Chapter 2
SEVERIN
To be fair, I was a professional chef, and one thing I’d listed as a turn off was picky eaters. My turn ons included someone who enjoyed a good steak, so I was pretty sure the unfortunate location was my fault.
Either way, this was already starting to feel like seven disasters in a trench coat pretending to be a date.
The first disaster, of course, was me deciding to be me. I loved punk rock, and I looked the part with tons of black-and-gray tattoos, well-worn jeans, leather boots that’d seen better days, and the black Misfits T-shirt I’d had since high school.
Given the amount of time I spent in the kitchen, I kept my dark hair cropped close and my beard short. I liked to think I resembled a younger, more tattooed Colin Farrell, though that assessment may have involved a bit of delusion.
I’d have worn a button up and some nicer shoes, but it would’ve felt like a lie, and there’s no covering my neck and knuckle tattoos. Besides, I figured that if I wanted something more long-term—which, fuck me, I did—I was going to need to be myself from the beginning.
Then again, when I got out of my car, a mom pulled her children to the other side of the row. So, yeah. Disaster number two was probably fucking up the first impression.
On top of everything, I’d been nervous, so I was here fifteen minutes early. Pulling up the app, I found a message from Rhys. We hadn’t even been able to message each other until now, and it’d be just my luck if he canceled.
Rhys: I am so, so sorry. There’s been an injury at rugby practice.
Rhys: Though, “injury at rugby practice” might be redundant.
Me: Shit. Are you hurt?
Rhys: No, it was one of the other guys. I’m team captain, though, and I need to make sure he’s okay before I take off.
Rhys: Probably going to be at least 20 minutes late. We can reschedule.
Me: Eh, I’ll just do some grocery shopping while I wait.
Rhys: Oh, sweet. Thank you. Looking forward to meeting you.
Me: Me too.
Disaster number three out of the way.
I may look like the prickliest guy on the planet, but I had one helluva soft spot for thick thighs and sweet guys. That’s assuming a lot since I had yet to get a picture of the man, but rugby thighs are absolutely a thing.
As I walked into Meadow & Vine, it hit me that I probably knew who I’d be meeting.
I’d been too busy to go to a live game, but I’d been over the moon when I’d found out that Major League Rugby’s newest team had been formed in Austin.
Even though they were an expansion team, they’d gelled quickly and won three of their four preseason games.
Frankly, that one game was damn close and had been lost on a couple of bad calls.
I remembered because the captain of the Austin team was a monster of a guy, and his face had turned to stone when the ref made those calls.
He’d looked like the meanest motherfucker on the planet and, hell, if this shit worked out between the two of us, we’d have people crossing the street right and left to get away from us.
That thought probably shouldn’t have made me smile, but it did.
After grabbing my basket, I finally took note of my surroundings, which included an overwhelming number of balloons and stands of red roses. Disaster number four was me realizing that today was Valentine’s Day.
I had not considered the timing. Of course the algorithm was going to set me up on Valentine’s—that’s literally what I’d paid for.
Sure, I could’ve chosen my own date, time, and location, but I was, I dunno, trying to get into the spirit of things. There’d been a blind date option for not that much extra, so I’d hit it and let the computer spit out a pairing and a place to meet.
Brilliant, Sev.
Shit. Should I have brought some roses to this thing? At a minimum, I was starting to regret my faded Misfits tee. Walking toward the baking aisle, I pulled up the Heart2Heart email.
The fifth disaster had to be the name of the date. Or maybe it was that I was going on a date that could be named.
Severin, it’s time for your Meat Cute.
Find your match in the meat department of the downtown Austin Meadow & Vine. Your match’s first name is Rhys, and we think you’re going to be perfect for each other.
Since it was a blind date, the details were kept to a minimum to prevent either party from getting online and figuring out who their date was.
We could cancel through the app, but direct messaging only opened up the hour prior to the date.
By the time I’d completed my shopping, I’d decided if he could be twenty—now thirty—minutes late, I could cheat and look him up with the info I’d gleaned from our messages.
Ten seconds later, and I had my answer.
Rhys Dawie, captain of the Austin Falcons.
According to the stat page, he was six-four and a mouth-watering two hundred seventy-five pounds.
And I’d been right—it was the stone-faced guy I’d envisioned.
Jesus, he looked like he could kill me with his thumbs.
As I was lusting over pictures of a sweaty Rhys running over other huge men, my hearing processor beeped.
