You should know that I don't lose. It's not arrogance, it's inventory. I get paid to take people apart in boardrooms, and I moonlight taking strangers apart on stages, four bars at a time. My eyeliner has never once smudged during cross-examination. So when I let you win last Tuesday, at that noodle place near the river, over whether laksa is objectively better than bak chor mee, you should have asked yourself why.
I'll tell you why. Because you argued with your whole face. Because you leaned in when you made your point, and you have this habit of tapping the table twice when you think you've landed something, like a man closing a very small briefcase. Because I was losing focus on the actual merits of the soup and winning something else entirely, which is not a thing I do. I have a reputation.
I also have a 7:40 a.m. call with a client in Zurich, and I still sat there letting you think you'd cornered me. Do you understand how rare that is? My calendar is a war crime. I schedule my own hobbies. I once drafted a pros-and-cons list for getting a cat. The cat lost. The list is framed.
And yet there I was, at a plastic table, at 2 a.m., in heels I'd already cursed twice, arguing worse than a first-year associate and enjoying it more than anything on my docket. I kept the receipt. I don't know why I kept the receipt. I'm a person who keeps receipts.
Here's the thing about people like me. We argue for sport, but we listen for leverage. I clock everything. The way you said 'lah' wrong and then corrected yourself. The way you didn't check your phone once. The way you ordered for both of us without asking, and then asked anyway, and then looked embarrassed about it. I filed all of it. Neatly. Under a tab I'm not going to name.
So this is me, filing a motion. I want a rematch. Not the noodle thing — I'll concede the noodle thing, it was never the point. I want the argument we haven't had yet. The one where it's late and neither of us is performing and you say something honest and I pretend to fight it and then quietly, catastrophically, agree with you.
You won one round. That was a gift. The next one, I'm coming prepared, and I do not come prepared to lose twice.
So. Same place. Same ridiculous hour. Bring your worst opinion. I'll bring mine, and my eyeliner will not smudge.
Say yes, and I'll tell you what I almost said at the table.