Book Lovers

13

YOU WOULD THINK he’d be in a hurry to call this thing what it is: dead in the water.

But Blake is not a casual MOM user. He’s on the prowl for a wife, and despite my hulking stature, giantess feet, and indulgence in gin, he’s not willing to let me go until he’s individually clarified that I don’t know how to make any of his favorite foods.

“I really don’t cook,” I say, when we’ve made it through Super Bowl finger foods and moved on to various fried fish.

“Not even tilapia?” he says.

I shake my head.

“Salmon?” he asks.

“No.”

“Catfish?”

“Like the TV show?” I say.

He briefly pauses the inquest when the front doors swing open and Charlie Lastra steps inside. I fight an urge to sink in my chair and hide behind the menu, but it wouldn’t matter. The second a person walks through those doors they come face-to-face with our table, and Charlie’s eyes snap right to me, his expression somersaulting through surprise to something like distaste and then wicked glee.

It really is like watching a storm building in a time-lapse video, culminating in that flash-crack of lightning.

He nods at me before beelining toward the bar, and Blake resumes his fish list. Just like that, I lose another fifteen minutes of my life.

Blake was handsome in his photographs, but I truly find this man heinous.

I pat the table and stand. “You need anything from the bar?”

“I don’t drink,” he reminds me, sounding awfully impatient for a man who’s heard the sentence I don’t cook seventeen times in the last thirty minutes without it making any lasting impression.

I can’t actually order another drink. A third cocktail and I’d probably make Blake stand back-to-back with me while our waitress measured us. Or maybe I’d actually knock him out and steal his wallet.

Either way, I’m on a mission to find Libby rather than booze, but this place is jammed. I wedge myself against the bar and pull out my phone to find not one but two missed calls from Dusty, along with a text message apologizing for calling so late. I fire off a reply asking if she’s all right and whether I can call her back in twenty minutes, then type out a message to Libby: WHERE ARE YOU? As I hit send, I push onto my tiptoes to scan the crowd.

“If you’re looking for your dignity,” someone says through the roar of conversation (and the girls screaming “Like a Virgin” at the back of the room), “you won’t find it here.”

Charlie sits around the corner of the bar with a glistening bottle of Coors.

“What’s so undignified about karaoke night?” I ask. “I mean, you’re here.”

Someone steps between us to order. Charlie leans behind her to continue the conversation, and I do too. “Yes, but I’m not here with Blake Carlisle.”

I glance over my shoulder. Blake is staring longingly at a brunette who looks about four foot six.

“Grow up together?” I guess.

“Very few people who are born here ever escape,” he says sagely.

“Does the Sunshine Falls Tourism Bureau know about you?” I ask.

The woman standing between us clearly has no plans to leave, but we just keep talking around her, leaning in front of and then behind her depending on her posture.

“No, but I’m sure they’ll want an endorsement from you once you’ve done your walk of shame from Blake’s house. I’ve got it on good authority he has a carpeted bathroom.”

“Joke’s on you, because I haven’t slept over at a man’s apartment in like ten years.”

Charlie’s eyes glint, another lightning strike across the dark clouds of his face. “I am desperate for more information.”

“I have an intense nighttime skin care routine. I don’t like to miss it, and it doesn’t all fit in a handbag.” My mom used to say, You can’t control the passage of time, but you can soften its blow to your face.

His head cocks to one side as he considers my half-truth of an answer. “So how’d you end up here with Blake? Throw a dart at a phone book?”

“Have you heard of MOM?”

“That woman who works at the bookstore?” Charlie deadpans. “I think so. Why?”

“The dating app.” I smack the bar as the realization hits me. “Do you think that’s why they named it that? So you could be like, Mom set me up?”

Charlie balks. “I would never go out with someone Sally set me up with.”

“Your mom thinks I’m gorgeous,” I remind him.

“I’m aware,” he says.

“I guess we’ve already established that you wouldn’t date me though,” I say.

His brow lifts, tugging at one corner of his mouth. “Oh, we’re going to do this now?” He fails to hide a pouty smirk behind his beer bottle. As he sips, the crease under his lip deepens, and my insides start fizzing.

“Do what?”

“The thing where we pretend I rejected you.”

“You exactly rejected me,” I say.

“You said wait,” he challenges.

“Yes, and you apparently heard I’m going to tase you in the crotch.”

“You said it was a mistake,” he says. “Fervently.”

