You are early. Of course you are early. You are sitting in your car in a parking lot, going over the three stories again, the ones about the time you solved the thing and the time you led the thing, and you are certain that whether they hire you decides everything.
They will hire you, or they won't. I could tell you which, but it isn't the part I remember.
What I remember is the button. The top button of a shirt you only wear to things like this, done up too tight, and the way you keep tugging your collar at the red light. The little breath mint dissolving on your tongue. The steering wheel warm under your hands. You are so nervous you can hear your own heart, and you think that is the worst feeling in the world.
You will want, someday, to feel your heart pound like that again over something as small as a stranger's approval. You won't be able to summon it. The stakes get quieter as they get bigger, and you will miss the loud small ones.
Go in. Shake the hand. Forget the second story halfway through and recover, which is the part they'll actually like.
And when you walk back out to this exact parking lot, whichever way it went, notice that you're hungry, and that it's a decent afternoon, and that you have the whole evening ahead of you and someone to call about it.
That was the good part. Not the offer.
The drive home, wondering.