Read Online Friends & Fortune Cookies: A Sudden Falls Romance by Elizabeth Bemis - Free Book Online

had a dark-blue ink stain on a pocket. He had unfashionably long sideburns and a crooked grin and looked very uncomfortable in his own skin.
    “Hi. Grace, right?” He held out a hand for me to shake.
    “Yes, and you must be Bob.”
    He nodded. With introductions out of the way, suddenly the conversation dried up. My smile wavered. This right here is one of the reasons I don’t date.
    “I like the name of this place. Like Eureka,” he said.
    I had no idea what he was talking about. I shook my head.
    “The Syfy TV show? Eureka? Café Diem? Vincient? Global Dynamics? Sheriff Carter?” He trailed off as I continued shaking my head.
    “I guess I missed that one.”
    “Oh. You should catch it on Netflix. It’s about a town of genius super-nerds who nearly blow up the world in every episode and the non-genius sheriff who always manages to save the day.”
    “Ahh,” I said for lack of anything better to offer.
    After an interminable moment of uncomfortable silence, Bob asked, “Would you like some coffee or tea or something?”
    “A mocha cappuccino would be great.”
    “Stay and save our seat. I’ll go get it.” He moved toward the counter. Joe caught my eye and grinned. “Geek,” he mouthed from across the room.
    Noting Bob was busy ordering my coffee, I made a face at Joe and turned back toward the fireplace. My date returned a few minutes later, beverage in hand.
    “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    The silence once again drew long.
    “So, Bob, you said you work with computers?” I figured I’d jump into the deep end. Certainly couldn’t be worse than the Eureka conversation.
    “Yes.” He leaned forward enthusiastically. “I’m the network engineer for a consulting company. I design networks for companies that hire us.” He continued on for a few moments, enumerating what he did on a daily basis in great detail. It was all Greek to me, but I tried to stay focused on what he was saying.
    “Do you enjoy it?” I asked when he’d evidently run out of things to say and quiet returned.
    “Unless I’m dealing with idiot users who couldn’t distinguish a universal serial bus port from a hole in the ground.”
    Undoubtedly, I was one of the idiots in question since I had no idea what a universal bus thingy might be but guessed it had nothing to do with mass interstellar transit. The silence became oppressive again.
    “So how old are you?” I tried to remember what he’d written in his introductory email.
    “I’m twenty in hex.”
    Huh?
    He explained. “Hex or Hexidecimal is a counting system used by your computer that is based on sixteen instead of ten.”
    I tried to keep my expression blank. I really did, but I was pretty sure my eyes had glazed over.
    He proceeded to clarify. “When you count normally, you use the numbers one through ten, eleven through twenty, and so on, right?” He didn’t wait for any sort of response from me but continued on. “In Hex, you count zero-zero, zero-one, zero-two, to zero-seven, then zero-A, zero-B, zero-C, to zero-F...” Bob trailed off. “How old are you?” he asked me suddenly.
    “Twenty-five.”
    “That would make you nineteen.”
    Oh. My. God.
    “ Really... ” My brain went so numb that someone could crack me over the head with a baseball bat and I wouldn’t even feel it.
    Surreptitiously, I glanced at my watch. Only thirty-five minutes had passed since I’d arrived so I couldn’t leave yet. But I really, really wanted to.
    The conversation dragged on. Bob didn’t ask any questions of me, and I got tired of having to keep coming up with the subject matter. Inevitably, whatever subject I did introduce was met with a long discourse on a tangent I had little interest in. Finally, I noticed the hour hand on my watch had at long last crawled to the twelfth position.
    He had also been checking his watch with great regularity.
    “I have to go.” He stood somewhat abruptly and to my great relief.
    “It was really nice to meet you,” I