by Sarah Monzon
“The right guy can make you feel like a princess,” Molly had said. Well, sure. When you lived in a fairy tale where you’re engaged to a guy who’d given you a rainbow unicorn, you could have an outlook like that. My track record consisted of trolls that made me feel like dirt and should live under bridges.
I rolled my eyes but held my tongue. I was on this date under false pretenses anyway. If David Brown wanted to hit on our server, why should I care? Wasn’t like I was here for anything other than the money.
I stilled at that thought and let the faint laughter from Jen pass over me. I could feel a Grinch-grin curling the sides of my lips in evil delight. My friends were pimping me out—not really, I knew that—and I wasn’t going to let them off the hook. At least, not without a little more cash thrown in for the Nature Conservancy
What?! Saving the planet could get expensive, and a hairstylist didn’t exactly rake in the money.
My “date” flirted a bit more, and I stared out the window to give them a small measure of privacy.
“Are y’all ready to order then?”
The question pulled me back around. David looked at me and waited. I wasn’t really hungry and hadn’t looked at the menu to see if they had any vegan options. “I’ll have a garden salad.” I handed the still-closed menu to Jen.
“And I’ll have a hamburger cooked medium.” He glanced at me again. “And extra fries for the table.”
Let it go, Nicole. Let him squander his money if he wanted to. But the wasted money wasn’t what bothered me. It was the uneaten food. Restaurants threw out hundreds of pounds of perfectly good food a day while people literally starved down the street.
I smiled sweetly. “That’s okay. I don’t want any fries.”
David frowned and his eyes flicked down. If he had x-ray vision, he’d be looking though the table to my size sixteen jean-clad hips.
His gaze returned to mine. “You might think you don’t want fries now, but when mine come out, you’ll change your mind.” He looked back to our server with a placating smile. “Extra fries,” he said as he handed her his menu.
I beamed brighter at Jen, channeling the rising heat from my core into rays of clipped civility. “Just the salad. No fries for me. Thank you.”
Her sculpted eyebrows pulled down as she shot her gaze between David and me, wondering which of us she should listen to. I held her gaze a second longer, and she must have seen something in my eyes, because she scurried away with a squeak.
“I don’t know what the big deal is. It’s just French fries. If you don’t want them then you don’t have to eat them.”
I breathed in through my nose and gripped the edge of the table, my knuckles turning white.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Nikki.” How many times had I heard those words come out of Greg’s mouth?
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s only a little fever.” Sierra had been six-months-old, barely breathing, and burning up.
“Don’t be so dramatic. It’s only a joke.” One at which no one laughed, only cried or seethed on the inside.
“Don’t be so dramatic. I just had to work late.” And have an eight-month affair before running off with Debra from human resources.
I pushed my hair back from my shoulders and rolled my lips. This was one of those times I needed to pick my battles. David Brown and our hopefully-no-longer-than-half-an-hour acquaintance wasn’t worth a spike in blood pressure.
“Your profile says you enjoy rock climbing?” Maybe I could get him to talk about himself then tune him out until the check came.
He nodded. “Yeah. It’s a great workout, you know.” His eyes traveled south again, and he leaned a bit to the side.
Really? Was he really trying to catch a glimpse of my lower half under the table?
“You should check it out sometime.” He blinked, seeming to reconsider. “Although, I’m not sure they have…” His voice trailed off.
I knew exactly what he’d left dangling. He wasn’t sure they’d have a harness that would fit my thighs and hips.
I tilted my head and poured innocence into my voice. “Not sure they have what?”
“Well, you know.” He waved his hand in the direction of my lower half.
“No, I don’t know. Educate me.”
He looked away and shifted uncomfortably in his seat.
“Okay then, let me educate you.”
His head whipped back around.
“In the future, if your date doesn’t have the fictional body of a Barbie dream girl, don’t stare in horror and take surreptitious glances at what you consider problem areas.” My fingers hooked in air quotes. “Don’t flirt with another woman when you’re supposed to be out with a lady. And for goodness’ sake”—I scooted back from the table—“don’t assume that if a woman isn’t your ideal weight she’s going to steal your French fries!”
A smattering of applause erupted around us, and I realized my voice had risen with each word until I had practically yelled the last part.
Embarrassed, David ducked his head. “You know what? I don’t think this is going to work.”
I wanted to throw one of Betsy’s sarcastic retorts—no kidding, Sherlock!—his way, but refrained.
