by Amy Vansant
Should I ask him about puppies?
“What do you do?” asked Sebastian.
“I have a website development company.”
Website development company always sounded better than, I sit at home in my pajamas moving things around on my monitor.
“You live in town?” asked Benny.
“Yeah.”
Emily grimaced. She hated saying “yeah.” She practiced saying “yes” instead of “yeah” but the habit remained. It was like trying to kick heroin. She imagined. She didn’t know.
“Well, just on the outskirts of town,” she added, wanting to be completely honest with her new friends about everything except the fact she was stalking one of them. “I have a house in Thicke Woods.”
“Cool, wanna date?” said Sebastian.
Sipping from her Chicken Club, Emily gagged and coughed it back into her glass. She covered her mouth and looked up at Sebastian, who appeared alarmed.
“You okay?” he asked.
Benny laughed. Emily’s eyes watered. She used a napkin to wipe her mouth and fought to ignore the vodka in her nasal passage.
“I’m fine,” she wheezed, taking another sip to clear her throat.
“Sebastian wants your house,” said Benny.
Emily swallowed, pleased to find normal breathing patterns had commenced.
“What?”
“Do you want to date,” repeated Sebastian. “I sort of have a weird housing situation right now, so if you’ve got a roof, I’m yours, is what I was saying. I was kidding.”
“Ah,” said Emily. “Got it.”
She liked the way “I’m yours” rolled off Sebastian’s tongue. The “if you’ve got a roof” part barely registered. Apparently, if someone was attractive enough, Emily’s body released a hormone that ensured she only heard what she wanted to hear when they spoke.
That explained a lot.
Emily was preparing to ask Sebastian what he meant by a “weird housing situation” when more people entered the snug and diverted Sebastian’s attention from the sputtering girl with the literal drinking problem.
After one or two failed attempts to reignite a more intimate conversation, Emily did her best to remove her laser focus from Sebastian and blend with the others. After all, she wanted him to like her, not file a restraining order. Tessa had warned her about that.
Emily recognized many people from Dart Night. It seemed on non-tournament nights, the dart crowd gathered to freeform gamble. It cost five dollars to play and, luckily, Emily had brought cash to lose in the interest of practice. For these games, she played single; no need to embarrass a partner. A few of the less competitive players took it upon themselves to school her on board number two, while the big league players like Sebastian shot on board one.
Emily discovered the board in her dad’s garage had been an American dartboard. At the Irish Rover, all the boards were of the English variety, and Cricket was the game of choice. The object of Cricket was to close your numbers by hitting three darts in the pie slice for that number. The numbers you had to hit were 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, 15 and bull’s-eye. Most players did start with 20 and work their way down in order to keep people from “pointing” them. If someone “closed” twenties, for example, by hitting three of them, they could then hit more twenties to score twenty points per dart against a player who still had that number “open.” In the end, if the player with the most points closed the board, it was over, because there was no way for the other player to continue pointing the winner while they attempted to close their board.
Emily discovered that she loved playing darts. She quickly adopted dart slang, calling “fifteens” “fives,” for example, and learned how to write scores on the chalkboard. She even managed to keep her mouth shut when she wasn’t sure about something, so she didn’t spout the equivalent of screaming “touchdown!” at a baseball game.
Thanks to one or two lucky games and Benny’s own amateur status, Emily only ended five dollars down after over two hours of play. In the grand scheme of paying for entertainment, that rate wasn’t bad at all.
Maybe having a job was overrated. Maybe she needed to join the dart tour.
Enraptured by competition, Emily didn’t notice when Sebastian disappeared. At some point, she looked for him, but he had gone. She suffered a pang of disappointment that her interactions with him were over for the day, but she was happy she hadn’t noticed him leave. It proved her new hobby wasn’t all about Sebastian.
Or the sexy little scar on his left cheekbone.
Chapter Eight
Emily was working on a hair salon’s website when she heard knocking on her front door. She hated when people knocked on her door. Not because she minded the intrusion, she just had ridiculous nipples.
