I'm not good at sitting still long enough to notice when something underneath isn't right. You notice the thermal drift in unit 7. That took 3 weeks. She smiled. The real one, not the business smile.
Fair point. The burgers arrived. Both of them ate without performing elegance about it, which Ryan found he appreciated more than he expected to. He'd been on two post Lauren dates co-workers who'd pushed him into it early on and both had been dinners where he'd spent the entire time aware of himself eating performing normaly trying to seem like a man who had his life together. This was different.
This was just eating a burger. Your turn, he said. My turn what? Something about yourself that has nothing to do with Northbridge. She considered him for a second.
I failed my driver's test twice. She said once when I was 16 and once when I was 29 because I let my license lapse and had to redo the full exam. I parallel parked into a fire hydrant the second time. He stared at her. You run a manufacturing company with 32,000 square ft of automated production floor.
Vehicle automation is completely different from manual parking. How? I don't have to park the machines. He laughed. It came out before he could stop it.
Genuine, slightly too loud for the restaurant. The kind of laugh that makes people at nearby tables glance over. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth and got it under control. Victoria was grinning at him. " There it is," she said. "
What? You've been guarding that?" She picked up a fry since the factory floor. You almost laughed twice I saw it and both times you reeled it back. He didn't deny it.
Old habit, he said. Keeping things in, keeping things manageable. She looked at him steadily. Same habit. The table went quiet for a moment, but it wasn't uncomfortable.
It was the kind of quiet that meant something had been said that was true. Tell me about building the company, Ryan said. Not the Forbes version, the real version. Victoria was quiet for a second, like she was deciding how much to give. The real version is that my father had a stroke when I was 29 and handed me a company that was essentially being held together with expired contracts and loyalty from people who should have left years ago.
She paused. My mother wanted me to sell it. My father's business partners, three of them, offered to buy me out at about 40 cents on the dollar. They were very gracious about it, very sympathetic. She said the word with a precision that made clear what she thought of their sympathy.
I had an MBA and two years of investment banking experience and zero manufacturing background. And I stood in my father's office on a Tuesday morning in November and told all three of them no. Why? Because I walked the floor first. Before I gave anyone an answer, I asked my father's floor manager, a man named Jean Cassidy, who'd worked there for 23 years, to show me the operation.
And Jean walked me through everything, every system, every team, every problem for 4 hours. She paused and when we were done, he said something I've never forgotten. He said, "M Hail, this place has problems, but it has people, and problems can be fixed." She picked up her beer. He retired 5 years ago.
I gave him the best send off I knew how to give. Ryan was quiet. What did it cost you? He asked. Not financially, personally.
She didn't answer immediately, which he respected. Two serious relationships, she said finally. Both with men who said they understood that the company came first and then discovered they didn't understand that at all. She paused. Most of my friendships became professional relationships somewhere along the way.
And I let that happen because it was easier than managing the parts of people's expectations I couldn't meet. She turned her beer glass. I got very good at running things and very out of practice at just being in a room with someone until a factory floor at 10 p.m. until a factory floor at 10 p.m. She met his eyes. You didn't treat me like a walking decision. That's rarer than it sounds.
They stayed at Rudy's until 9:40. Not because either of them planned to, but because the conversation kept finding new rooms to move through his years studying industrial systems at Michigan Tech. Her year living in a studio apartment while the company hemorrhaged money, and she ate mostly cereal and gas station coffee. His theory about why motorcycles were philosophically similar to people. Her quiet admission that she still called her father every Sunday, even though he rarely knew who she was anymore.
When the server came by and they were the last table in the section, they finally asked for the check. Ryan picked it up automatically. Victoria reached for it. He held on to it. I chose the restaurant, he said.
She looked at him for the moment. All right. He paid the check. They put their coats on, walked out of Rudy's into the night air. On the sidewalk, they stopped.
There was a moment, the specific moment that exists at the end of something that went better than expected, where the next step is either said or not said, and Ryan felt it land between them. He looked at her. " I'm glad I came," he said. Victoria looked at him steadily. " So am I." And then, because he was a man who had spent most of his adult life choosing the careful thing, I should say something.
Okay, this is I want to be honest with you about the fact that I don't entirely know what I'm doing. I haven't. He stopped, started again. I spent 8 years being married and 7 months being not married, and I've spent most of both of those states not actually saying what I was thinking. So, I'm trying something different.
He held her gaze. I want to do this again. I'm not sure what this is, but I want to do it again. Victoria was quiet for a second. That's the most honest thing anyone has said to me in She didn't finish the thought, just shook her head slightly.