Just steady.
“We lost a developer last month to relocation. We’ve been trying to hire since then. I looked at your public work profile after I left the restaurant.”
Lauren stared.
“My public profile?”
“Yes.”
“You found that?”
“It wasn’t hard.”
She had forgotten it was still up.
An old portfolio site.
A stale résumé page.
Some archived project descriptions.
A few code samples from years ago.
“I don’t understand,” she said.
“You can code.”
“I used to.”
“You still can.”
“I haven’t been in that world.”
“You haven’t forgotten how to think.”
That sentence did something too.
Different from the first.
Sharper.
Like somebody blowing on coals to see if fire was still underneath.
Ethan slipped one hand into his coat pocket.
“If you say no, I leave and this is still gratitude. That part doesn’t change. But I am not offering because I pity you. I’m offering because you did something tonight that told me more about your judgment than most interviews ever tell me.”