Emily’s actual nipply parts were like pencil erasers and needed to be contained in public, strapped down like King Kong on his way to New York City. The circle parts, the areolas, were normal, at least compared to naked girls in movies. Movie girls were helpful when deciding if your body parts conformed to societal norms, or if you were a freak of nature destined to flee from villagers with pitchforks.
Emily felt confident her nipples weren’t freakish, but they weren’t little nubby things either. And she hated wearing a bra. Why would she wear a bra in her own home, when she didn’t need its gravity-fighting abilities? But though her breasts weren’t pendulous, if she didn’t wear a bra, she looked like a gunslinger. All visitors could do was stare down the barrels of her nipples. Then, she felt compelled to make jokes like, “They aren’t loaded!” which made everything so much worse. One time, she'd tried recovering from that blunder by adding, “Do you feel lucky? Well do ya, punk?” which proved to be a total disaster. She never saw that FedEx guy again.
When Emily heard the knocking at 7:30 a.m., she screamed, “Just a second, hold on, I’m coming! Hold on!” as she tore off her t-shirt, applied a padded bra, and reapplied the t-shirt. In the meantime, Duppy took his usual spot behind the front door, barking his head off. At forty-five pounds, Duppy sounded like a five-hundred-pound hell hound; handy for a woman living alone.
Emily answered the door to find a man in a black suit holding a pamphlet.
“If you want him in your heart, just ask,” he said.
Emily groaned. Her neighborhood posted signs to warn away sales people of all sorts; magazine subscriptions, meat in a truck, religion, politics, but nothing stopped the onslaught of peddlers.
“Thanks, I’ll do that,” said Emily, taking the pamphlet and closing the door.
Emily tossed the paper on her table and stared at her coffee maker. She needed caffeine, but didn’t feel like home-brewed coffee. She felt like human interaction. The kind that didn’t arrive, unannounced, on her doorstep with pamphlets. She worried if she stayed at home, her mind would drift to Sebastian and she’d end up at the Irish Rover even earlier than usual.
Emily threw on shorts and a polo and drove to Grounded. It wasn’t prime man-watching time; at this hour people rushed in and sprinted to work. No one lingered to read paperwork, crunch spreadsheets, or do whatever people with real jobs did. It was the perfect time for head clearing, surrounded by hustle and bustle, and yet completely alone.
A woman rushed out of the coffee shop as Emily arrived, and although Emily was the perfect distance from the door, the woman didn’t hold it for her. She did everything but push the door closed and nail it shut.
“So polite,” Emily muttered under her breath. She didn’t think she’d said it loud enough for the woman to hear, but as the woman hustled away, Emily heard her call, “You didn’t ask, shoulda moved faster!”
Emily opened her mouth to respond, but the perfect retort didn’t jump to mind. She entered the coffee shop.
Emily stood behind two people, a man and a woman dressed in suits. The line moved faster than she expected, and she panicked as the barista’s attention turned to her. Not ordering at the speed of light topped the shop’s sin chart, falling directly behind ask
ing for “a coffee.”
“I want something different,” she blurted.
The teen stared at her blankly, the subtle shift of his weight from one foot to the other the only sign that he’d heard her.
“Can I get a double espresso, but with whipped cream on top?” asked Emily. “That’s weird, isn’t it?”
The kid shrugged.
“Ask and ye shall receive,” he said, writing her name on a cup.
There were a few people waiting, so Emily found a seat. She’d brought a book, figuring she’d finish her coffee and then head home and get to work.
“Sebastian!” called a barista.
Emily sat up like a meerkat and scanned the shop. She didn’t see Sebastian, but no one moved to claim the coffee. There couldn’t be two people named Sebastian in town, could there?
“Sebastian!”
No one moved.
Could he be here? Emily wondered. Her initial excitement gave way to trepidation. “Coincidental” meetings had worked for Emily in the past, but if she bumped into Sebastian again so soon, he might get suspicious. Or frightened.
