by Hazel Kelly
Table of Contents
O N E
T W O
T H R E E
F O U R
F I V E
S I X
S E V E N
E I G H T
N I N E
T E N
E L E V E N
T W E L V E
T H I R T E E N
F O U R T E E N
F I F T E E N
E P I L O G U E
N O T E F R O M T H E A U T H O R S
O T H E R B O O K S B Y H A Z E L & C H L O E
S W I P E D
Hazel Kelly & Chloe Clark
© 2017 Hazel Kelly
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, copied, or stored in any form or by any means without prior written permission of the author. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
All characters, events, brands, companies, and locations in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons is purely coincidental.
Edited by Aquila Editing
TABLE OF CONTENTS
O N E
T W O
T H R E E
F O U R
F I V E
S I X
S E V E N
E I G H T
N I N E
T E N
E L E V E N
T W E L V E
T H I R T E E N
F O U R T E E N
F I F T E E N
E P I L O G U E
N O T E F R O M T H E A U T H O R S
O T H E R B O O K S B Y H A Z E L & C H L O E
“Love isn’t always on time.”
- Toto
O N E
I can’t remember the last time I saw someone wearing so much hemp.
Must have been the nineties. Can’t say it was a trend I thought I’d live to see come back around. Then again, I couldn’t have predicted the rise of Tinder either…or my serial dating addiction, for that matter. Which probably explains why I’m so surprised to find myself sitting at a bar across from Tyler, hemp junky extraordinaire.
“Is that vintage?” I ask, pointing at the hemp necklace with the clay mushroom charm that’s hanging down his awkwardly low-cut shirt.
“This?” he asks, pushing his other accessories out of the way so he can grab it.
I nod.
“No,” he says, letting go of it. “I got it for my birthday.”
“From…?” Someone you should cut out of your life immediately, I presume.
“My dealer,” he says. “Why? Do you like it?”
“It’s unique.”
“The necklace or the fact that my dealer gives me birthday presents?”
“Both,” I say, wondering why his fucking Tinder pics showed him wearing respectable work clothes if he planned on showing up dressed as a fucking hippie. Not that I have anything against hippies. I’ve just found that they don’t make the most attentive dating prospects.
“I only smoke weed, by the way,” he says.
“Thanks for the clarification.”
He takes a sip from his bottle of beer. “No problem. I just didn’t want you to freak at the word dealer.”
“It takes more than that to make me freak.”
He nods. “Cool.”
Despite the bar being busy, the silence between us is so awkward I’m convinced everyone can hear it. Like there’s a fucking spotlight on us because we’re the headline act in the traveling bad dates circus.
“So,” I say, wishing I hadn’t come straight from work. It’s not that I think I’m intimidating in my pencil skirt, but I’m wearing an expensive silk blouse while he’s sporting a collection of concert wristbands on his arm, one of which looks suspiciously similar to a hospital tag. Just weed, my ass.
“Can I get you another drink?” he asks, pointing towards my half-full beer.
I notice his is empty. “Sure, thanks.” Maybe I’m being too hard on the guy. Maybe he smokes weed because he has a great job and so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it. Or maybe he has a legit medical condition, like anxiety or PTSD. I study the way he walks to the bar and determine that it’s unlikely he’s a soldier.
Not that there aren’t any soldiers who wear Toms shoes, but…I lose my train of thought when I see the bartender who comes to serve him. He’s a muscly Italian who looks like he needs to be cut out of his shirt. And boy wouldn’t I love to do the honors.
I mean, I wouldn’t date an Italian. All the Italian guys I know are too in love with their mothers, and frankly, my cooking isn’t up to scratch enough for me to have a fighting chance. But I would definitely fuck that guy.
I imagine what it would be like to ruffle his slick hair so it falls in chunky pieces around his face while he pounds me up against a wall. Maybe in an alley or something. Somewhere as dirty as he is.
My mouth is watering by the time he hands Tyler his change, and as he goes to help the next customer, I glimpse the hint of a tattoo peeking out from his sleeve. It’s probably a heart with Mom in it, but I swear to God, it could be the face of Gollum and it wouldn’t be hideous enough to taint that precious bicep.
“Thanks,” I say when Tyler sits back down.
“You’re welcome,” he says, raising his eyebrows as he watches me drain the rest of my lukewarm beer.
“It’s better when it’s cold, don’t you think?” I ask, closing my mouth in time to keep a small burp from being audible. I try to remember what I ate for lunch and wonder how close I am to catching a buzz.
“What do you do for work?” he asks, seeming genuinely interested enough that I actually feel bad for not being able to return the feeling. Then again, he looks a bit like Cory’s best friend in Boy Meets World, so fifteen years ago I probably would’ve wilted at the sight of him. “I’m a psychologist.”