“I’m just going to go.” He was halfway to the door before he’d finished speaking.
My nose scrunched. Great. Now I was left with the check and the dead carcass of a murdered cow. Perhaps I could get Jen to box up the burger and find someone on my way home who’d benefit from a free meal.
But the worst part was that the Nature Conservancy would be out a two hundred dollar donation. Maybe if I told the girls about the body shaming I’d had to endure, they’d still write the checks.
Movement out of the corner of my eye brought my head up in time to see a man lower himself into the newly vacated seat across from me.
Over-long maple syrup-colored hair flopped across a stately brow. Ginger eyes dancing with mirth stared back at me, a grin full of hidden secrets pulling at the corners of his cheeks.
Well, ding dong dilly. Wasn’t this my luck. Drew Bauer with his cocky smirk that probably left all the female personnel at the hospital swooning but irritated me like a splinter left to fester.
“Quite a show you put on there.”
I huffed.
“Although, I’m surprised you gave him so many strikes before kicking him out of the batter’s box. You didn’t give me quite so much rope to hang myself with.” He leaned his forearms on the table, invading my space uninvited.
His presence was like kerosene on my temper, igniting the fire within me to four-alarm proportions. I leaned right back, staring into his ginger orbs, rising to the unspoken challenge.
Everything about Drew Bauer annoyed me. He was a dripping faucet, nails on a chalkboard, litter tossed in the streets kind of man all rolled up into one carefree, obnoxious package. I’d been accused of caring too much about too many things, and if that were true then Drew was the anti-me. All nonchalant casualness. Complacent disinterest and apathetic indifference.
A small part of me whispered that couldn’t be completely true, since he was a doctor, and doctors had to care about their patients. But then I’d remember his comments about how we needed more oil pipelines and less restriction on pollution from big companies, and my stance on him being a horrible human being would solidify.
“You know”—he continued to smirk at me—“I was five seconds away from laying into that guy myself.”
“I don’t need you to come to my rescue.”
“Of course not. You’re strong enough to fight your own battles. I’d never mistake you for a damsel in distress.”
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“No, I wasn’t going to say anything on your behalf.”
“Why then?”
A group of people at an adjoining table burst out laughing. Drew paused for their gaiety to quiet.
“For the male gender, naturally. That jerk was making us all look bad.”
My turn to bar
k out laughter. “A little late to redeem my estimation of the males of our species.”
His grin hiked. “We aren’t all terrible.”
I made a show of considering. “You’re right. Ben is a sweetheart.” Ben was Drew’s colleague and best friend and the fiancé of one of my best friends. Molly and Ben were the reason I put up with Drew. They were also the reason I had to put up with Drew.
I grabbed my purse and stood. “As lovely as this evening has been, I’m going to go home.”
His hand encircled my wrist to stop my departure. “Not so fast.”
I glared at his fingers. “Unhand me.”
Instead of obeying, he had the audacity to trail his thumb along the tendon of my inner wrist.
I jerked my arm away.
“I don’t think you really want to go,” he said smoothly.
“You presume to know what I want?” I challenged.
His eyes rose to meet mine, a flash of victory making them shine bright. “You want to earn the two hundred dollars your friends promised.”
My lips pressed together.
“I believe the stipulations were dinner consumed, three topics of conversation, and you let him walk you to your car.”
I folded my arms across my chest. “As everyone witnessed, David Brown walked out. My agreement with the girls can no longer be fulfilled.”
“Can’t it? They just said you had to go on the date. They didn’t say with whom.”
Jen took tentative steps toward the table, a tray with two dinner plates in her hand. Drew waved her over.
I speared Drew with a look. “I’m not going on a date with you.”
“Of course not.” He said it like the idea was preposterous. “But I’m pretty sure you can eat a meal with me to get your beloved donation.”
Jen practically tossed the plates on the table before retreating. Poor girl. I’d need to leave her a hefty tip for all the chaos she’d endured. I touched her arm before she scurried all the way back to the kitchen and asked for the check.
“My friends will see reason,” I pointed out to Drew.
He picked up the knife sitting at an angle along the edge of the plate and cut David’s burger in half. “Will they?”
Something in his tone caused me to pause. “Are you…blackmailing me?” I gaped at him, gathering my thoughts before I continued. “If I don’t sit down and eat with you, then you’ll somehow sabotage this donation? Do you hate the planet that much?”
