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IF A DATE was going well, Jason usually ordered another drink. Not enough to get him light-headed, but something to hold on to while he and the lovely lady across the table talked and laughed. If a date was going south, he had, on occasion, ordered enough to drink that he had to Uber his way home after seeing the woman to her car.
Tonight was one of those other nights. Those nights when he was two hours and one drink in, and Allison hadn’t caught any of his polite overtures about the night being over. The waitress had disappeared into a black hole on the other side of the restaurant.
Not a black hole. The customer whose table she’d attached herself to was very cute. Even Jason could see that and men weren’t his type. However, he wasn’t the only non-cute-dude customer who wanted her attention and wasn’t getting it. Someone was going to complain to the manager soon. It might be Jason, if he could figure out how to get Allison to stop telling a story about her childhood cat and get out of this chair.
“My mom had said I shouldn’t name him Muffin, but it went with our breakfast animals. My brother had his dog Bacon and my dad had Pancake and...” She paused to drink from her water glass.
Good enough. “Allison, please excuse me. I’ve really got to use the bathroom.”
Her water glass was resting on her bottom lip as she looked up at him. “Okay. Sure. The best part of the story will be here for you when you get back.”
“I can’t wait,” he said, then kicked himself. He liked his job because he liked people. He got to work with his hands, improve the way the world worked one small repair at a time, and chat with all the interesting people who worked at the research firm. He also knew how to flatter people and make them feel good. Most of the time, he was sincere about it. But then there were nights like tonight when habit kicked in and Allison was smiling up at him, pleased that he was going to listen to some boring story about Muffin, and he wished he could be a dick, toss money on the table and leave.
As soon as he rounded the corner of the bathroom, he pulled a random waiter aside and asked him to get their waitress and their check. He needed to be done with this date. He and Allison had met for coffee earlier in the week and that had gone well. But the more she drank, the more she talked, and the more she talked, the less well everything went.
In the safety of the bathroom, he pulled out his phone and thought, for a moment, of texting Marsie to tell her that not all dates were fun. He’d run into a wall of chatter, he’d say. She’d be amused by that. Smile that superior smile of hers where the corners of her mouth lifted a hair and her cheekbones looked extra sharp. When she smiled like that, he knew she was trying not to laugh at him or his story because she thought it wasn’t fitting, but secretly—or maybe with people she felt comfortable with—she would burst out in a full gut laugh.
Or that’s what he liked to imagine with her starched button-down shirts and pressed slacks. Depending on his mood, he imagined her laughs to include her leaning over and him getting a nice peek down the front of her shirt to what was probably a sensible skin-colored bra, but which he always imagined to be red lace.
But he and Marsie worked together. They weren’t friends. Hell, Marsie didn’t even consider him a colleague. She’d said he was a good worker, not a good coworker. He may not have a PhD, but he was smart enough to know the difference between the two.
Plus, he had never seen her relax enough to laugh like he imagined. Maybe she didn’t know how.
Plus, he didn’t have her phone number. The message lost its fun if sent through work email. Too many strikes against the idea to count, he put his phone away, did his business, washed his hands and headed back out to his table, Allison and the check.
At the table, Jason made some excuse about getting a call about a broken pipe at work, slipped his credit card into the holder and looked at his date.
“This has been fun,” he said. It was better to be direct with these things than to leave a person hanging. He’d been ghosted enough times while dating, and he didn’t do it himself. Well, not anymore. One of many things he’d learned dating so much was that you either became a more understanding, more considerate person, or you became the other. Some of his friends had become the other. Drinks with them were a never-ending litany of complaints. They didn’t understand that you got back from the world what you put out into it.
He wondered if he should talk about this with Marsie. She was starting to date, and he didn’t want her to fall into that negative black hole. Then he blinked Marsie out of his head. Even if he was ending any chance of a third date with Allison, he shouldn’t be thinking of Marsie.
Bringing himself back to the present, he realized Allison had apparently been dating long enough to know what was coming. She looked at him, her brows raised. She thankfully looked more expectant than hurt.
“I don’t think this is going anywhere. You’re nice,” he said, meaning it. “But there’s no spark.”
The waitress picked that moment to grab the check. She gave him a dirty look, then passed Allison a sympathetic one.
To his surprise, his date laughed, and he liked her better for it. “Yeah. I didn’t think so, either.”
Huh?