“Oooh,” he says, waving his fingers like he’s playing a floating piano. “Are you going to psychoanalyze me?”
I bite my cheek to keep my eyes from rolling and decide it’s not worth explaining the difference between psychology and psychoanalysis to this guy. “Actually, I try to leave work at the office as best I can.”
“Shame,” he says. “Because I had three years of awkward adolescence that I could really use closure on and—”
My eyes grow wide.
“That was a joke,” he says.
“Right.” I reach for my beer. Hilarious. “So how do you spend your days?”
“I’m a telemarketer from nine to five,” he says. “But that’s just to pay the bills.”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you have a job that doesn’t pay the bills?” ’Cause I’m pretty sure that’s called a hobby.
“More like a gift that doesn’t pay the bills,” he says. “But it will someday.”
“I’m all ears.”
“I’m a psychic.”
I nod slowly. “Is that so?”
“You don’t believe me.”
I can’t tell if he’s asking me a question or showing me how truly psychic he is. “I don’t not believe you,” I say. “I just…would rather not make an immediate judgement either way.”
“That’s okay,” he says. “People without the gift are always skeptical.”
“I’m sure you can see why.” I smile at my own pun.
He shrugs. “Of course. Plus, I’m still learning to harness my intuition as I only realized I had the gift recently.”
I promised myself I wouldn’t judge the guy, but if he keeps referring to his intuition as “the gift,” I’m not going to be able to help myself. “How did you come to
realize you were…?”
“Special?” he says, a completely serious look on his face.
This is getting good. I wonder if they sell popcorn at the bar. “Sure.”
“I started trying to predict how my cold calls would end at work,” he says. “And after a while, I realized I was able to predict the outcomes with surprising accuracy.”
I wonder if he can already tell I’m not up for a second date. “Wow.”
“So I started trying to tune into my inner voice more regularly, and I’ve found that I’m really good at reading people.”
“What a wonderful skill to have,” I say, hoping my feigned enthusiasm distracts him from trying to read me right now.
“Do you want me to try and see what I can tell you about yourself?”
I scrunch my face. “It depends.”
“Oh?” He looks genuinely surprised. “On what?”
“Well, are you just going to guess—sorry, share—things I already know about myself, or are you going to reveal deeper home truths I might not be ready to hear on a Thursday night?”
“Whatever you’re comfortable with,” he says.
“Do your worst,” I say, daring him with my eyes and hoping he’s not expecting a tip.
He leans forwards and lays his palms up on the table.
For a moment, I worry he’s going to start meditating, but he just nods towards his hands like he’s waiting for me to take them.
I lay my hands on his.
“Palms up,” he says, wrapping his fingers around my wrists after I follow his instructions.
“Is this one of those tricks where you can guess how close you are by taking my pulse?” I ask, growing cold at his touch.
“Shhh,” he says. “Relax.”
My cheeks start to burn with how uncomfortable I am. I mean, psychic predictions are one thing, but New Age wrist reading is too much too soon.
“I’m sensing you’re a Scorpio,” he says, his eyes fixed on me in a way that makes me feel like there’s nowhere to hide…in an icky way.
“Close,” I say.
“Sagittarius?”
“Bingo,” I say. “What’s my favorite Hugh Grant movie?”
His mouth twitches. “I’m not good enough yet to pick and choose what I see.”
“It’s About a Boy,” I say. “In case you were wondering.”
“I like that one, too.”
“Anyway,” I say, nodding towards my hands so he remembers why I’m hunched over with outstretched arms.
He stares at me too hard for a few seconds. “You’ve been hurt before,” he says finally. “Somebody broke your heart.”
My face falls.
“Am I right?” he asks.
I pull my hands back. “That’s enough. This is nonsense.”
“I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Everyone’s been hurt before,” I say. “That was just a lucky gues—”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
I cock my head and narrow my eyes at him, making sure that even if he’s the shittiest psychic on Earth, he can sense that I’m not interested in playing this game anymore. “I need to go to the bathroom,” I say. “If you’ll excuse me.”
I grab my purse off the back of my chair and head towards the lit-up “Toilets” sign at the rear of the bar. Unfortunately, another girl follows me in, so I enter one of the stalls, playing along with the excuse more than I intended to.
Of course, once inside, I figure I might as well break the seal while I’m here. After all, I’ll do just about anything at this point to keep from having to go back out there and pretend this lunatic and I have anything in common.
I hover over the seat and fire away, admiring the other girl’s shoes when I reach for some toilet paper, which I can only get by doing extreme hand gymnastics inside the plastic cylinder bolted to the wall.
A moment later, I stand up, smooth my skirt down, and grab my purse off the hook in front of me.
And that’s when I see it.
There’s a sign taped to the back of the door.
It’s written in hurried permanent marker, and as I read it, I’m forced to question all the nasty things I ever thought about psychics.
