finn
CHAPTER FIVE
The grumpy part of the grumpy/sunshine pairing my friends concocted was called Will, and he wasn’t so much a grumpy guy with a soft underbelly as he was an asshole.
Will waited for me on the steps of the linguistics faculty, where he was an undergrad student, and he pointedly checked his wristwatch when he spotted me.
“Sorry,” I said automatically. “Peanut jumped on me with muddy paws. I had to go back and change.”
“That a dog?” Will asked, tucking his hands into his pockets.
I paused for a moment, blinked, then said, “Yes, he’s our dog.”
“Come on.” That was all he said, as if holding back a sigh, and began to walk.
Harrison had explained this to me. When there is a grumpy guy paired with a ray of sunshine of a person, the undying optimism of the cheerful one didn’t wither and die. It dispersed the grumpy one’s clouds and led him to discover that happiness didn’t come with a hidden price tag.
In theory, I understood it, but Will’s next words nearly made me give up at once. “Don’t really like dogs.”
“What? Dogs are the best,” I said.
“Just another responsibility,” Will grumbled. “Like my plate’s not already full enough.”
I bit my tongue, then swallowed back harsher words. “Good thing you don’t have a dog, then.”
He didn’t acknowledge it.
We walked around campus to a park where students occasionally did group reading picnics.
People would come out with picnic blankets and snacks and a good book, and they were encouraged to come over and ask about what others were reading.
I’d never gone, but Taylor had come along with Harrison in the early days of their dating. Well, their fake dating at the time.
“Let’s sit here,” Will said, pointing to a bench.
“That’s nice,” I said.
He scoffed, or close enough that the difference didn’t matter.
We sat down, and I looked at him. He had a handsome face with deep-set eyes, only made a little less attractive by the constant air of frustration.
“Sorry, did I do something to annoy you? I’m sorry I was late,” I said.
He flicked his gaze to me. “No. Why would you think that?”
“It’s just that you seem on edge.”
“I’ve got a lot of stuff to do,” he said shortly.
“It’s okay if you’d rather go do that…stuff,” I told him. At this point, I hoped he would.
“Now I’m here,” he pointed out, only growing more annoyed. “We might as well sit and talk. What’s your deal? Can’t find a boyfriend?”
“Excuse me?”
He shrugged, oblivious. “That’s what they said.”
“Bullshit,” I said and laughed. “No way they told you that.”
“I’m pretty sure it was something like that,” Will said. “So, can you?”
I bit my lip for a moment or two, letting the frustration wash over me. This was not cute. “I’m trying to meet people in a more natural way, that’s all. Apps never get me far. Why did you agree to this?”
Will shrugged. “Sounded like a way to go outside and touch the grass.”
There was something a little sad about those words. I was drowning in assignments and blowing past deadlines already, and I wasn’t even taking my studies seriously. I could imagine what it did to someone who believed in this whole academic ladder.
Will’s gaze swept the campus.
“Do you wanna?”
“Huh?”
“Touch the grass, I mean.” I kicked off my shoes and peeled off my socks and planted both feet squarely on the cool grass.
“What are you…?” he asked incredulously and stared at me like I was crazy. More quietly, he said, “You should put your shoes on.”
Never in my life had I felt more humbled than here and now. I’d done a fair share of stupid things, gotten in trouble, and gotten chewed out for it, but hearing a guy tell me to put my shoes on while I tried to create a moment was easily the most self-conscious I’d ever felt.
So I put my shoes on, stood up, noticed him lift his hands and drop them into his lap, and sighed. “I don’t think this was a good idea.”
“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Will said. A stray lock of hair fell over his eyebrow, and he swiped it away with an angry little gesture. “You’re nothing like I thought.”
But I wasn’t going to let him bait me. I cared too little to argue, so I shrugged and walked away.
This was six out of seven, and not one had gone beyond the first date.
The clueless himbo was sweet enough, but the number of people who flirted with him while we watched a football game on Tuesday night was so ridiculous that I figured I didn’t have it in me to swat them away all the time.
And he flirted right back at them, but in a way that said it was his natural way of acting around people.
I wasn’t the jealous type, but even I had a limit.
And when the time to decide arrived, I was tempted to go to his place for a drink, and I almost did, but something was nagging me in the back of my head.
Something that just wasn’t letting me rest. I thanked him for the nice evening, even though the Elmwood U team had lost, and walked away.
I returned to the BEL house to find Taylor and Harrison on the porch like an old married couple.
They just lacked a pitcher of iced tea and a deck of cards.
The lawn had a scattering of orange leaves nobody wanted to rake just yet.
Soon enough, there would be piles large enough for Peanut to nosedive into all day long.
“That was fast,” Taylor said.
“Not good?” Harrison, ever the perceptive one, asked as I neared the porch.
I shook my head once. “The guy’s an asshole.”
