I don’t remember what exactly we had been talking about when Alyssa looked at me and said “You’re destined for greatness.”

“Yeah, okay, JOSH.” Kind of sad that the best response to that was to point to another person with similar hopes about me.

“You have too much going on in you to not be meant to do something.” The emotion in her eyes was genuine.

I brought up a story from the night before. “You should’ve heard what Josh said when I mentioned trying for that job. He goes on, ‘When they ask you to weld aluminum to titanium and then stainless steel and loop it around again, you smile at them and say “I got this. I did that last week.” Because you can. You tell them that you’re the best damn welding engineer in the city. In the state. Because you KNOW you. You know your learning curve, you’re smarter than 99% of people out there. You got this. You just gotta know it.’ I just looked at him, a little stunned(only slightly thinking about the metallurgical sins he mentioned) and said ‘You really believe that.’ He gave me his you’re-the-smartest-idiot-I-know grin and said. ‘I do. ‘”

“Yeah, he’s right. There’s no reason that you can’t be the best in the state.”

“There’s a lot of people out there that are smarter than me.”

“Josh and I both see something in you- and we’re negative people. For you, we’re hopeful cynics.”

I cocked my head and nuzzled in with “I collect the delusional.”

“We’re not delusional. We just see the potential in you. And how brilliant it must be, if the negative people see it in you.”

I kissed her, she wrapped her hands behind my neck and told me to leave.

“I’m getting mixed messages…”

She smiled, kissed me, and then let go of my neck.

“Go home. Write me something.”