“Tinder date gone bad? We’re here to help. Just go to the bar and ask for Angela.”
T W O
I weigh up my options.
Option 1: I attempt to end the date myself, which Tyler will presumably see coming. After all, I’d rather be at home catching up on Game of Thrones than wasting my evening with this guy I clearly have no future with.
Option 2: I let the date continue and then just never call. Unfortunately, this requires a degree of patience I’m not sure I can deliver and completely disregards the respect I have for my own time.
Option 3: I go see what Angela recommends.
By the time I’ve washed my hands and reapplied my lipstick, I’m too curious about Angela the Tinder Disaster Guru to not go with Option 3, so I sneak out of the bathroom and walk straight to the oval-shaped bar.
As I rest my elbows on the shiny counter and clasp my hands together, I realize that I can see Tyler across the room through the gaps in the liquor shelves in the center of the bar. Fortunately, he’s too bent over his phone to notice me.
The large Italian appears in front of me a second later. His hands are like shovels, and his thick eyelashes are downright unfair. “What can I get you?” he asks.
I lower my head like a secret agent. “I’m looking for Angela.”
He squares up to me and lays his fists on the opposite side of the bar. “I’m Angela.”
“You’re Angela?”
He shrugs. “Angelo, technically, but I’ve found women in distress are much more likely to ask for help if I botch the last vowel.”
“Oh.”
“What’s your trouble?”
He looks so solid I think I could climb him. “I’m on a date that’s going nowhere, and I saw the sign on the door so—”
“I can get rid of the guy,” he says. “If that’s what you want.”
I don’t know if I’m disturbed or aroused over the fact that he sounds like a genuine goodfella. “I don’t want you to get rid of him, like, in the mafia sense.”
His dark eyes flash with amusement as a smile lights up his handsome face. “I’m a bartender, babe, not a gangster.”
“Right.” I try to decide if I’m offended that he’s called me babe, but I let it slide since I haven’t actually introduced myself and because—if the fantasies playing in the back of my mind are anything to go by—I’d probably let him call me way worse than that and like it.
“Are you sure, though?” he asks. “Because you were holding hands five minutes ago and—”
“You saw that?”
“It’s my bar,” he says. “It’s my job to see everything.”
“Of course,” I say, feeling silly for imagining that I might have caught his eye.
“Well?”
“It wasn’t what it looked like,” I say. “We weren’t having a moment or anything.”
He tilts an ear towards me.
“He thinks he’s psychic, and he was trying to get a read on me.”
Whatever it is about that last phrase makes Angelo drop his eyes and check me out. “And?”
“I’m not convinced, to put it mildly.”
Angelo looks over his shoulder, presumably peering at Tyler through the wall of liquor bottles.
I use the moment to unbutton an extra button.
“I’m not convinced either,” he says, noticing my shirt right away.
Shit. Maybe that was too obvious. Then again, maybe it was just right. Having this guy’s eyes on me is better than a mouthful of dark chocolate.
“My great-grandmother,” he says, talking with his hands. “Psychic.”
Great, so this guy’s cracked, too.
“But that guy,” he says, pointing behind him. “Probably just trying to get in your skirt.”
I swallow. So
he has noticed me. Or at least, he can’t see my skirt from where he’s standing so…
“What’s your name?” he asks, lifting a finger towards a customer who’s just arrived to let him know he’s on his way.
“Ruby.”
He keeps his eyes on me for what feels like the most delicious second of my life. “I’ll be over in a second, Ruby.”
“What are you going to—?”
“All you have to do is play along,” he says. “Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
I adjust my purse on my shoulder and head back to the table.
“Hey,” Tyler says when I sit down, his wide eyes trained on his phone.
I cock my head.
“Do you play Plants vs. Zombies?” he asks without looking up.
“Can’t say that I do.”
“It’s addictive,” he says.
I reach for my beer. “I can see that.”
He groans and his head falls back two minutes later. He’s still shaking his head when he slips his phone in his pocket. “What you have to do is use the pea-shooters to keep the zombies from—”
“Tyler.”
“You don’t care?”
I shake my head.
“Right.”
“So where were we?” I ask, taking another swig of beer.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Angelo appears beside our table with a wet rag clenched in his hand.
My mouth falls open, and I can see out of the corner of my eye that Tyler looks genuinely frightened.
“Your shift started an hour ago,” he says. “And you’ve already got two strikes against you—IF I don’t count the unsolicited lap dance you gave a customer last weekend.”
“You work here?” Tyler asks, looking back and forth between us.
“Good question,” Angelo says. “Do you work here, Ruby? Or should I take this blasé rebellion as your notice.”
I’m so impressed by his performance that it’s actually turning me on. “I—”
“Because if you do,” Angelo says, tossing the wet rag next to my beer. “You can start your shift by wiping this table down.”
I blink, too stunned to speak.
