“Haverford. It’s a boring suburb about forty-five minutes from here,” he said with a disinterested shrug.
“At least you get to spend your early twenties in a fun city like Philly. Enjoy being young and spry while you can, you’ll feel old in no time.” She cringed. She sounded like a middle-aged mom.
“How old are you?” he asked with a laugh.
“You aren’t supposed to ask a lady her age.” Especially when the lady was definitely older than the hot guy asking. Dan carried himself with a youthful openness that made it seem like the years had yet to wear down his energy. “I’m twenty-six,” she conceded. “Old and decrepit to you, I’m sure.”
He shot her a quizzical smile. “Why’s that?
“I don’t know. I remember being in my first year, and at twenty-two, anything over twenty-five seemed old and disturbingly adultish. It felt like my midtwenties were centuries away, and it was some big milestone of maturity.” Harper crinkled her nose. “And then you blink, and all your friends from undergrad are getting married or having kids or buying a house. You feel this bizarre mix of desperately old and desperately young, and you aren’t really sure how someone your age acts because you realize that past twenty-five, you aren’t actually an adult—you’re just good at pretending to be one on social media.”
Dan chewed on another bite, watching her. “That’s pretty spot-on.”
“I probably sound dumb and preachy, but I swear you’ll get what I’m saying in a few years,” Harper said, taking another bite.
He paused, eyeing her. “How old do you think I am?”
She chewed, looking at him closely, something she hadn’t allowed herself to do all evening at the risk of spontaneous combustion. The sharp angles of his jaw and cheekbones were a far cry from the softness of a boy’s face, and the gentle lines that bracketed his mouth were a testament to how often he seemed to grin. But his eyes still held a reckless spark. He seemed to show his emotions easily—humor, vulnerability, kindness—all surfaced in an unguarded way that made him youthful and energetic.
“Twenty-one, twenty-two-ish?” she guessed.
His eyebrows shot up, and a smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth.
“I’m twenty-six too. A ‘nontraditional’ as the school likes to call me.” He brushed some crumbs from the table, his smile dimming.
“Really?” Harper said, barely masking her disbelief. Something about assuming he was younger had given her a false sense of confidence, a safety net of “older womanhood” that now felt disastrously immature. Thinking she was drastically older—as drastic as four years can feel in your twenties—allowed her to feel safe, as though any flirtation was a harmless indulgence.
Knowing that he was the same age, going through a similar quarter-life identity crisis, created a different sense of level ground that felt ridiculous and overwhelming.
“What made you start so…”
“So late?” Dan finished with a laugh. “Believe it or not, I was actually all registered and ready to start four years ago—so with your class, I guess—but I backed out at the last minute. Much to the dismay of my family.” Another laugh, with much less humor, escaped him. “It’s weird to be starting now. I feel too old to be undertaking something so huge, but too young to already have every step of my life planned out in this weird linear fashion.”
“Why’d you back out?” Harper asked. The idea was so foreign to her. Having a plan, a clearly defined path, and deviating from it was the most reckless and dangerous thing a person could do. It made her pulse hammer in her chest and wrists just thinking about it.
His demeanor changed, his relaxed, playful posture transforming into a stiff spine leaning back and away, a dullness filling his features.
“I felt pulled toward something different,” he said. “Finance,” he added.
“Finance?” Harper couldn’t hide the distaste that covered the word, her head jerking back. “That sounds incredibly boring.”
“Boring? Numbers are the most interesting thing out there.”
Harper shook her head, crinkling her nose. The idea of numbers and spreadsheets and math being interesting was inconceivable. “You’re deranged. It doesn’t get more boring than finance.”
“More boring than scraping crap off nasty teeth?”
Harper’s head shot back in genuine shock. She loved the satisfying rush of scaling plaque off teeth.