2. Oliver
Chapter 2
Oliver
“I s it me, or is there something new about this place?” I looked around Plymouth Bowling, where I was enjoying my weekly night out with my friend Chris Jacobs. Chris was a mystery writer and a single dad who didn’t have much time for himself, so I always looked forward to us catching up. I frowned. “It’s weird. Right?”
Chris shrugged and raked a hand through his brown hair, sipping his lager with the other. “Got new seats about a month ago. Took you long enough to notice.” I ignored his smirk and looked around again.
The seats were dark blue instead of green, and all the parts that were previously sewn up or duct taped were gone. “Hmph, guess you’re right. Weird. “How’s Lila adjusting to third grade?”
Chris shrugged and let out an exhausted sigh. “Much better than the last few months of second grade. She has friends now, but she’s a bit more… precocious than the kids in her class.”
I took my time and lined up my shot, sending the ball right down the center of the lane before I turned back to Chris. “That’s not a bad thing. They’ll get used to her, just give them time.” It wasn’t easy being different in a small town, but Pilgrim was pretty open-minded.
“I am. She wants to sign up for the Junior Search & Rescue Training Program in town. I don’t know.”
“Why not? What have you got against that kind of work?”
“Not a thing, but that doesn’t mean I want my little girl to take a job that puts her in harm’s way.”
I stared at Chris, trying to put myself in his position. A single dad to a little girl, worrying nonstop. As a bachelor with only myself to think about, I couldn’t. “She’s eight. Next month, she’ll want to be a ballerina, unless you make a big deal over this current fad.”
“When did you become so smart about women? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot I was sitting with a celebrity. Dating royalty, Mr. Your Best Bachelor.” I knew he was joking, but I was kinda proud of my job.
“There’s no Mister. It’s like Madonna, just Your Best Bachelor.” It was now a syndicated column published in more than a dozen magazines and newspapers and, as of last year, a male-centric podcast. “I wouldn’t say celebrity, more like well-known local. ”
Chris laughed. “Does that mean Chrissy the choir girl didn’t change your bachelor ways?”
I shuddered at the thought of my last date, more than two weeks ago. “Definitely not. She showed up to dinner with her wedding binder, determined to ‘convince me’ that marriage is beautiful.” It would’ve been funny if the woman hadn’t been so serious about it.
Chris sent his bowling ball flying down the lane and turned to me, tilting his head back and laughing his fool head off. “That’s why I have no shame about using my daughter to get out of dates. Works every single time.”
“Still hung up on your ex or what?” Chris and I had met about six months earlier, and had grown close because we both worked odd schedules, but we were men and we didn’t open up right away about our feelings.
“Nah, I’m glad to be rid of her. But my relationship with Sandra, specifically the way it ended, left me a little sour on dating and relationships.” He sighed and reached for his beer. “My focus is on the new Cobalt series, and Lil.”
“How’s the new series coming along?”
He shrugged. “As soon as I figure out why the killer is killing, the words will fly. Until then, I’m just twiddling my thumbs.” His eyes glazed over for a moment before he shook it off. “I read your latest article.”
“And?” Everyone in town usually had an opinion about what I wrote or said for Your Best Bachelor, so I was used to it.
“It was pretty brutal. You think women don’t want romance? Well, I can tell you that you’re wrong. Totally wrong.”
I shook my head and smiled, wondering what Miss Prissy herself, Eva Vargas, thought of it. “Maybe your ex really craved it, but I stand by what I said.”
Chris laughed. “You’re a jackass. Entertaining, but still a jackass.”
“Not the first time I’ve heard that. Still, you haven’t told me why I’m wrong.” Romance was a fraud. It was all a show that men were forced to put on to please a woman—specifically, to get pleasure from a woman. “Roses and chocolates are somehow special? Means you love her more than the other girls?”
Chris’s brown eyes bored into me for so long that I started to shift in my seat. Thankfully, it was my turn to bowl. “That’s what you think romance is, and that’s why you’re still single.”
“A choice,” I told him, before letting the ball roll like thunder down the newly-waxed lane.
“Whatever. The point is that romance varies by woman and it’s in the thought, not the act.”
I shook my head as I took my seat. “Come on, Chris, be serious. You brought flowers because you screwed up or wanted a blow job, not because you wanted to.”
“You’re wrong. When you love a woman, you want to see the way her face lights up when you do something just for her. Before everything went to shit, Sandra loved it when I made her Belgian waffles. I told her I took all the calories out just for her. It was stupid, but she loved it and I knew that, so I did it for her.”
I mulled over his words. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“You’ve never been in love before so you don’t know, but I assure you that romance is real. And meaningful.” He shook his head with a smile. “Eva didn’t like it too much.”
I smiled and leaned in. Eva Vargas was a feisty little thing with sinful curves in all the right places. And I had an uncanny ability to get her upset over just about everything. I secretly loved it, sparring with her, but I didn’t know how she felt about it. And I didn’t much care, because I didn’t get personal with women.
Ever.
“When does Eva like anything I do?”
“She really liked it that time you ran into the Mayflowers’ door. Then again, I’m pretty sure we all appreciated that.” Sheriff Xander Willowby’s laugh was loud enough to draw stares from the other bowlers as he took the third seat at our table. Finally.
“Thanks for that, Sheriff.”
“Anytime, man. Anytime.” He looked around the bowling alley, noting the new seats and maybe a few other things I’d missed over the past month while I was busy revamping my website. “Why’d they change everything?”
“Everything?” I looked around and noticed the same old arcade games, the same rickety dartboard, and the same slanted bar that made the strongest Long Island Iced Tea in Texas. “I thought it was just the seats.”
Chris laughed. “You two are both hopeless. No wonder you can’t get a date.”
Xander frowned, deeply offended. “I can get a date. If I want one,” he insisted. “Who has time for women?”
“Don’t listen to him, Xander. He’s just feeling good because as a rich writer and single dad, he’s catnip for the husband-hunters.” The mamas in town had all tried to set up him over the past nine months and so far, none had been successful.
“Too bad I’m not looking to become anyone’s husband.”
“Yet,” Xander and I both said at the same time, laughing at Chris’s look of confusion.
“At least I’ll live long enough to get roped into another ill-advised marriage. The next thing you say about romance, Eva’s gonna chop off the family jewels.”
That pulled another laugh out of me. “Eva? She’s all bark and no bite.” I’ve said and done a lot to get a rise out of her over the last three years, but it was always friendly.
Chris and Xander stared at each other and burst out laughing, once again drawing looks from the lanes around us. “Spoken like a man who’s never been sliced with that sharp tongue.”
“You guys can’t scare me.” It was pretty hard to be anything but amused or turned on around the petite spitfire with the raven hair and the grey eyes.
“We can’t,” Xander said with a devious smile. “But Eva can.”
They laughed again and, suddenly, I felt a lot less confident.