“So does mine. Bet you know where it came from.”
“Kohl’s, definitely.”
They laughed together, and Jonah wondered when had it ever been this easy? “Thanks for sending me a picture of the present, by the way. I needed that heads-up so I can get my happy face on by the time I see my parents.”
“I completely understand. My grandmother got me some sweats. But not cute joggers like everyone wears. I mean sweats, the kind you wear when you’re training for an Olympic weight-lifting championship. You know, thick and utilitarian.”
Jonah pictured her in thick utilitarian sweats. He imagined that she’d pair them with an old, oversized college sweatshirt and fuzzy socks, and tie her hair up in a messy bun on top of her head. He would like to see that. “What do you think happens to our parents when they get older? It’s like they think if you wouldn’t wear it when you were twelve, they must have a shot at it again twenty years later.”
She laughed.
“What’s the best Christmas present you’ve ever received?” he asked curiously.
“Oh wow, I have to think.” She ate a couple of chips as she pondered it. “It’s not very sexy, but the Christmas after I graduated college, my parents paid off my student loans. Now that was a great gift.”
So she’d gone to college. “No kidding,” he agreed. He was still paying his loans. “Where’d you go to school?”
“Rice. You?”
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the University of Texas campus. “UT.”
She took another chip. “What was your best Christmas gift?”
“Truck,” he said instantly. “Truck the dog, I mean. I finished graduate school one December and I guess I’d been talking about wanting a dog. And then, one day, my mom found him wandering the street. He was just a puppy, but he didn’t have a collar and he wasn’t chipped. And the rest, as they say, is history.”
“That is so awesome. It sounds like a Christmas miracle! He looks like an amazing dog.”
Jonah had to laugh. Truck was one hundred and twenty pounds of undisciplined goofball. He loved him. “He is . . . but he’s not well behaved.”
“No?”
“He’s horrible,” Jonah said, and he wasn’t exaggerating. Two weeks ago he’d come home from work and found the pantry door chewed and an empty bag of chips in the living room.
“Here’s a question,” Jonah said. “What do you do for work?”
She tilted her head as if trying to decide what exactly she did. “A better question is, what do I not do? My job is kind of hard to explain. I work for a guy who has a lot of irons in the fire.”
For some reason, that description reinforced Jonah’s idea of the tech world with office space at the Domain. He imagined a Jeff Bezos–type boss.
“For example, he e-mailed me over the holidays to tell me he was thinking of making candles. Like, manufacturing them with his favorite incense scent. Where did that come from? And why? Is there great money to be made in candles?” She shook her head, apparently still flummoxed by it. “Anyway, I’m in management. I help him manage some of his investments.”
Ah. A financial person in the tech industry. Jonah suddenly remembered that text her boss had sent. “Have you found out what you were right about?”
“I have not. But I’ll see him tomorrow and I will get to the bottom of that.”
He felt fondness for her waving through him.
“What do you do?” she asked.
“I’m an aerospace engineer.”
Her eyes widened with surprise. “That’s awesome! You design rocket ships?”
“Not rocket ships, although I would not be opposed. Satellites.”
“No way! Here in Austin?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Neptune Industries.” He didn’t mention that he was on a sabbatical to help out his parents. Frankly, he was enjoying this meeting so much that the last thing he wanted to think about was the Lucky Star.
They ordered another round of beers and talked about Austin. It was growing so fast, she said. She was taking spin classes at SoulCycle in the Domain, but they were expensive, and she’d started running when the weather had cooled. Jonah said he often ran on the Butler Hike and Bike Trail around Lady Bird Lake, and they should go for a run sometime.
She said a new horror movie was coming out soon, and he knew all about it. She said her favorite restaurant was the Knotty Deck & Bar, because she liked the rooftop and the cushy furniture they had in addition to the food. He said he was more of an old-school diner and his favorite restaurant was Matt’s El Rancho.
Harper gasped. “The cheese enchiladas.”
“To die for,” Jonah agreed.
Somewhere during the course of working their way to the bottom of the chip basket, Harper glanced at her watch. “Oof, I’m going to have to go,” she said. “I have a couple of things I need to do before work tomorrow.”
Jonah reluctantly looked at his watch, too. He’d told his parents he would swing by tonight. “Yeah, me too.”
“Hey, want a commemorative photo?” Harper asked, pointing to the photo booth. “Someday you can tell your kids about the time you lost your phone with actual evidence.”
They took photos of themselves holding up their phones, pretending surprise and then despair. They laughed in the photo booth until their eyes teared. They took the thin paper photos and tucked them away.
As they were leaving, she said her one regret was that she did not get to meet Truck. Jonah jumped at the chance. “Would you like to meet him after work sometime? We could take him for a late run down by the lake if you’re up for it.”
“Yes!” she said, her eyes sparkling again. “You have my number, right?”
Jonah laughed. “I do.”
They made arrangements to meet under the Loop 1 Bridge in a couple of days after Jonah checked his weather app and gave the all clear on the forecast.
On his way home, Jonah got a text. You’re even better IRL. Looking forward to making Truck’s acquaintance.
He texted back. You’re better in real life, too. I’m going to give that driver Amal five stars.
You know he didn’t get his five-star rating by accident.
Jonah laughed at the memory of that night in the van. Trust, he responded, and received a line of laughing emojis for it.
In a funny way, Harper was the best Christmas present he’d gotten in a very long time. “Sorry, Truck,” he said aloud, and grinned like a fool all the way across town.