me.”
“The hell is your problem? You’re on edge tonight.”
My problem is that I was supposed to call a woman almost two hours ago and because of Fight Club over here, she’s probably passed out by now.
It’s almost midnight.
I’m not going to call her.
If she was yawning two hours ago, she’s definitely asleep by now.
Fuck.
Chapter 9
M aren
H e never called Saturday night .
I even waited up until two a.m.
That’s what I get for expecting a twenty-something ladies’ man to actually follow through with a promise. All he wanted was to get laid Saturday night. I’m willing to bet a million bucks that he found some other woman to keep his bed warm and decided that pseudo-phone sex with me was no longer going to serve his needs.
Fucking horny prick.
Fucking hot-as-sin horny prick.
That’s what I get for playing along, letting his intense stare cloud my judgement, and for entertaining, for a millisecond, that he might be worth my time.
He tried to call me Saturday night, but I ignored his call.
Any man who can’t keep his word isn’t worth my energy.
Marching into work Monday morning feeling unrefreshed and wishing I’d done something more productive all weekend than sit around and stew about Friday night, I toss my purse into my bottom desk drawer and feel the weight of Keegan’s stare on my back.
“Good morning,” I say, back still toward hers. “Did you have a nice weekend?”
The click of her heels on the concrete floors grows close, and her outline fills my periphery. Her silence concerns me, and when she sighs and takes a seat on the edge of my desk, I’m scanning my brain at warp-speed, trying to figure out why I’d possibly be in trouble.
Glancing up, I see her checking her reflection in a compact. Her brows meet in the middle and she seems displeased.
“Do my lips look uneven?” She pouts and purses her lips, examining them from all angles. “I just had them done, and I feel like this side is bigger than that side.”
“Oh. Um.” I squint, trying to scrutinize her puffy, swollen, mauve lipstick-covered lips. “They look fine to me.”
“That’s what I get for going to a plastic surgeon’s office that accepts coupons.” She makes a rattling sound in the back of her throat and clicks the compact shut. “But to answer your question, Mary, no. I did not have a nice weekend.”
“It’s Maren,” I correct her. “And I’m sorry to hear that.”
No, I’m not.
“God, why can’t I ever get your name right?” Keegan laughs, resting her hands on her lap and turning to me. “So I went on this date Saturday night. The guy was a total weirdo. I mean, what did I expect? I found him on that Swiper app. I should’ve known better. But he looked so normal in pics, and we texted back and forth a little bit and he seemed funny.”
“Where’d you go?” I have no interest in engaging in this conversation, but every minute spent listening to Keegan rattle on about her bad date is one less minute I’ll have to spend standing in front of the scanner/copier.
Keegan sticks out her tongue. “He took me to this Japanese steakhouse, you know the kind with the hibachi grills where you sit by people you don’t even know? Who does that? It’s the least romantic restaurant you could possibly choose for an intimate, getting-to-know-you date.”
“Agree.”
She has a point.
“So anyway, we get there and we’re eating and I ask if he wants to see a movie afterwards. I tell him there’s this indie movie showing at Flix Market Cinemas downtown, you know, the one with Joseph Gordon Levitt. And then that turns into this whole thing about how it’s too much walking for him and he has plantar fasciitis and he didn’t wear his supportive insoles . . .”
I wince. For him, not for her. I feel horrible for this man who clearly has never been on a first date before.
“And then somehow,” she continues, “it turned into this thing about this birdfeeder he built. I don’t even
“The hell is your problem? You’re on edge tonight.”
My problem is that I was supposed to call a woman almost two hours ago and because of Fight Club over here, she’s probably passed out by now.
It’s almost midnight.
I’m not going to call her.
If she was yawning two hours ago, she’s definitely asleep by now.
Fuck.
Chapter 9
M aren
H e never called Saturday night .
I even waited up until two a.m.
That’s what I get for expecting a twenty-something ladies’ man to actually follow through with a promise. All he wanted was to get laid Saturday night. I’m willing to bet a million bucks that he found some other woman to keep his bed warm and decided that pseudo-phone sex with me was no longer going to serve his needs.
Fucking horny prick.
Fucking hot-as-sin horny prick.
That’s what I get for playing along, letting his intense stare cloud my judgement, and for entertaining, for a millisecond, that he might be worth my time.
He tried to call me Saturday night, but I ignored his call.
Any man who can’t keep his word isn’t worth my energy.
Marching into work Monday morning feeling unrefreshed and wishing I’d done something more productive all weekend than sit around and stew about Friday night, I toss my purse into my bottom desk drawer and feel the weight of Keegan’s stare on my back.
“Good morning,” I say, back still toward hers. “Did you have a nice weekend?”
The click of her heels on the concrete floors grows close, and her outline fills my periphery. Her silence concerns me, and when she sighs and takes a seat on the edge of my desk, I’m scanning my brain at warp-speed, trying to figure out why I’d possibly be in trouble.
Glancing up, I see her checking her reflection in a compact. Her brows meet in the middle and she seems displeased.
“Do my lips look uneven?” She pouts and purses her lips, examining them from all angles. “I just had them done, and I feel like this side is bigger than that side.”
“Oh. Um.” I squint, trying to scrutinize her puffy, swollen, mauve lipstick-covered lips. “They look fine to me.”
“That’s what I get for going to a plastic surgeon’s office that accepts coupons.” She makes a rattling sound in the back of her throat and clicks the compact shut. “But to answer your question, Mary, no. I did not have a nice weekend.”
“It’s Maren,” I correct her. “And I’m sorry to hear that.”
No, I’m not.
“God, why can’t I ever get your name right?” Keegan laughs, resting her hands on her lap and turning to me. “So I went on this date Saturday night. The guy was a total weirdo. I mean, what did I expect? I found him on that Swiper app. I should’ve known better. But he looked so normal in pics, and we texted back and forth a little bit and he seemed funny.”
“Where’d you go?” I have no interest in engaging in this conversation, but every minute spent listening to Keegan rattle on about her bad date is one less minute I’ll have to spend standing in front of the scanner/copier.
Keegan sticks out her tongue. “He took me to this Japanese steakhouse, you know the kind with the hibachi grills where you sit by people you don’t even know? Who does that? It’s the least romantic restaurant you could possibly choose for an intimate, getting-to-know-you date.”
“Agree.”
She has a point.
“So anyway, we get there and we’re eating and I ask if he wants to see a movie afterwards. I tell him there’s this indie movie showing at Flix Market Cinemas downtown, you know, the one with Joseph Gordon Levitt. And then that turns into this whole thing about how it’s too much walking for him and he has plantar fasciitis and he didn’t wear his supportive insoles . . .”
I wince. For him, not for her. I feel horrible for this man who clearly has never been on a first date before.
“And then somehow,” she continues, “it turned into this thing about this birdfeeder he built. I don’t even
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