Chapter 5
FIVE
KITTY
LATER THAT WEEK
Playlist recommendation:
Me, Myself & I - G-Eazy, Bebe Rexha
“Who’s your hall pass?”
I smirked at my current situationship. “You sure you want to know?”
“Why not?” Brad Trelaney queried before taking a deep sip of Rioja.
Though handsome enough for multiple dates, there was something about him that consistently got on my nerves.
Whether it was his insistence on doing that mouth-swilling thing with wine and making a shit ton of noise in the process or the fact he sniffed a lot—I’d no reason to suss that he’d lied about having sinus problems.
Neev, my sister, accused me of being too suspicious for this era’s dating marketplace.
I thought she wasn’t suspicious enough.
If a man sniffed that much, then he was prone to colds. Did I want any potential children to have a compromised immune system from day one? Either that or he partook in Columbian marching powder on the reg… and an active addiction didn’t exactly get my juices flowing.
“You can never compare with my hall pass,” I teased, enjoying the annoyance that he quickly banished from his expression. What could I say? He’d swilled that Rioja extra loud tonight. “He doesn’t exist outside of the pages of a book.”
He sneered. “Nothing to compete with so why would I care?”
“Not in real life, no,” I mused, but my smile formed slower than frozen maple syrup.
I caught his eye. Watched him watch my mouth. Practically salivated when his nostrils flared in irritation…
“Who is he?”
Snap.
I had him right where I wanted him.
“Someone who can get me to hit the big O without even touching me,” I tested him.
My other sister, Róisín, said it wasn’t normal to test dates.
I also disagreed with her.
“Well, if you’re not going to tell me his name, then what’s the point of playing this dumb fucking game?”
“Someone’s cranky.” My finger shaped the stem of the wineglass. “He’s a character in a book. His name is Jack DuBois.” His brow furrowed, but before he could disdain my tastes, I continued, “Anyway, it’s my turn to ask you a question.”
“Maybe I won’t answer.”
I rolled my eyes.
The server broke into our conversation/argument by dropping off some patatas bravas and a bunch of other tapas. I had no problem with Spanish food, loved it even, but I didn’t enjoy the tiny portions or the dishes’ inauthentic vibes.
Brad, despite claiming to have visited Spain, had zero idea he’d forked up trash. But then, he worried about his macros and micros more than flavor.
Another turnoff.
What was it with guys today? Maybe I’d been around my brothers too much, men who put away metric tons of food on a daily basis, but fuck, I missed a dude who feasted. Unashamedly. Wholeheartedly.
“You sure you should be eating that?”
I stabbed the potato with my fork. Extra hard.
“The sardines are protein-rich…”
Slowly, my eyes locked on his, I raised the potato to my mouth, dragged the tines against my teeth, then chewed on it. Only when I’d swallowed did I drawl, “My macros are my own business. So, are you going to ask me a question or what?”
“How many times do you work out in a week?”
Wow, he really was choosing death today, huh?
“Every time I work. Yesterday, I clocked in over twenty thousand steps.” I pinned him with a stare. “I recommend we get off this topic before I skewer you with this fork instead of the potatoes.”
“Your turn,” he croaked.
“Is there anyone on this planet that you’d date in a heartbeat?”
His frown made an instantaneous appearance. “Like a celebrity?”
I considered this my standard third-date question.
There was rarely a fourth…
“Nah. I mean an ex.”
I watched his eyes shift a fraction to the left.
“I’m not interested in anyone,” he retorted calmly.
Too calmly.
I sniffed a rat.
“An ex. A friend. An old hookup—”
“Why are you asking about this?”
A-ha!
Not hesitation, but annoyance. Aggravation.
Bingo.
“Know what a placeholder is?”
The glass of wine hovered in front of his lips, the trajectory freezing as he stared at me.
When he didn’t answer, I dropped the undercooked potato back into the terracotta dish. “Do you, Brad?”
A nerve in his chin flexed. “I know what a placeholder is.”
“Good!” I winked. “I wasn’t born to be one.”
Declaration made, I retrieved a twenty from my purse—not a straight fifty percent of the bill, but I wasn’t willing to pay forty bucks for undercooked potatoes in ketchup and a Rioja that tasted like sawdust when he’d picked this joint.
Gag.
Thanks to a Mexican BFF in college, I knew my shit about Latino food, and in Beatriz’s words, this place was malísimo.
Bewildered, he stared at the cash I tucked under my plate. “What are you doing?”
“Leaving.”
“Oh. I’ll get the bill—”
“No. I’m leaving. You’re staying.”
“What? We were supposed to go back to my place!”
“I don’t think so.”
