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she said and they both fell silent.
    He drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. If he were with Rilka, he’d just have a fucking conversation. But this … rabbit would faint if he were his normal self.
    “So,” he said. “There’s a game on. You wanna watch?”

Chapter 6
    Rilka spent the morning wondering when Jeremy would report in on his date with Daphne. She was pretty sure he hadn’t gotten laid, although she hadn’t heard from Daphne either, but that didn’t mean the date was a dead loss.
    She’d just gotten off the phone with an older man who remembered Gran fondly and set up an appointment for later in the afternoon when it rang under her hand. She glanced at the caller I.D. and was relieved to see it was finally Jeremy. Though she would have preferred for him to come see her. There was something cheering about Jeremy.
    “Hi, there,” she said.
    “May I ask what the hell you were thinking?” he demanded. So obviously she had gotten confused; there was nothing cheering about Jeremy.
    “I was thinking you asked me to set you up on a date.”
    “With someone
suitable
,” Jeremy said.
    “Daphne didn’t work out?” Rilka said. Although, yes, she didn’t really need telling as she could deduce. “I told you about her and I told her about you. So don’t tell me either of you had problem with — ”
    “The scar’s not the problem,” Jeremy interrupted. “She’s extremely shy, painfully aware of her disfigurement, and she needs someone to be gentle with her — ”
    “Well, of course,” Rilka said.
    “Then why did you set us up? I’m not a gentle person, for chrissake. You know that. What, did you think, ‘I’ll put the two appearance-challenged people together’? Did you really think that?”
    “Well, damn,” Rilka said.
    “You
did
?” His voice rose.
    “It’s something you guys have in common,” she snapped.
    He started to laugh. “You really suck at this, Rilka.”
    “You’re just mad you didn’t get laid,” Rilka said.
    “Well, obviously,” he said. “I thought I made it clear I only wanted women who would come across on the first date.”
    She was laughing now, too. “You are such a pig.”
    “Exactly. So set me up with another pig, not a fragile porcelain doll, okay?”
    “You bet,” Rilka said.
    • • •
    “She’s fat,” Don said. He was in her hallway, having stopped by before work so he was wearing his uniform, which emphasized
his
fatness, but Rilka didn’t point this out. “Fat, fat, fat,” he said again, in case she hadn’t heard him the first time. “Didn’t I specify I was interested in attractive women?”
    “Don, you’re packing a little extra poundage yourself,” Rilka said, provoked, but she wasn’t being mean, just trying to be realistic.
    “What? Did you think, ‘Hey, I’ll stick the fat people together’?”
    • • •
    “He was a jerk,” Julia snapped. “I hate men.”
    “That’s probably not the most helpful attitude to take,” Rilka said, though God knew she sympathized. “I agree that Don isn’t the most — ”
    “Then why did you set us up?”
    “He said he was interested in a career woman.”
    “I see,” Julia said grudgingly. “But I think I’d rather date someone more like me.”
    “Meaning?” Rilka asked tentatively. She hadn’t been right about anything since approximately June of last year.
    “A hard charger. Like an entrepreneur or a stockbroker or — I don’t know, a foreign correspondent.”
    A foreign correspondent. Rilka raised a brow. “We’re in the middle of the Midwest,” she pointed out.
    “Stop being so
literal
,” Julia said, beyond exasperated.
    • • •
    “I hope it wasn’t too awful,” Rilka said, having decided to bite the bullet and call Daphne instead of waiting for her to check in. Story of her life lately, setting people up and then apologizing for it.
You have a gift
, Gran used to say and now Rilka realized her gift was for screwing things up.
    “He wasn’t,