away—the attraction seemed to be deeply rooted inside me, and the fact that he was a complicated man didn’t unravel it. If anything, it made him more interesting—there was something in his eyes that called out to me—like a voice that he didn’t know how to use. I sensed that I had only begun to scrape the surface of what was behind that stare, and it convinced me to keep trying—to see if there was something deeper than just attraction that drew me to him in the first place.
“Can I ask you something silly?” I reached for my wine and took a sip.
“Of course.” He looked at me and nodded.
“Your last name…” I raised my eyebrows. “Sinn?”
I’m sure he’s been asked this before, but it seems safe—please let it be safer than asking about his company or his family…
“Ah.” A hint on a smile formed on the edge of his lips, and he chuckled.
Laughter—thank goodness…
“It’s rather unusual…” I put my wine glass down beside me.
“Yes.” He nodded. “My mother did one of those genealogy things when I was younger—apparently it originates from the Shinn tribe that settled somewhere near England. Over the years, it forked in multiple directions with different variations on the name—Sheen is the most common, but Sinn was one of them.”
“A little less dastardly than I imagined.” I looked down and smiled.
“I heard it all growing up, trust me.” He shook his head back and forth, but the smile didn’t leave his face—I took that as a good sign.
The rest of our conversation, while we ate, was a lot lighter. His demeanor shifted considerably, and I didn’t feel like I was walking on eggshells like I did after I asked about his family’s company. He even opened up some about the falling out with his grandfather and told me that it was because his father was named as the next CEO of Sinn Technology. I shared in the shock over the decision when he told me that his father had been spent time in prison for Securities Fraud—making him the CEO of the company seemed like a rather bizarre move. Not being close to our fathers was one thing we had in common. I didn’t hate mine, but I barely knew him—I got a birthday card every year if I was lucky, and I hadn’t seen him since I was eight or nine years old.
“Do you want dessert?” Damien motioned to the menu.
“Not after all of that pasta.” I shook my head back and forth. “I feel like I need to go run a marathon to burn off the calories…”
“I don’t know of any marathons that start this late, but we could always go take a walk in the park.” Damien drained his glass and put it down.
“Sure, that sounds good.” I smiled and nodded.
I’m really glad I didn’t decide to wear heels…
The park wasn’t far from Moretti’s, so we decided to walk there instead of drive. The date no longer felt like a disaster, despite stumbling into a conversation that wasn’t pleasant for Damien in the beginning. He really did seem like a decent guy. The fact that he walked away from his family’s company because he didn’t want to work for his
father was admirable. He basically sacrificed his birthright for his own integrity. I didn’t know how I would have reacted if I was in that situation. I wanted to believe I could have walked away from everything if it was the right thing to do, but it would have been a difficult decision.
I was still drawn to Damien—and everything that I learned about him made that attraction grow. I was glad that he suggested a walk because I wasn’t ready for the date to end. I didn’t know if he felt the same butterflies or if it was just another date for him—with some girl that couldn’t stop staring at him in a bar. Romance was a new arena for me, and it wasn’t one that I ever thought I would find myself in—especially after seeing how things worked out for my mother and dealing with the normal angst of being ignored by the guys I liked in high school. My attraction towards Damien—and the fact that it appeared to be mutual—was unexpected, but exciting. It was a natural sense of exhilaration.
“I haven’t been here in years…” Damien looked around the park once we arrived. “They’ve expanded it a lot.”
“My grandparents used to bring me here when I was a kid.” I looked towards the playground area. “They had to practically drag me off the merry-go-round every time.”
“Ah—in my day, the whole idea was to spin it fast enough to knock someone off.” He chuckled under his breath.
“Yeah, we did that too.” I laughed and nodded. “Thankfully, an adult usually intervened before we hurt ourselves.”
“Do you want to give it a whirl?” He motioned to the merry-go-round. “No pun intended…”
“Sure, why not.” I smiled and started walking that way.
I had a lot of fond memories from that playground, but most of them were because I got to spend time with my grandparents. I was a lot closer with them than my mother—they were the ones that treated me like a kid instead of wanting me to grow up way too fast. I spent most of my weekends at their house before I was old enough to stay home by myself—and sometimes I would end up staying there for a few extra days if my mother was out of town or otherwise distracted. I even lived with them for a couple of years when my mother was involved with a guy that had no interest in having a kid around—I wouldn’t have been terribly upset if that relationship was the one that didn’t go up in flames.