Boomerang (19 page)

Who’s now my co-worker.

Who’s also ironically making it hard for me to get any work done.

Christ. This has to go away.

The only real mistakes are failures to learn,
Coach Williams used to say, and my ass is
learning
. I’m not going to let this girl ruin my plans. I’m not going to let her become an obsession.

Or maybe I am.

Jabbing at my keyboard, I pull up RobbyDTF’s profile. Robby Down to Fuck. Excellent freaking choice, Mia. I shake my head, staring at his fake-tan mug. Zooming in, I notice he has bad teeth. Then I spend the rest of the day thinking of ways I can force him into much-needed orthodontia. Really, I’d be doing the guy a favor.

At six, I stand and sling my messenger bag over my shoulder. “So,” I say to Mia. I’ve denied myself the pleasure of looking at her for hours, but the flipside is that now I feel like I’m starving for the sight of her. I rub a hand over my hair, trying not to stare. “See you tonight at Rock Sugar?”

“Wow,” Mia says. “Time flies.”

I almost roll my eyes. Time did not fly. Today time broke a wing and had to be put down. I’ve just spent four hundred and eighty minutes thinking about Mia, looking at Mia, and actively
not
thinking about and looking at Mia.

She shuts down her tablet and pulls her purse onto her lap. Usually it drives me nuts when girls can’t find crap in their purses, but I’m a fan of this quirk of hers. Free pass to check her out. Which I shouldn’t be doing, but screw it. A man only has so much self-control.

The girl is pure sex appeal, and those boots are
killer
on her. I’m picturing her with
only
those boots on when Mia comes up with her keys and stands.

“Do you need a ride?” she asks, scooting her chair in with her hip.

“Ethan?”

“What? Oh, no thanks. I’m good. Rhett’s waiting for me.”

She nods, and I can’t tell if it’s disappointment I see in her eyes. “What about tonight?”

“Thanks, but I’ve got Jason’s car.”

“Okay . . . How’s it going living with Isis?”

It’s cool that she asked. I want to tell her, but things between us need to stay strictly professional. I drew a line in the sand on Saturday, and I’m not crossing it.

“Great,” I say, using the mother of all non-answers.

“Great,” she says, giving me a taste of my own medicine.

She pulls her purse over her shoulder. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Hold up,” I say. “Should we have an abort signal or something for tonight? If it’s awful, we should be able to communicate that, so we can bail each other out. What do you say?”

What I really want is to be able to step in if she needs it.

Mia shrugs, like she can’t imagine Robby Down to Fuck being anything other than a complete gentleman. “Okay. How about we text the word Baudelaire?”

I shake my head. “Too hard to spell under duress. How about . . . Cookie?”

She smiles—a real smile—which guts me. I can’t fuckin’ win. She can be cold, or warm, or anything between and it doesn’t matter. I’m screwed.

“Cookie it is,” she says. “See you at eight.”

“Okay,” I hear myself say, but it’s not.

Nothing about this scenario is okay with me.

I’m the first one to arrive at the restaurant, which is a bad call. Technically, Rock Sugar isn’t Chinese food, it’s Asian fusion, but my body can’t tell the difference. The smell takes me back to that night two months ago with Alison, and a queasy feeling settles in my gut.

I grab a booth and take a moment to give myself a little pep talk about recommitting to the single lifestyle, which was the plan pre-Mia, and still
is
the damn plan. Land the job. Pay off some student loans. Apply to law school. All that stuff.

I open the menu and stare at it, wondering if I’m going to hurl before the food even gets here.

I feel Mia’s arrival before I see her. I look up and sure enough, there she is, following the hostess through the restaurant. She’s wearing a dress—red, I’m almost sure—that makes the black one from earlier look tame by comparison. Her curls are smoothed into long waves and she looks completely different but still the same—still unbelievably hot.

I watch as the hostess brings her to a table only a few feet away from my booth and says. “How’s this?”

Mia does a double take when she sees me. “Oh . . . Um, this is fine.”

Then she sits so that I have a perfect side view of her perfect body.

Awesome. Looks like I’ll be spraining my peripheral vision tonight.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the time. Five minutes until our dates get here. Opening the menu again, I stare at lists of food, not really seeing anything but letters, until Mia crosses her legs. Then my eyes pull over like they’re attached by a string.

She looks goddamn amazing. Couldn’t she have worn sweatpants? A trench coat, maybe?

She catches me looking, so I clear my throat.

“Ready for the Robster?”

“Ready. You?”

“Yep.”

We fall quiet but keep looking at each other. I wish it were awkward, but it’s not. Looking into her eyes just feels right.

Mia looks away first, her attention shifting to the front of the restaurant, where a girl with a turquoise gift bag in her hands is speaking to the hostess. I recognize my date, Raylene. Walking up right behind her is RobbyDTF in the flesh, scanning the restaurant with the hungry look of a great white shark.

I get up from the booth, raising a hand so my date sees me.

“Ethan Vance?” she squeaks as she walks up. She does a mini-clap thing, then looks me up and down with such crazy excitement on her face that I want to make a break for it right then. “I’m Raylene Powers. My gawd! Aren’t you gorgeous? How much fun are we going to have? Isn’t this night already the best?”