His skepticism must have been clear on his face because she laughed again. “Don’t look so surprised. You tried very hard. But I don’t want to be with any man who needs to try so hard to be with me.”
This Allison was more interesting. Still no spark—he hadn’t lied about that—but he’d hang out with an Allison who shot him down before he’d hang out with an Allison who talked about her cat Pancake or Bacon or whatever breakfast item it had been named after. “You deserve better. That’s true. Good luck finding him.”
She shrugged. “I have a date tomorrow with a guy. It’ll be our fourth date. I have hopes for him.”
It was Jason’s turn to laugh. “So I’m the confirmation date.”
“Confirmation date?”
“You know, you’re really into someone, but you go on a date with a guy to see if you spend the entire date thinking about the person you’re really into or if your eyes roam. I’m that guy for you.”
“Yeah, I guess you are.” All pretense of this date going anywhere was over. Allison reached into her purse and pulled out her phone. “I’d feel bad, but I think he’s on a date right now, too. Normally we text several times a night. Nothing from him tonight.”
“Such is the way of modern dating.”
“Oh, Jason, how long have you been dating?” She must have heard the weariness in his voice. A weariness he tried to pretend wasn’t there, because the sympathy in her voice cut a little.
He shrugged off her pity. “A while. Not that I haven’t had serious girlfriends, but none of them ever seem to stick.”
“No spark,” one of those girlfriends had said, when he’d asked why. That was the only reason she’d been able to give for why she was breaking up with him. Though, if he were being honest with himself, that particular relationship had been faltering ever since she’d started sending him links to different college programs for older students.
Allison’s face looked less sympathetic when she pursed her lips. “Sure you haven’t had trouble sticking to them?”
For a server who hadn’t paid them any attention practically the entire time they’d been in the restaurant, their waitress now picked the most inopportune times to pass by their table. Apparently, she’d heard Allison’s question which, following the other bits of conversation she’d overheard, made him look like the bad guy. The server’s book landed on the table with a smack, jolting his card and the pen onto the table.
“I don’t think you can come back to this restaurant,” Allison said, her eyes twinkling.
“At least not when she’s working,” he said with a gesture of his head to their retreating waitress. Which was okay. He didn’t like this place much anyway. The restaurant thought too highly of itself for his taste.
He collected the pen and his credit card off the table, added a tip to the bill and signed his name.
“Want me to pay half? I have cash.”
“Nah. If this guy is the one, your confirmation date might as well have all the trappings of a real date. It might be your last.”
She smiled, but his hopes that she’d forgotten her previous question were dashed when she opened her mouth and said, “Well, have you been the one giving up too early?”
“Is this a date or therapy?”
“Come on,” she said, giving him a gimme gesture with her fingers. “Look, we’ll probably never see each other again, and we’ve both been doing this dating thing a long time. You might as well be honest. What have you got to lose?”
She had a point. Maybe even one about him giving up on the women too soon. “I don’t know. Maybe. I don’t think so.” He shook his head, shoving the book and the signed receipt to the middle of the table. “I don’t want to think so.”
“It’s the risk everyone talks about with online dating and dating apps. The pool of prospects seems to be so vast that the girl who is close enough, and might actually be better than you deserve, can’t compete with the possibilities of your imagination.” Allison said those words with no trace of bitterness in her voice. Flat, like those were the rules of the game and she’d played them, too.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He looked at dating as fun, which led credence to her statement. “But isn’t that what modern romance is? We all date and date and date until we decide we don’t want to date anymore, then we settle down with the person we happen to be with at the time?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, I think you take each person at face value and not think about how they compare to competition. Only the people able to do that get off the hamster wheel with someone. The others are either running forever or get spun off alone.”
“Yeah?” Jason wished he had another drink. Some excuse to sit here and keep talking to Allison. The removal of hope and expectation made their conversation interesting. “Sounds decidedly unromantic. Is that how you did it?”
“I like to think that I fell in love the old-fashioned way. I met a guy, liked him and the more I got to know him, the more I liked him. Nothing unromantic about that. The computer helped some and hindered some, but no more and no less than relatives would have one hundred years ago. Only the skills I used to navigate it were different.” Her smile was soft, without a trace of irony, and her focus had drifted away from him, probably to the man in her life.
No denying it. He was jealous.
“Fell in love? But you’re out here with me.”