A suited woman stepped to the counter.
“Do you mean Samantha?” she asked.
The barista studied the scribble on the side of the cup.
“Probably. Half caff latté?”
The woman nodded and took the coffee.
Emily’s expectant heart fell. Fate had dropped Sebastian in her lap the previous day at the snug bar. She loved surprises like that. It was too much to expect it to happen again.
“Amy?” called the coffee guy.
Emily’s phone rang. She looked at the caller ID. It was her mother.
“Hi Mom,” she said.
“Amy?” called the barista again.
“Do you want Sebastian?” asked her mom.
Emily’s eyes grew wide. Her mother’s ability to sense what she was doing at any given moment was legendary, but this took her superpowers to a new level.
“What? What did you say?”
“Do you want sea bass, hon?” repeated her mother. “Your father has some and we’re coming down, so we can bring you some to put in your freezer if you want it.”
Emily closed her eyes and chuckled. Her parents lived a few states away, but they owned a small house near Emily as well, and they periodically came to stay. Her father fished, and often caught enough to share.
“Sea bass, hon,” echoed Emily.
“Just say the word!” said her mother.
“Sure. Thanks.”
“Oh good, I’m glad I called,” said her mother. “I figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”
They said their goodbyes.
“Amy?” called the barista again.
Emily looked around the store. Only she remained.
“Emily?” she asked.
“Probably,” said the teen.
Emily retrieved her coffee and sat back down. Before she could take her first sip of joe, a brilliant idea flashed across her brain.
I’ll ask out Sebastian.
Forget the stalking, forget the unrequited crush that could linger for weeks or months, forget waiting for someone to notice her, or for the perfect moment to strike. She would just go and ask him out.
Emily couldn’t fathom the origin of her brilliant idea.
Clearly, she was some sort of love genius.
Chapter Nine
Asking out Sebastian at the Irish Rover was a bad idea; too many people, too much noise, and if he said no, Emily couldn’t bolt out of the bar and run home without suffering further humiliation. No matter how discreetly she asked, she’d be forever known as “the chick Sebastian dissed.” The Rover would name a drink after her, called “The Desperation” made with vodka, cranberry and the tears of girls dumped on prom night—and spurning someone would be forever known as “pulling an Emily,” as in, “Man, Bob really gave that girl the Emily!”
No. Asking Sebastian out at the Rover was a no-go.
And no matter how private the location might be, Emily couldn’t go to Sebastian’s home. First, she had no idea where he lived. Second, there was no logical reason she should know where he lived, so appearing on his doorstep would make her Creepy McCreeperson.
Emily knew Sebastian worked at a home decor store at the Cove Center shopping plaza, which only had one such store; Über Home. There was nothing strange about shopping; she could stop at Über Home and be “surprised” to see Sebastian.
“Oh hey! Sebastian, right? Fancy meeting you here!” she would say.
No, no. She couldn’t say “fancy meeting you here,” without sounding like a dame from a 1940s rom-com. How about:
“Oh hey! Sebastian, right? Ha! We’ve got to stop meeting like this!”
No; even worse. She should punch herself in the head for even thinking that cliché.
“Oh, hey! Sebastian, right? You work here?”
Duh, no, he doesn’t work there; he just likes to sneak into stores and see how long he can stand behind the counter waiting on people before the owner throws him out.
“Oh, hey! Sebastian, right? How are you?”
Better. Not clever or memorable, but better than embarrassing herself.
She didn’t worry too much about what to say next because if it took her an hour to decide how to say hi, she and Sebastian would both be dead from old age before she ever found the nerve to proposition him.
Emily took a deep breath and mentally embraced the notion that if she felt this strongly, it must be fate. As sure as bite marks in Christmas cookies meant Santa had visited. Never mind that Mom’s breath smelled like chocolate chips. Or that when you suggested leaving out sugar cookies, Mom, the chocoholic, insisted on Toll House. Or that there were crumbs on her pajamas.