I have no idea which question to answer, and I’m too busy focusing on the full-body hug Robby is giving Mia. He’s practically lifting her off the ground.

“Nice to meet you, Raylene.” I shake her hand, trying to ignore the way her inch-long fake nails dig into my skin. Then I wait for her to sit down before I take the opposite seat.

Raylene reaches for her dinner napkin. Her hand freezes, hovering there for a second, her fingertips trembling slightly. “Do you want me to sit next to you?” she asks. “I just sat here because it seems customary, but I can move if you want, so we’re closer? What do you think? Too much or okay?”

Holy
shit
.

Holy. SHIT.

“What—no,” I stammer. “I think we’re good like this.”

Raylene’s shoulders sag, and I see my night going up in flames, with my career roasting over them, all because I couldn’t survive a single date. Words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Whatever makes you comfortable, Raylene. If you want to sit next to me, by all means. Please do.”

“Great!” She scoots to my side. “That’s
so
nice of you. Charming, actually. People say that chivalry is dead, but I don’t know what they’re talking about.” As she speaks, she pulls over her place setting and straightens everything in front of her with total precision, like she sees only right angles. Then she straightens my fork and knife. Wine glass. Water glass.

“Perfect!” she says, when there’s nothing left. “We are ready to go! Isn’t this great? I’m already having so much fun. Aren’t you?”

Suddenly, I’m having a hard time processing everything. Raylene claimed to be twenty-four in her profile, but I’m thinking she’s ten years past that at least. The other thing is the way I can see white all around her dilated pupils, like she just saw a ghost. And won a new car. Then there’s the way Robby is talking to Mia’s rack, like her eyes are at chest level. It’s really too fucking much to handle.

A bead of sweat runs down my ribs. I draw a deep, deep breath—then blow it back out as I see a steaming plate of kung pao noodles go by.

Too late. My stomach twists.

“Ethan?” Raylene says.

“Yeah?” I’m boxed in. The only way I get out of this booth is by climbing over it, and I’m actually considering it. There is a part of me that’s dying right now. Dying and screaming
Cookie! Baudelaire!

Raylene turns a little, hiding a smile behind her shoulder in a gesture that I think is supposed to be coy. “I brought you a little something. Don’t worry, it’s nothing extravagant. I wouldn’t do something that forward or
slutty.
That’s totally not my style.” Raylene’s eyes go even wider and drop to my pants before coming back up. “I made triple-quadruple sure this was okay with the salesman at the store. He said this was the
perfect
thing for a first date. Not too much. Just right.” She hands me the gift bag, which says Tiffany’s on the side. “So, here. Open it!”

“Wow, Raylene. This is really nice of you, but I can’t—”

“Yes, you can! Open it!”

“Excuse me, waiter?” I say, catching a busboy walking by with a tray of empty dishes. “Drink, please? Double whiskey, straight up. Raylene, do you want anything?”

“You
drink
?” She makes a face like I just told her I’m a pedophile. I must look terrified because she hurries to say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. We all have vices, right? Nobody’s perfect. Open, open!”

I reach into the bag and pull out wads of tissue paper, half expecting to find a horse head or maybe a boiled pet rabbit, but it’s just a small box. I take it out and open it, and inside I find silver cuff links, similar to what Adam wears.

I’m feeling a little dizzy at this point, but I can handle this. I have to.

“Raylene . . . These are great, but I can’t accept them.”

“But you have to! I can’t return them.” She takes them from me and holds them close to the candle. “They’re engraved, see? EJV. Ethan James Vance. That’s you! Aren’t they the best? Here, let me put them on you.”

I can’t find a single thing to say, so I sit there, watching her long, shaking fingernails clip the cuffs onto my shirt.

“They look
soooo
good on you,” she says once they’re on. “My gawd, you are so handsome. I was so worried, signing up for a dating site, but you are such a catch. Gawd, I bet you’re good in bed. Do you love them?”

“Um . . .” Still nothing. No words. My mouth is starting to fill with warm saliva. I feel like those animals that chew off a limb to free themselves from a trap. I would give my right hand to not be here.

“You can kiss me now if you want to,” Raylene says. “I’m just saying it would be fine with me, as a way of showing your gratitude. I wouldn’t think it was too forward.”

Her hand comes down to my thigh, moving higher, and my dick literally retreats.

Right at that moment, Mia looks over to our table for the first time.

Chapter 25

Mia

Q: What’s your idea of a perfect date?

M
y brain attempts to absorb the picture in front of me. Ethan and his date sit side-by-side in the booth, about as close to each other as paint to a wall. And on the table in front of them is a box from Tiffany’s.

I can’t quite put it together.

Did that ginger giant
propose
to Ethan?

Taking a long and much-needed sip of my White Russian, I lean forward for a better view. Because judging from the location of her hands, she’s not trying to put the ring on his
finger
.

“Oh, girl, look at you,” says my date, eyeing my breasts with all the bug-eyed subtlety of a cartoon wolf.

I straighten sharply and exhale away my urge to stab him in his Bettie Page tie with my fork. One thing he’s got going for him: he’s not afraid to make a statement.

And that statement is: I am gross.

Robby leans back and does this weird chest-massaging thing he’s done about sixteen times in the last half hour. Like,
look at my shiny shirt, girl. Let it hypnoooootize you.