“Yeah. Stupid. I just realized, as the words slipped out of my mouth, that I’m really falling in love.” She nodded to the check still lying between them on the table. “I’m going to head out. Sure you don’t want to split that?”
“Leaving from here to see your guy?”
She rolled her eyes. “From a date with one guy into the bed of the man I love? No. Custody switch is tomorrow. I might as well get a head start on my cleaning. Got to keep up a good example for the kids,” she added with a wry smile.
Her chair squeaked against the floor as she backed it up. “Thanks for the evening. I enjoyed my dinner. And the conversation, especially the last part.”
He pushed his own chair back and stood. “Yeah, me too. Thanks for the advice.”
“You look like you need it. But hell, probably all of us do.”
They walked out to the sidewalk and Jason walked her to her car. When they got there, she leaned in and he gave her a hug. She was warm and smelled good. Postpressure, she’d proven to be interesting and funny. But it was like hugging a cousin for as much interest he had in her beyond tonight.
The truth of modern dating had to lie somewhere between her starry-eyed old-fashioned romance with new technology and his wondering if you got out of the game with the person you were with when you decided you didn’t want to play any longer. As nice as she was, Jason would still take his toys and go home rather than end the game now, with Allison.
Lucky man who had her, both being with a great woman and for finding that spark in the first place. Jason didn’t think he’d met any woman who could lure him to stop playing yet, and he’d been looking. He wasn’t lying to himself about that.
“Good luck with your guy,” he said as she got into her car.
“Good luck to you, too. It’s hard out there.” With that, Allison slammed the car door and she was out of his life.
Jason turned to walk to his car. He spent his career making and maintaining contacts, and he’d never quite gotten used to dating, where trying to keep in touch with everyone you shared a cup of coffee with was creepy. Watching someone like Allison, who was smart and interesting, drive out of his life would never be fun.
He shoved his hands into the pocket of his jacket. He’d be on Marsie’s floor on Monday to fix some guy’s desk and bring her a cup of coffee before asking her if she’d had any luck with her profile. He’d also like to hear her opinion on the flyby nature of dating. She was sure to have something unexpected and insightful to say. It was one of the reasons he liked working with her so much, beyond his hopes that she would lean over and he’d catch a glimpse of her cleavage.
He wasn’t a total dog.
CHAPTER THREE (#u372e9ba1-3f20-5292-8dd1-9a0adc97e0bc)
WELL, I’M NOT sick to my stomach.
Rolling over in bed made Marsie reconsider her hopeful sentiment.
Yet.
Once her head had found its place on her shoulders, she swung her feet over the side of the bed and steadied herself with the help of the nightstand as she stood, her toes sinking into the plush rug. All things considered, she wasn’t that bad off. She didn’t vomit as she reached down for her clothes and the throbbing in her head hadn’t hit a level she would call pounding. She was too old to go through one, two—please, God, say it wasn’t three—bottles of wine with Beck in one sitting.
The mattress sank as her butt hit, helping to steady her when she put on her socks. Everything about Beck’s guest room was cushiony. Her feet sank into the rug. The mattress had practically swallowed her whole. The curtains had enough fabric to be properly called draperies. The only nonsoft things in this room were the tchotchkes covering every flat surface and the wood of the four-poster. The guest room made up for the rest of the house with its hard edges and modern furniture. Whenever Marsie stayed over, she wondered if this was what the rest of the house would be like if Beck lived alone, or if she put all her girly decorating energy into this one room and the effect would be diluted if she had the entire house to play with.
Not that Marsie imagined she would ever find out. Beck and Neil had been together since their first year of a college and, since Marsie had known them, had only seemed to grow into a more solid couple.
As she passed the mirror over the dresser on the way to the door, she considered checking her hair. But if her hair was as bad as she thought, she’d feel the need to fix it, and she didn’t think she had the energy. Better not to know.
The sound of a couple arguing assaulted her ears as soon as she opened the door. Not that Beck and Neil were being loud, but the anger in their voices pulsed through the house like a sonic wave. She shut the door, then backed into the room and sank her butt back into the bed with a sigh.
All couples fought, at least according to all the books she read—both when she had still been trying to work things out with Richard and in preparation for knowing if her own future marriage was healthy. Apparently fighting could even be good for a marriage. Better to get everything out in the open. Of course, all the books stressed the importance of how couples fight, but she wasn’t going to listen at the door to evaluate how Beck and Neil were doing.