He picked up the burger and took a bite, making appreciative noises in the back of his throat. He held the burger up. “This is really good. You want a bite?”
I sat back down in my chair with a thud. “Did you know that seventy percent of all agricultural land is used to raise farm animals? A lot of that is for grazing, which could be used to grow crops for human consumption. Livestock farming also leads to deforestation in key places like the Amazon and is a major component of the loss of biodiversity.”
He studied the hamburger in his hand. “So you’re saying my dinner is at the epicenter of world hunger and basically the end of the natural world as we know it?” He stared right into my eyes as he took a huge bite. “What a delicious way to go,” he said around a mouthful of food.
“You’re a horrible person.” I stabbed at a piece of romaine lettuce with my fork.
“Awwww. I’m sure you say that to all the guys.”
A cherry tomato died at the end of my fork tines. “Why are you here?”
He wiped his mouth and lifted a fry. “I thought it was pretty obvious.” He popped the fried potato wedge in his mouth. “I’m eating dinner.”
A cucumber succumbed to my silverware attack. “No. Why are you here?”
He looked right at me and repeated slowly, “I thought it was pretty obvious.”
Obvious to whom? Needing to reduce the human carbon footprint was obvious. Social reforms were obvious. Why a man I couldn’t stand and who had made his mocking regard of me evident chose to not only eat with me but blackmail me to do so was about as clear as a mud puddle.
“How’s Sierra?”
His jump in topic and the casual way he brought my daughter into conversation left me reeling. “Pardon?”
His brow quirked. “Your daughter? Eight years old, about this high”—he motioned with his hand—“and too smart for her own good.”
“I know who my daughter is.”
He shrugged. “You seemed confused.”
My molars ground together. “She’s fine.”
“Still playing soccer?”
I pushed down the queasiness in my gut. Sierra didn’t get her athletic prowess from me. And as much as I encouraged her to put her energy into debate club and her chess team, she’d still managed to talk me into signing her up for team sports. Stupid debate club coming back to bite me on the behind.
It took all my will to remove the anxious tension I felt when I pictured my daughter padded up and on the field. “No. She decided she wanted to try football.”
“Flag?”
“Tackle.”
Drew blanched. “But the league here is co-ed with a high majority of players being boys.” He said it as if I wasn’t aware of the ramifications.
I bristled at his tone. “And I’m not raising a wilting daisy.”
He studied me, thoughts skimming across his face, never settling long enough for me to get a read. “What made you so…”
“Dramatic?” The word punched out my lungs.
He shook his head slowly, almost as if my word choice saddened him. “I was going to say passionate.”
Passionate sounded…nice? But that couldn’t be right. In the months I’d been acquainted with Drew, he’d never said a nice thing to me. No, his M.O. was to see how many of my buttons he could push. He got some sick satisfaction in working me up into a tizzy. I told myself repeatedly not to rise to his bait, but there were a few (okay, a lot) of issues I refused to stay silent on. Which meant passionate to me—me caring enough about things to fight for them—but probably meant something different to him. A wild, unbalanced harridan with too much zeal and not enough self-control.
“I only seem passionate because you look at the world through a lens of apathy.”
His jaw clenched then released. A low chuckle rumbled through his chest and he stood. “Come on. We’ve eaten and discussed three topics. Let me walk you to your car so you can collect your money.”
He threw a hundred dollar bill on the table while I stood. If he thought I’d let him pay and somehow be indebted to him, he had another thing coming. I opened my purse, but a hand closed around the opening.
“Don’t.” All playfulness vanished from his eyes, and they seemed to darken somehow. “I can’t make that guy take back the lies he said to you—and they were lies, Nicole—but I can not allow him to heap insult on top of injury by taking care of the check.”
Where had the immature version of Drew gone? Who was this man in his place? Shocked from an argument, I nodded in agreement. He placed his hand on the small of my back, the pressure reigniting my brainwaves enough to have the mental acumen to move away from his touch.
I couldn’t see his grin but felt it thickening between us.
“Is this you?” He nodded to my pale-blue electric car.
I pressed the button on my key fob to unlock the doors.
“For our next date, I’ll pick you up in my SUV. It might use more gas but at least it wasn’t made on the backs of child labor in cobalt mines.” He turned and started to walk away.
“I’m not going… My car wasn’t…” I sputtered, his mocking laugh echoing in my ears.
Crime-a-nitally, I really hated that guy.
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