8. Cool Confidence
8
COOL CONFIDENCE
S omehow Hyde was getting a second chance when he wasn’t sure he was going to walk away with his skin intact the first time he tried to apologize to Tori.
They’d had a drink while they waited for their table. Then they were seated and he was on his second beer. It’d be his last too.
She’d switched over to club soda.
Their appetizers were just brought out.
He didn’t even cringe when she got artichoke dip and homemade pita chips.
He went for the oldie but goodie of pulled pork smothered nachos.
She was eying his food that he was putting on a plate. “What?” he asked, grinning. “I like messy food. I should warn you right now.”
“Good to know,” she said. “Do you need a bib? Maybe we should have gone to a seafood place and you could get one of those lobster bibs.”
“No,” he said, laughing. “To both of them. I’ve just mastered eating over my plate. Ryder picks on me all the time when I get loaded burgers and all the toppings fall out with every bite.”
“Okay,” she said. “Can I confess something to you?”
“Sure,” he said.
“I love burgers like that but only ever get them when I’m with friends or make them at home.”
“Why?” he asked, picking up a chip and putting one in his mouth. He nudged the plate toward her to see if she’d take some. She did. “Because you don’t want anyone to think you don’t eat healthy or just messy? Don’t take this the wrong way. I don’t want it to come off that way. But you don’t look like someone who doesn’t take good care of herself.”
She smirked at him.
He was positive she wasn’t trying to turn him on with her attire, but she was.
There was nothing on her other than her shoes that screamed sex, but it was the way she carried herself that spoke volumes.
Cool confidence that she could handle the world was one sexy feature on a woman that she should never leave home without.
“Thank you,” she said. “Most of the time I eat healthy, but we all need to live a little. You look like you take good care of yourself, but for all I know you just burn it off. Your arteries could be screaming at you to stop.”
“They probably are,” he said, taking another bite.
She nudged her dip toward them. “Give them some relief and try a vegetable.”
“If you think that is healthy, you’re delusional. It’s still dip with fat in it.”
“Yummy fat covering up the taste of the vegetable,” she argued. “Think of it that way.”
“I suppose,” he said, grabbing a chip and trying it. “Okay, not bad.”
“And your arteries might thank me.”
“I’m going to hush them up with nachos,” he said, helping himself to another.
She smiled again and he found himself lost in her bright brown eyes.
He tended to be attracted to blondes with blue eyes.
This might be the first time that he could remember dating someone with brown eyes before.
Expressive eyes too.
Maybe he was used to seeing them annoyed, confused, or angry, but the humor was a nice change of pace.
“It’s your body,” she said. “But I think I’ll let mine scream at me a bit tonight too.”
“There you go,” he said when she put some nachos on her plate too.
To be polite more than anything else, he had some more of her dip and chips too.
“This is nicer than I thought it’d be,” she said after a minute.
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said.
“I didn’t know what to expect tonight,” she said. “I’ll be honest and say that I worried I’d lose my patience or say something snarky to you. I don’t do that and it bothered me that I thought it’d happen.”
“Trust me,” he said. “There is part of me that is just waiting for me to put my foot in my mouth again too and that will most likely bring the sarcasm out of you.”
“I’m not sarcastic,” she said. “I don’t see the need for it. What I say, you know where I’m coming from.”
Which told him she was livid and not holding it back in some of their encounters. He’d have to keep that in mind if they went on another date.
He wanted to go on another date too.
It’d been too long since he looked at a woman and thought it’d be nice to get to know her rather than hop in bed.
The last person was Shana and that turned out so well. She didn’t even believe he was trying to change.
“That’s not a terrible trait to have,” he said. “Tell me about yourself. I mean, I know what you do in terms of work. You know what I do. What made you want to go into that field?”
“I'm not sure this date is long enough for me to go into that.”
That was interesting. “You’ve got drama in your life too?” he asked, running his hand across his forehead. “Thank God I’m not alone.”
