Bloom

3

"So Alissa," Shane says looking over at me while Ryan and Mari are in their own little conversation. "Tell me about yourself."

He stares at me smiling while awaiting a response. I smile a bit saying "Oh man, trust me there's not much. I'm a very boring person."

He lets out a breathy laugh and shakes his head. "Somehow I don't believe that." Taking a quick drink of his beer and then looks back up towards me waiting my response. I take a quick look up at Ryan who seems to be trying not to make it obvious he is watching our interaction.

I wet my lips with my tongue before answering, " Well, I'm from Oregon, only ever left there for college and now. Ummm I'm 28, I have a degree in the Arts of English and communications. Before I moved here I helped run the towns library." I stop to think and as I stop the waitress walks up with our mass of sushi rolls. She sets all of them on the table in front of us and walks away. We all start to dig in and after a minute Shane looks at me again and says.

"Keep going I want to know more." I'm a little taken back by his straightforward way of going about things. Earlier I thought he had just asked to be polite but it seems like he actually cares. I take a drink of my beer and look around the table to realize everyone is staring at me and waiting for a response.

"Well what else do you want to know?" I ask while making eye contact with Shane.

His smile grows before he says "Everything." I smile for a reason I can't quite place. I guess du to the fact that I feel like not many people want to know me.

" Well I have a younger sister named Lydia but I don't get to see her very often because she moved to Nebraska a couple of years ago with her fiancé. Other than that I don't really know, I don't do much to make my life dinner conversation." I say laughing a bit and feeling a little bit uncomfortable due to the fact that I'm realizing just how much of a stick in the mud I must sound like to Shane right now and that disappointments me.

Ryan finally speaks up saying, " That is not true! She always does this, she thinks she's the biggest bore ever." He rolls his eyes, takes a sip of his beer before continuing, " She is a badass really. Did I ever tell you guys about how when we were in college we were at this bar and they were doing a battle of the bands type of thing and there was this brief period in between bands coming on stage and Alissa drunk out of her mind gets up on stage and just starts doing this crazy guitar riff. We had been friends for a like a year at that point and I didn't even know you played guitar!" He says laughing and pointing the last part towards me. I'm still laughing from the memory of the story, Mari and Shane both laughing extremely hard as well.

"That was a lot of fun! I guess I did use to get crazy when we would go out in college." I say still laughing, " Unfortunately I don't think many people would think it's appropriate for someone my age now to do something like that."

Shane speaks up still laughing a bit, " First of all that's kickass and second I'm 30 and I would love that to happen again so I can witness it!"

I smile towards him and scrunch up my nose a bit before saying " Alright enough about me! Shane how do you know Ryan?" I ask.

" I actually work at Buzzfeed with him, I'm joining Buzzfeed Unsolved after this next episode." Shane says and I look over to Ryan who says something about how excited he is about Shane joining. The boys start to talk about their series and I look over to Mari who has been kinda quite tonight but she is already looking at me. She quickly smiles and taps her phone that is sitting on the table with her pointer finger to signal she wants me to look at mine. I excuse myself from the table to use the restroom so I don't pull my phone out at the table and seem disinterested or rude. On my walk over to the restroom I pull out my phone to look at my texts.