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“Ah.”
“When do you work next?” Saint asks Jake as we all step away from the building.
“Tuesday. You?”
“Tonight,” he groans, sending his keys on a full rotation around his finger, catching them against his palm. “Off Tuesday. Wednesday?”
“Yep.”
“Cool. See you then.” The other man holds his hand up in a wave. “It was nice to officially meet you, Sophia.”
“You too, Saint,” I reply before stuffing my hands in the pockets of Jake’s sweatshirt. Taking my cues from Jake, I wait until he takes a step toward the front of the building, walking beside him.
Suddenly, I’m unsure how to proceed, so I go with trusty ol’ small talk. “How long have you worked at O’Gallaghers?”
“Just about a year.” As we head west, there’s an oncoming group traveling our way, talking and laughing, paying very little attention to what’s going on around them. Jake smoothly pulls me behind him, holding onto my hand, as we pass the group, staying nearest the buildings. Some shoulders are bumped, but once we’ve made it by, Jake resumes walking beside me, keeping me on the inside and dropping my hand. “I moved into the townhomes after college and was looking for work. Heard good things about the O’Gallagher siblings and how they run things.”
I guess I wasn’t prepared to hear he’d gone to college. “What did you go to school for?”
“English major. I have a degree that I don’t know what to do with.” His chuckle is bordering on self-deprecating.
“Tell me about it,” I grin. “I went to school for business and learned quickly I have zero business—no pun intended—running a business.”
“You’re kind of running a business now though, right?”
“Well, sure, but it’s different.”
“Is it, though? You’re the one making all the decisions. If you need work, you’re the one making those connections. You make financial decisions.”
“I guess it was always drilled in my head that my degree should be used in some big Fortune 500 company, and not some little LLC that I run.”
“By who, you’re parents?”
“A little.” I hold up a hand immediately, “But they’re great parents. They were originally worried that my choice of work was going to put me in severe debt. They’re a different generation. All of this internet work is basically foreign to them.”
“I guess.”
Curious about this particular topic, I ask, “Are your parents upset that you have a degree you don’t use?”
He shakes his head. “Nah. They’re just happy I graduated,” Jake laughs.
“Tell me about your family?”
“Well, I have my mom and dad. He was a mechanic when we were growing up. My mom was a homemaker, and when all of us kids were in school full time, she started to do odd jobs at the schools. I have two younger sisters. Chandler is twenty-two and Hollis is twenty.”
“They certainly got the cool names,” I can’t help but tease.
“What, you don’t like Jake?” he jokes right back.
“No! No, I don’t mean it like that.” My smile is wide as I glance to him. “It’s a good name. You’re definitely a Jake. But yours is so...”
“Normal?”
“Yeah.”
“To be fair, my full name is Jacobi.”
“Ahh. So you have a fun name too, after all.”