She laughed. “Everyone has drama in their life at some point,” she said. “Mine comes from my mother. Let’s just say as an adult, she struggles to help herself. I spent most of my life looking after her. Setting up budgets and routines and schedules so she did what she should.”
“Does she have any disabilities that you have to do that?”
“No,” she said. “Why?”
“Just curious. I don’t know too many people that have had to do that for most of their parents’ life unless there was a reason they couldn’t care for themselves.”
“She chooses to live like an immature irresponsible person most of the time.”
“Is she a nuisance to society?” he asked.
She frowned. “No.”
“I’m not trying to make you angry, but I’m probably doing that. It’s that I’m curious. If she’s not hurting herself or anyone else, why not let her go and learn from it?”’
“Because she doesn’t learn from it,” she said, sighing. “Trust me, I tried. I end up picking up the pieces and listening to the problems in the end regardless so if I can avoid some of those calls it’s for the best.”
Which could be why she usually talked to her mother rather than texted because she didn’t want any misunderstanding with her.
“Are your parents not together?” he asked.
“My father left when I was ten and my mother couldn’t handle it. That is about when I stepped up.”
“That stinks,” he said. “It’s like you weren’t able to be a kid? Right?”
She shut one eye at him. “I was still a kid, just had a lot more responsibility. At least in most people’s eyes. I’m not saying my life is horrible or was horrible, just there was drama. You asked how I ended up in the counseling field. It’s simple. I’ve been helping people most of my life and it comes naturally to me. I like what I do.”
He knew not to say much more now. He didn’t want this date to take a turn for the worse.
“Everyone should enjoy what they do, but it doesn’t happen often.”
“No,” she said. “It doesn’t. Why did you go for engineering? I know you and Ryder grew up and went to college together, but he’s an architect.”
“I always loved drawing and putting things together. Maybe growing up in and out of their house I saw things and learned that way. Not sure. As you know, I just came back to the area. I never thought I’d return.”
“Everyone should be able to go home if they need to,” she said softly.
He looked into her eyes. “Can you?”
“I’m not sure where home is,” she said. “It’s the one I make, so I guess I’m always home.”
He’d have to store that away too.
The server came over and took their appetizers away. He’d stopped eating because he wanted to make room for his steak and baked potato.
Tori had pushed her plate aside too.
“They say home is where the heart is,” he said. “Sounds corny, but to me it should be where you feel the most comfortable.”
“I agree,” she said. “I grew up in South Carolina. Just outside of Hilton Head. After college, I moved to Florida. My father is still in South Carolina, but I haven’t talked to him in over ten years.”
“Can I ask why?” he asked.
“Because he never reached out after I turned eighteen. It’s like once I hit that magic number he stepped back. When I realized that, I stopped reaching out to him to see what he’d do.”
“That’s it?” he said. “You just stopped talking and he has no idea why it stopped?”
She laughed, but it wasn’t a funny sound. “No. I’d text now and again, and he’d do the same. Maybe we get one text a year, I don’t even know. But we haven’t talked. Like you, I got a lot of lectures about letting my mother stand on her own two feet. He doesn’t realize his leaving caused a lot of those issues.”
“Do you blame him?”
“No,” she said. “What happened in their marriage is between them. I was young and only knew my mother’s side and it’s one-sided. My point is, we were talking about me not having a home. My mother followed me to Florida years ago. When I moved here she was upset. She’s still upset.”
“Got it,” he said. “She wants you to go back there or she wants to come here?”
“Yes to the first, no to the second. I hope she doesn’t ask to come here, but it’s not like I can stop her either. What I can do is say she can’t move in with me, and when that happens, it’s too hard for her to financially do it.”
“Hopefully she doesn’t bring it up,” he said.
“Here’s hoping,” she said. “So tell me, how did you end up returning home? Or is that something you’d prefer not to share?”
He picked his beer up and took a long drink.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to say it, but if he wanted another date with her, it should come out sooner rather than later.
“My previous girlfriend died and my life went to hell fast, ending with me being fired from my job. Not good first date conversation, is it?”