As predicted, that was when he turned nasty. A sneer puckered his lips, making his handsome face ugly. “Three dates with only a kiss at the end of the night, Catriona? What is this—eighth grade?”
I tapped my chin. “It’s called proper time management. I waited until you confirmed you were an asshole. Only decent guys with game get past second base.”
Before he could attempt to insult me with something original like ‘fat/stupid/insert misogynistic adjective bitch,’ I shimmied in my dress to make sure the skirt swung around my ankles, pivoted on my heel, and tossed over my shoulder, “Lose my number, moron.”
“Fat bitch. As if—”
Sigh.
“Try for some originality if you want to hook up with anyone this century, Brad.”
I strolled out of the restaurant, the fire in my soul telling me that his focus had locked in on my so-called fat ass, and smirked at nothing once I was on the street.
Facing a rather empty night ahead of me, I looked at the crossroads, as this joint sat on the corner of two blocks, and decided to take the scenic route home.
Sure, I could go now and have Neev tell me about the latest viral show as she bitched about her coursework and Ma could fatten me up with her colcannon or…
I took the path back to the hospital.
This outfit would be wasted on the guy I was visiting but hell, he needed to see something pretty today.
When my phone buzzed, I peered at the screen.
Lara: How’s the date going?
Unsurprised that she was checking on me, I replied to my BFF:
Me: I walked out
Lara: Why?
Me: He sniffed a lot.
Lara:
Lara: Only you, Kitty
Me:
Me: I’m thinking about going home and correcting Wikipedia’s article on narcissism. I might upload his picture and call him out publicly.
Lara: You’re still doing that?!
Me: Not as much as I used to and only when I’m annoyed.
Me: It’d be a service to womankind. I’m a martyr for my gender
Lara: You’re such a weirdo.
Lara: I’ll tell George he was right about this one.
Me: When isn’t he?
Lara: I swear we should let him pick our dates. We send him a picture and he can tell us to swipe left or right.
Me: Millie was lucky when she snagged him.
Lara: Damn straight.
No, I wasn’t jealous. Certainly not about the multiple pregnancies. Just that my besties were so in sync and made it seem effortless while the rest of us had been cast adrift post-college.
Texts and calls were the only way we got together since Lara had moved to Vermont and George and Millie had returned to his hometown of Seattle. As for Beatriz, well, we’d lost her before any of us had even become nurses.
Because I couldn’t go hang out with my long-distance friends and had zero desire to hit up a Pilates class, I continued on the path to the hospital.
The receptionist frowned when she saw me. “You only left forty minutes ago, Kitty. Not another failed date!”
“Sharon, if you saw what I wasted this dress on, you wouldn’t be asking why I came back.”
“Barney drives me crazy, but I’m glad we’re married and I only have to hear about the dating scene from you guys.”
“I’d be glad too. The current dating pool makes amoebae look sexy. Anyway, I’m visiting someone.”
“It’s not exactly visiting hours, Kitty.”
“I work here!”
With a tut, she shoved a visitor’s pass at me. “You’re incorrigible.”
“Stay the boss-ass bitch you are, Shaz.”
Hearing her chuckle as I wandered toward the bank of elevators, I hit the floor for the sharks—the people who paid millions to treat this like a hotel/hospital.
I’d only visited this area by chance a couple years ago, when a VIP in the ER had been transferred to this section and had left her delicious Birkin bag by accident in my department.
That was how you knew you were rich—you could lose a Birkin bag and not care about its location.
Attempted suicide be damned, I’d give a fuck where my $100k ostrich Birkin was. Hell, I’d want to be buried with the SOB.
I watched the monitor as the elevator drifted toward the high-rollers’ section and mumbled, “Have to pry that bastard out of my cold, dead hands.”
That earned me a perplexed look from some stranger I shared the elevator with, but I stared straight through them.
Ever since the Birkin incident, I’d visited this floor a few times a week and it was why I’d noticed Custanzu Valentini in one of the private rooms.
When I arrived, I flashed the pass at the nurses’ station and earned myself a wolf whistle from one of the girls on duty.
“Are you overdressed, or are we underdressed, Kitty?”
I winked. “You could never be underdressed, Nina.”
Heading to the swankiest of swank suites with a wave, I knocked on the door and pushed inward.
When Currau Valentini’s head rocked on his pillow away from what had to be a gripping rerun of CSI: New York, his eyes widened.
I swiped a hand over my silhouette—the skintight, ankle-length, racer-neck dress that split at the back, tumbled curls, strawberry makeup, and hooker heels. “Yes, Currau, I wasted this on one of your gender.”
His nose wrinkled at the bridge when I slapped my purse at his bedside. “Wasted?”