29
At first, he was dizzy with relief, as if he had stood up too fast. Then the adrenaline of victory hit him. I am going to show her the best damn time ever, he thought, jubilant. I want her to know what I wanted to give her. Everything that I can give her, that no one else can. I’m winning this one.
Then five seconds later, a panicked: Oh, my God. What the hell am I doing?
For all of his cynical, confident New York patina, he was just a Greenleigh boy underneath it all. He had no idea what he was doing.
He'd lived in New York City for eight years. Eight long, tortured years. He'd worked himself into the ground, sometimes sleeping at his desk and using the gym on the fourteenth floor to shower and change into the extra shirt he kept bundled in a drawer. It was always somewhat wrinkled