The boys looked at each other apprehensively, as if not wanting to break the bad news. Taylor waved his hand off. “I hoped your sense of humor would soften him.”
“Do I have a sense of humor?” I asked.
“A particular one,” Taylor assured me. “Some people get it. Most don’t.”
That made me laugh, albeit briefly. “Go on,” I said, aware of them holding something back. “Shoot.”
“It’s just…” Taylor stammered, then looked at Harrison.
“We only have one guy left,” Harrison said. “And it’s… Look, it’s worth a shot. It’s what Bennet calls a Hail Mary. But this one would really be a miracle.”
“Let’s just get it over with,” Taylor said. “And you can tell us you’ve told us so.”
“What’s he like?” I asked.
Again, that pause. Harrison cracked a smile as if to reassure me, but it did the opposite. Whenever people smiled this way, they were about to drop something that would ruin your day. “He’s stylish,” Harrison said.
“Stylish,” I repeated.
“He has a strong sense of self,” he went on.
“Uh-huh.”
A beat. Harrison held his breath for a moment or two, then slouched. “He calls himself The Rizzler, and I think he just wants to be involved. I don’t think he’s got that boyfriend material air about him.”
“The Rizzler,” I said flatly. “You want me to go on a date with The Rizzler. Where are you finding these characters?”
Taylor perked up. “At Mr. Magnificent’s Little Shop of Monsters.”
Harrison had the guilty look of someone who was responsible for this travesty.
“He’s in the cabaret where I asked around for single guys willing to go on a blind date.
The, er, Rizzler overheard and got really excited.
He’s the kinda guy who’ll volunteer to help you move, show up with a pizza and beers, and pack up all your furniture with a smile on his face.
That said, it’s highly likely that he’d do that with or without you moving in the first place. He’s just friendly like that.”
“So he wants to do a pity date to cheer up a stranger,” I said. “I guess he sounds…” Nice? Yeah, what the hell, he sounded nice. But he also sounded like he was as much of a nutcase as all the other dates I’ve been put through. “Do you guys hate me?”
Taylor laughed, while Harrison just sank deeper into his chair. “Got us,” Taylor said, raising his hands in surrender. “Guilty as charged.”
I sucked my teeth and shook my head. “Cancel The Rizzler. Though it pains me to say it, I just fear we won’t meet on a deeper, more spiritual level.”
“Ah, but rizzle me this,” Taylor said.
Harrison punched him in the shoulder hard enough to shut him up, but gently enough that it was endearing, and I almost said, “Fuck it. Let’s give it a last chance,” because they were so cute together, and having that was worth the suffering.
But no. I was done with blind dates and romance tropes. Done, except for one. “Actually, I have a date on Saturday.”
“That’s not in the ledger,” Taylor protested. “You can’t do that.”
I laughed and moved to kick his shin, which made him flinch just enough for me to laugh harder. “I ran into an old friend. We used to be friends, at least, when we were kids.”
Harrison’s eyebrows lifted high. “Really? That could work.”
“What?”
“A childhood friend coming back into your life. That’s not uncommon,” Harrison explained. “I’ll need Bennet to interview him and crunch some numbers.”
“No, no, it’s not him,” I said. As if! “He’s got a single roommate looking for dates. I’m meeting him at your café on Whitmore Street in the afternoon.”
The guys agreed it was a good idea to try to break the pattern, but they wanted to be involved, which I explicitly forbade right then and there.
See, I usually let the algorithm decide who to match me with.
Then I let my friends make the choices. Now, at last, I wanted to be in charge.
Because running into Jesse after ten years was crazy enough, but Jesse, a near-stranger at this point, setting me up with someone was as wild and fate-like as it could get.
I was in charge of letting the universe make this decision for me.
By Saturday afternoon, I was more than ready for this date.
I’d gone and had a little haircut, getting a low-taper fade to put the emphasis on my curly locks even more.
I made sure to get enough sleep the night before so I didn’t yawn while the guy told me about himself.
And I took a long shower just before walking out of the house.
Jesse had said this guy was cute, single, and seriously looking for a connection.
I was all those things, too. And whatever happened, whatever he was like, he had to be better than Will or Knox or Dominic or Bear or The Rizzler, because my friends were magnets for oddities, and Jesse had always been a smart, focused sort of guy, and I strangely trusted him to be the judge of whether this guy was a fit or not.
Besides, I’d had a whole week of failed dates. If this guy was even marginally better than all the dates I’d had, I was at least going to let him fuck me.
The coffee shop was adorable, and I could see the power of romance working its magic in the interior design.
Fall was well underway, and the leaves down the street were more orange than green by now.
The sky was overcast, dark clouds beginning to gather with a promise of the first real storm of the season.
I sat down, told the server I’d wait for my date, and did just that. And I waited. And I waited some more. And I waited because this had been a hard week and I’d had too many disappointments, and goddamnit, I’d at least get laid if he wasn’t the love of my life.
But he never showed up.