Instead, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and opened her dating app.
Nothing.
This was what she had remembered from last time ’round. People said women were inundated with requests for sex and a boob shot, but she never had been. Which was fine by her. But despite all the preparation that had gone into this round of online dating, she was no more successful than when she’d plopped her résumé online and crossed her fingers.
Marsie Penny, you are smarter than that. She tossed her phone to the end of the bed. She’d also been told not to take anything that happened in online dating personally. Anyway, she’d started back into this thing only last night. There was no way she could interpret one night of no responses as an indication of her worthiness as a person. That was the hangover and listening to her best friend’s marital spat talking. Plus, if she allowed herself to go down this road, she’d be entering a dark, scary forest from which she might not return. She had to remain positive and not take anything that happened in online dating to heart.
Easier said than done. Especially with her phone still within arm’s reach. She had set herself up a schedule of when she could check for messages, and she’d be breaking that schedule if she checked again.
And Jason said online dating was fun! Well, she’d never understood Jason, and thinking about online dating and him didn’t help her comprehension. She needed to stop thinking about him at all, unless it was in relation to work. Work was safe.
What she needed was to get out of this room and leave her phone ensconced in the divot made by the down comforter. She could make it to the bathroom without infringing on her friend’s privacy. Though that meant she wouldn’t be able to escape fixing her hair.
Once out of the bathroom, her hair fixed and her mouth rinsed with mouthwash, Marsie made another attempt toward the stairs. She tiptoed, trying to be as quiet as possible as she got close enough to the top of the staircase to fully judge if the argument was over. Several breaths later, she deemed it safe to go down.
Beck was standing in the kitchen, her back to Marsie. The first drips of morning coffee hit the bottom of the carafe, and the delicious scent was beginning to make its way across the kitchen to Marsie’s nose. But even with the slight hangover, her friend’s shaking shoulders were more important than the first cup of coffee.
She put her hand on Beck’s lower back. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No.” Beck sniffed, still trying to cover up the fact that she was crying. “Yes. I don’t know.”
“How about I fix you a cup of coffee while you think about what you want to say.” Marsie kept one palm in contact with her friend while she got mugs out of the cabinet and set them on the counter. Then she busied herself pouring cream in a pitcher while the coffee finished brewing. When it was done, she made her friend a cup with extra sugar and cream, then steered her to the living room so they could sit.
Whatever Beck was crying over, it was not a conversation to be had sitting on bar stools.
Marsie had finished her entire mug of coffee by the time Beck put hers down, full, on the table, and looked ready to speak. “Neil and I are going to get a divorce.”
Marsie’s cup clanged on the glass of the table when she set it down with more force than she’d intended. “Like you’ve seen a lawyer and you’re getting your separation agreement ready, or like you’re fighting a lot and it’s scary?”
What she wanted to ask was, “Why the hell is this the first I’m hearing about it? I thought we were friends?” but even in her not-quite-hungover state, she knew that wasn’t supportive.
Beck reached for her mug, brought it to her lips, then set it back down without drinking anything. “No lawyers.” She sighed. “Maybe I exaggerated. I don’t know. Right now, it feels like divorce is coming at any moment.”
“What are you arguing about?” Marsie asked, her hand braced on the side of the couch. Of all her coupled friends, Beck and Neil were the ones she thought least likely to split. They’d been together forever, seemed to have the same life goals and, well, just seemed in step.
“Money, of course. Sex.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. Don’t all couples fight about those things?”
Beck shrugged. “Sure. I mean, we’ve always had tensions over what to do with our money and how much sex to have or who gets what fantasy. But the past couple months, it’s been different. Meaner.”
“Oh.” Marsie wouldn’t be so worried if Beck were crying, but instead her friend kept blinking away the tears in her eyes. Like if she didn’t cry them, then they weren’t there. She put her hand on Beck’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.
Her friend looked up at the ceiling and blinked several times. It wasn’t enough to keep tears from running down her face. “I want a kid.”
And Neil didn’t. He’d never made a secret of that fact.
“Oh, honey.” Marsie wrapped her arm around Beck and pulled her close. Finally, her friend started to cry.
Beck cried noisy snotty tears onto Marsie’s shoulder. She shook with grief for several minutes while Marsie held on to her, not able to offer anything but support while her best friend fell to pieces in her arms.
