An Evening with Italian Guy

On Wednesday, I got a lovely surprise when Italian Guy sent me a message out of the blue saying, "Hey there. I will be at the club on Friday, hope to see you there xx".  Apparently coming as the guest of the girl I'd met the last time we were out, who I'd really liked, and so he invited me to join them.  Although as much as anything, I think he just saw an excuse to see me and so wanted to take advantage of it.  

I got to the club right around 7, which turned out to be perfect timing, as they had also just arrived.  I got a drink and joined the group, and we all sat around chatting.  I spent quite a bit of time with the girls of the group, although thankfully due to people getting up and moving, I eventually found myself sitting and chatting with Italian Guy.  

It was interesting to talk to him, as I had never realised quite what a worker bee he is.  He apparently started working while he was still a teenager, and actually put off university for a year because he was earning so much money working.  But then at age 19 he decided he actually wanted a degree, and so while continuing to work full-time, he took classes at LSE from 6-9 PM each evening.  After graduating, he moved on to Goldman, got married at 25, had a kid at 27 and another at 29, and was divorced by the time he was 31.  And now that he's only two years older than I am, he's a managing director at GS while I'm still spinning my wheels in middle management.  On the one hand, he grew up early and worked his tail off, and look where it got him:  Divorced with two kids.  On the other hand, I'm in awe of his ability to work hard and get results.  One thing that cannot be denied is that I've been lazy...and I get to go out a lot more than he does.

We also had fun talking about the infamous GS Elevator Twitter Feed, which he said around the office they are desperate to find out who it is.  He thinks half of it is fake, but he says some of the quotes could definitely be real.  All I know is that it's some pretty hilarious stuff.  

We finished the evening with our heads huddled together, just talking and chatting and enjoying each other's company, as we always do.  He'd been going easy on the drinks all evening as he had to go see a specialist in the morning for something to do with his son, and so finally begged off to go home early.  

I stayed on a bit, where the group was unfortunately joined by some deathly dull older men, who didn't quite seem to realise how much they had gate-crashed our group, nor how boring they were being.  And of course, all of the polite Brits in the group couldn't quite seem to figure out how to tell them to get lost.  In the end, we talked about grabbing some food at Automat, but basically just ran away in the end.  As it was, I caught one of the last Tube trains home, making it back around 12:30 AM and calling my brother to chat for an hour.  At least one advantage to coming home late!

And then in the morning, I woke up to a sweet little message from Italian Guy.  "Hey thank you for your lovely company as usual last night. See you soon xx"

My Scottish Lawyer friend had asked me at one point when I was up at the bar what was going on between the two of us.  I explained with a sigh that we are just good friends, and that's it.  But of course, the truth is that we both want to on some level.  It's just that he's divorced with two kids, AND he smokes.  No way do I want to get involved in that mess.

Yet, I really do enjoy his company.  Very glad to see he feels the same.  At least let's see if we can manage to spend some more time together, as it's always such a pleasure...