She just shook her head at me in disappointment.
“Why on earth would you make such a decision? You like him, and he likes you. If the date goes well, you bring him back to your place and screw his brains out. This isn’t a marathon you’re running; you don’t need to save your energy for later. This is casual dating, Del. Casual means you have fun and relax.”
“I don’t want him to think I’m easy like that,” I said.
“Oh, because sleeping with him on the second date would mean you’re easy, but the first date didn’t?” she teased. “Come on, just have fun for once in your life. Let things progress. Get to know him and just enjoy yourself. Just because you go on more than one date with the guy doesn’t mean the two of you are going to be walking down the aisle.”
Logically, I knew Mattie was right. I was enjoying getting to know Brandon and wanted to date him casually. The problem was that I only had two speeds when it came to men: I either fell in love with them, or I discarded them after one night. If I planned on dating this guy, it was going to be really hard for me to keep my feelings in check and I knew it.
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
“Yeah, do your damn best and forget about the rest,” she said in a chant as we made our way back to the elevator and to our desks.
When I arrived back at my desk, the computer consultant that had been there the other day to bring me my computer was there again. If Robert had called him earlier this morning, the guy sure did move quickly.
“Your boss says there are some errors in your system?”
“Not really. He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. There are errors in the website coding, not actually with the computer. I’ve gone over the code and just can’t seem to figure out what I’m missing.”
“Oh, I see. If you’d like to log into your administer section, I can take a look. I’ve got several years of coding experience. Sometimes it just takes another set of eyes.”
“Sure, I could use another person scanning through it. Anything at this point,” I said as I logged in and pulled up the internal code I was having trouble with. “I’ll be just across the way talking with my friend for a minute; let me know if you need anything.”
Chapter Ten
Brandon
“I’m sorry, sir, your card has been declined,” the waitress said softly. Josh and I were out to lunch, and I had offered to pick up the tab.
“What?”
“Is there another form of payment you’d like to use?” the waitress asked me.
She was a very nice waitress, but I was dumbfounded as to how on earth my credit card could be declined. It wasn’t like I rode my cards close to the limit and didn’t have availability on them. Something strange was going on, and I needed to get over to my bank and get it figured out.
“Yes, I’ll pay in cash,” I said, afraid of using a different card and having some sort of similar issue.
“That’s weird,” Josh started to say. “Has anything like that ever happened before?”
We were both thinking the same thing, I could tell. My heart raced as I looked at him and shook my head. If some government agency had tagged me in an investigation and frozen my bank accounts, I was going to be pissed. I was an upstanding citizen who followed all the laws. There was no reason for me to get involved in anything against the law. I made millions by following the rules.
Josh and I didn’t talk at all as we left the restaurant. I knew he wanted to say something about the damn trading account. But I would have exploded on him if he had mumbled one single word. My anger was building, and we quickly walked the two blocks down the street from the restaurant to the main branch of my bank.
“Take some deep breaths and don’t lose it in there. Banks kind of freak out when customers get volatile.”
“I’m fine. I just need to find out what the hell is going on with my account. Can you do me a favor and go log into my trading account to see if there’s any notices or anything like that? I just don’t see how this could be related, though; this is a credit card and not attached to any of my bank accounts.”
“Well, if they freeze…” Josh started to say before deciding against continuing on. “I’ll go check your account. Do you want to just meet up with me at my house when you’re done?”
“I’ll call you when I’m done.”
As I walked into the bank, I took a couple deep breaths to try and focus myself because I could tell I was already getting really worked up about what had happened at the restaurant. I hadn’t had a card declined since I was in college. It was ridiculous, and I wanted to find someone at the bank to share how I felt about their customer service and declining a transaction from a client such as myself.
I wasn’t trying to be an asshole, but certainly the bank earned a lot of money from all the business I did through them and they should treat me better than to decline a transaction for no cause.
After going through a teller and a shift manager, I was finally led to the branch manager’s office to discuss what was happening with my account. Up until that point, I had been level headed and calm. There had been no yelling at all, and I was pretty damn proud of myself.
“Mr. Baker, I hear there is some potential fraud going on with one of your accounts that we need to take care of right away,” the man said as he shook my hand. “I’m Jerrod Anderson, the bank manager. Let’s get this straightened out.”