“You said that first!” I say.

He snorts. “We both know”—the woman between us has finally left, and Charlie slides onto her abandoned seat—“all that was for you was a checked box on your extremely depressing list, and that’s not a game I’m interested in playing, Nora.”

“Oh, please. You don’t even qualify for the list. You’re as city-person as it gets.” Immediately I regret saying it. I could’ve pretended the kiss was calculated; now he knows I just wanted it.

The way his beer bottle pauses against his parted lips, like I’ve caught him off guard, almost makes it worth it. Whatever game we are playing, I’ve won another round: the prize is his chagrined expression.

He sets his bottle down, scratches his eyebrow. “I’ll let you get back to your date.”

I check my phone. Libby has replied: Headed home. I won’t wait up for you. She had the audacity to include a winky face.

I look up, and Charlie’s watching me. “Is there a way out of here,” I ask, “that doesn’t take me past Blake?”

He studies me for a beat and says dryly, “Nora Stephens, MOM is not going to be happy with you.” Then he holds his hand out. “Back door.”

Charlie tugs me away through the crowd and behind the bar, and we duck through a narrow door into the kitchen, only to be immediately cut off.

“Hey! You can’t—” the pretty bartender cries, throwing her arms out to her sides. She clocks Charlie and flushes. Somehow it makes her even prettier.

“Amaya,” Charlie says. He’s gone a little more rigid, like he’s just remembered he has a body and every muscle in it has tightened reflexively.

I’ve been thinking of Amaya’s smile — and her tone with Charlie — as flirty, but that was before I knew their history. Now when that smile makes an appearance, I parse out shades of hurt and hesitancy, a wispy beam of hope shining through it all.

Charlie clears his throat, his fingers twitching around mine. Amaya’s gaze judders toward the motion, and just like that, my face is on fire too.

“We need the back door,” Charlie says, apologetic. “Blake Carlisle thinks he’s on a date with this woman.”

Her eyes flicker between us again. After a moment of weighing her options, she sighs and steps aside. “Just this once. We’re really not supposed to let anyone back here.”

“Thanks.” He nods, but doesn’t move for a second. Probably too stunned by the return of her brilliant, hopeful, I-still-love-you smile. “Thanks,” he says again, and leads the way through the door. Out in the alleyway, the air feels cool and dry, and with the sudden rush of oxygen to my brain, I remember to jerk my hand from his. “Well, that was awkward.”

“What?”

I cut him a glance. “Your jilted lover and her X-ray vision.”

“She wasn’t jilted. And as far as I know, she has no superpowers.”

“Well, maybe she wasn’t jilted,” I say, “but she’s hung up.”

“You’re misinformed,” he says.

“You’re clueless,” I say.

“Trust me,” he says, leading me to the cross street. “The way things ended left no room for hang-ups.”

“She looked haunted, Charlie.”

“She heard Blake Carlisle’s name,” he replies. “How else was she supposed to look?”

“So Blake has a reputation.”

“It’s a small town,” Charlie says. “Everyone has a reputation.”

“What’s yours?”

His gaze slices toward me, brow lifting and jaw muscles leaping. “Probably whatever you think it is.”

I look away before those eyes can swallow me whole.

A few people are smoking in front of Poppa Squat’s, a couple more shuffling toward an ivy-wrapped redbrick Italian restaurant, Giacomo’s. Until now, I haven’t seen it open.

Tonight, the windows are aglow, the awnings twinkling, servers in white dress shirts and black ties whizzing back and forth with trays of wineglasses and pastas.

I tip my chin toward Giacomo’s. “I thought that place was closed down.”

“It’s only open on Saturday and Sunday nights,” Charlie says. “The couple who run it retired a long time ago, but everyone talked them into keeping things going on the weekend.”

“You mean the whole town banded together to save a beloved establishment?” I prod. “Exactly like the trope?”

“Sure,” he says evenly, “or they showed up with pitchforks and demanded their weekly cacio e pepe.”

“Is it good?” I ask.

“Actually, it’s very good.” He hesitates for a moment. “Are you hungry?”

My stomach grumbles, and his mouth twitches. “Would you like to have dinner with me, Nora?” He heads off my response with, “As colleagues. Ones who can’t fulfill each other’s checklists.”

“I wasn’t aware you had a checklist,” I say.

“Of course I have a checklist.” His eyes glint in the dark. “What am I, an animal?”