Emily didn’t know why she carried a torch for this man, but she had to end her puppy love. Nip stalking in the bud. He was interested in going for a drink with her, or he wasn’t; either way, once she asked she could move forward.
No more planning. She’d go to Sebastian’s work and ask him to drinks or coffee; something non-threatening, and leave. Über Home was nice. Maybe she’d even buy a new sofa. It would depend how much she panicked. Emily scrutinized her house for a spot she could fit new furniture, just in case.
Last time she saw Sebastian, he’d arrived at the Irish Rover at 4:20 p.m., wearing khakis, a button-down white shirt and a loosened tie; clearly a work outfit. No one would dress up for the grungy Rover. If Sebastian left work and traveled directly to the bar without changing, she could reasonably induce he clocked out at four.
Why didn’t I ever consider becoming a detective?
Emily checked her stove clock. It was 2:10 p.m. She still had time to catch Sebastian at work, assuming his schedule was consistent and he worked Fridays and he hadn’t already installed snipers on the rooftops to take her out should she come within fifty feet of him.
So many ifs.
Emily went to her bedroom to choose the perfect outfit. Broad daylight seduction attire required sexy, yet subtle; waltzing around a shopping center at three in the afternoon in a plunging neckline and four-inch heels was conspicuous. The second-to-last thing a stalker wanted to appear was conspicuous.
The first, was bat-shit crazy.
After trying four outfits, Emily found a coral summer tank with a touch of glitz along the neckline. The tank enabled her to display flesh, yet appear casual. Perfect. She paired the tank with a linen skirt and inspected the outfit in her full-length mirror.
Nipples. All she saw were nipples.
Emily couldn’t wear a proper bra with a tank. She had seen girls with bra straps peeking from beneath their tanks before, but Emily also knew her mother would appear on a flying carpet woven from a shredded copy of Miss Manners if she wore bra straps in plain view. Her mother was five inches shorter than she was, but very much like Tessa in that small-but-terrifying way.
From a sex appeal perspective, the tank was perfect, but if she walked into Über Home without proper
nipple padding, all Sebastian would see would be the perfect place to hang his jacket.
Emily walked to her office to fetch a roll of tape. She removed the tank and attempted to tape down her offending nipples. They refused to be contained. Cellophane tape was no match for nipples determined to stand at attention.
Emily moved to the hall closet. After some digging, she found a roll of medical tape in a first aid kit so old, the bloodletting leeches were dead.
She cut a chunk of white tape and slapped it over her springy nugget.
Close.
She cut a second piece and criss-crossed the first to double-down.
Success!
Slipping back into her shelf bra tank, Emily reviewed her progress in the mirror. She looked like a normal girl; not a nipple in sight.
After makeup and hair, the time was 3:15. Time to go.
Emily put one foot into her car and stopped, struck by a memory from her college public speaking class. She made an about-face and headed back to the house.
Emily beelined for her liquor cabinet. She poured a shot of vodka and tossed it back. Vodka always helped when speaking in front of strangers in college; hopefully, propositioning men at strip malls fell under the same category.
Sebastian’s shopping center was five minutes from Emily’s house. She found a parking spot and sat in her car for a further five minutes, wishing she’d brought the whole bottle of vodka. And a Valium. And a better body with bigger boobs and smaller nipples. Thicker hair. Blue eyes. A fuller mouth...
“Screw it,” she said, bursting from the car as if escaping a carjacking. The vodka had kicked in. She felt calmer. She strode towards Sebastian’s store.
Emily got within three feet of the Über Home door and stopped. Her stomach dropped to the pavement. Her mouth went dry.
“Deep breaths,” she whispered. “He’s just a guy.”
Emily stared at the door. Her face felt cold. The sun’s reflection upon the all-glass storefront prevented her from seeing inside. Maybe Sebastian isn’t even there. Maybe I should just go...