Ah. Disaster number six, just as I was looking forward to this thing.
I’d been stuck with a cochlear implant after a bout of meningitis right as I was entering cooking school. I should’ve gotten two, but my insurance would only pay for one. It sucked hardcore, but I’d eventually made it work.
“Se-Se-Severin?”
I’d just replaced the battery and knew I’d left the house with a full charge, so who knew what the fuck was going on.
“Se—verin?”
I mean, sure, I was glad to be able to hear and communicate with people more easily, but it wasn’t great.
I for sure missed listening to music without the tinny, bad-robot sound of the implant.
I’d started learning sign language, but between relearning how to process sound and starting Escoffier a year after I’d wanted to, I hadn’t really given it the focus it deserved.
I halted my pacing of the meat department, distracted by the biggest bone-in rib eye I’d ever seen. God, it was beautiful. I reached for it just as a large hand gripped my shoulder.
Not gonna lie, I may have screeched like a little girl. It was hard to tell, though, since my processor was not cooperating. I spun around and a massive man with fluffy golden retriever hair who looked like he’d been rolling around in the grass stepped back.
Ah, hell. That was Rhys Dawie, alright.
“Se-Severin?”
I read my name off his lips, though there must’ve been something funny about the way he’d said it because his face was going red.
“I’m Rhys Dawie. S—orry about the rug-rugby gear. I didn’t wa—nt to be any later.”
Some of that cut out, but it didn’t matter because I already knew who he was.
“You’re Rhys, right?” I asked, and he nodded. “Am I pronouncing that correctly? Rhys as in Reece’s Pieces?”
He nodded, grimacing.
Fuck, I was probably yelling.
“Apologies if I’m being loud. My ear went off.”
“Wha-wha-what?”
God, it was so hard to understand what he was saying. I was terrible at lipreading, but I could usually pick out the easy words. I pulled my processor away from my ear, showed it to him, then reattached it.
“I have severe hearing loss, and my battery needs to be replaced.”
“Can you hear me now?”
I tilted my hand side to side. “A little. I’m having a hard time understanding you, though.”
“Sor-sor-sor—” He stopped and took a deep breath. “So—orry, I stu—tter when I’m nervous.”
I laughed. “Well, this is a disaster. I can’t hear and you can’t speak.”
Rhys took another step back. He was still in his rugby gear and I’d been right about his thighs. The way he looked off to the side, though, clued me into the fact that… shit. I might’ve said the wrong thing.
In fact, I know I did.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t hear very well and if you’ve got a stutter… I won’t be able to understand you until I get my batteries situated. I wasn’t making fun of you, I promise. Super promise.”
He nodded, but still said nothing. We stood there for a moment, completely awkward, and I let out a sigh. Probably a little more loudly than I should have.
“Tell you what, I think you’re a handsome guy, and if the tattoos haven’t scared you off, maybe we can reschedule our date.”
He made a pained expression, then looked around, carefully.
“Is something wrong? I can’t tell,” I said, looking around as well, though I didn’t know what for.
He made a quiet down gesture with his hands, which irritated me. I hadn’t waited an extra thirty minutes for this guy to be told to quiet down. I mean, I probably was still yelling, but he knew I wasn’t doing it on purpose.
My equipment died for real this time and I cursed under my breath. Ripping the processor off my head, I shoved it in my pocket.
Fuck. Blessed silence. Well, not complete silence, but at least everything had been reduced to gentle background noise.
I pulled up my phone and opened up the Notes app.
Sorry, I can’t hear anything now. Maybe this isn’t the best match.
I shoved my phone into his hands, and he read the words quickly, knitting his eyebrows together. He typed out a response, his thick thumbs ridiculous on the delicate screen.
I’m not that well known, but I am the captain of Austin’s new rugby team, and you were yelling about us being on a date.
I took the phone back, read his words, and shook my head.
Are you in the closet? Is this some kind of experiment for you?
He thinned his lips, shook his head, and turned to go. DAWIE was in big, bold letters across his back, accompanied by the number seven.
Shit. I probably could’ve been a little more discreet. I called after him, but he didn’t turn around.
“Wait. Are you pretending not to hear me? That’s rich.”
His shoulders tightened, but he kept walking. Yeah, I probably deserved that.
Looking at the massive steak in my hand, I went ahead and tossed it into the basket.
“Fuck it. I’m going to make this for myself.”