Chapter 1
My date was picking his teeth with a steak knife.
It wasn't a quick thing either. No in, out, done. He was halfway to giving himself a root canal right here in the middle of the restaurant.
The best part was when he struck gold and dug out a bit of food.
He'd give it a thorough inspection and then pop it back in his mouth.
Maybe I was wrong about it being the best part.
None of this could qualify as the best of anything.
I didn't know how it could qualify as the best when it seemed like increasingly dark shades of awful.
The dating world knew no connection to logic. This had to be the worst part.
He'd ordered the largest steak on the menu and requested it "blue and mooing." There was something about the purposeful wink he'd shot in my direction as he'd said those words, as if his capacity for red meat was somehow indicative of his penis size.
But I couldn't get past the dental exam.
I watched, my fingers frozen around the stem of my wineglass, while he engaged in this ritual for full minutes at a time.
My first instinct was to drown the flames of this date with Pinot Grigio, but I was oddly entranced by this guy's knife-swallowing act. I didn't want to be caught unaware when he sliced off a chunk of his tongue.
In the two months since diving headfirst into the dating game, I'd learned one thing: it shouldn't be this difficult.
The human race had millions of years of existence on its side, and it wasn't supposed to be so complicated to find a decent guy.
That was all I wanted: a decent guy. I didn't need a prince, a white knight, a billionaire, an athlete, or even an architect.
Another thing I'd learned: I wasn't asking for much.
I wanted a guy who knew how to wear a pair of jeans and fix a leaky faucet and enjoyed big family dinners on Sundays.
I wanted a guy who returned text messages and remembered birthdays and never made shady comments about his exes being crazy clingers.
He didn't have to be perfect. He could leave his dirty socks and underwear right next to the laundry hamper and keep porn on his computer.
Hell, I loved porn and didn't even own a proper hamper.
And another lesson: I was convinced I'd met all the men metro Boston had to offer.
There was the wandering millennials, the affluent assholes, the man-shaped children, the chronically misogynistic mansplainers.
I wasn't positive where the knife swallower fit in this phylum but I knew these savage teeth-cleaning rituals met the criteria for automatic disqualification.
Next, please.
"What do you do, Margot?" he asked, his gaze trained on the half-chewed bit of god-only-knew-what on the tip of his knife.
Since meeting him at the restaurant an hour ago, he'd managed to butcher my name into an endless string of nonsense. Maisey, Margot, Melanie, Mackenzie. Without my name and profile pic front and center on the dating app in which we'd matched, it seemed he was lost in the sauce.
Damn dating apps. As promised, I was going along with this crazy scheme of my mother's. She'd signed me up, loaded the photos, wrote the pithy profile, and breathlessly waited for me to meet the man of my dreams.
Easy enough, right?
Not so fast.
The presumed anonymity of the internet stripped back layers of formality and pleasantry—and humanity.
This algorithm-fueled existence reduced many men—not all, but a good share—into vagina-seeking drones who led with their penises and defended themselves with a war chest of insults.
Despite my mother's insistence she could survive a dick pic or twenty, I'd shielded her from all manner of messaging. It was the Wild West out there.
"Landscape architect," I said with a smile. I'd told him this during our first message exchange but I figured it was filed away with all the other useful information I'd shared.
Like my name.
He glanced at me and then returned his attention to the bar on the other side of the restaurant. He'd been eyeing the busty bartender since we walked in. "What is that again?"
"I design and build outdoor environments in residential settings," I replied. I couldn't scrub the smile from my face. Whether blessing or curse, I was a serial smiler. "I specialize in roof gardens and sustainable design."
"That sounds like good money," he said. "What do you pull in per year?"
Lord have mercy.
"I do all right for myself," I said, a stiff grin pointed at my dish of ravioli. "You're in the fire detector business, right?"
"Sure am." He plucked a sprig of rosemary from his plate, sniffed it, and tossed it down.
It landed on the middle of the bright white tablecloth like an herbaceous casualty of this skirmish.
"I was in Burlington today. Installed a whole floor on one of those new business parks.
The building codes these days, I'll tell ya, they have a unit every few feet.
Not that I'm complaining. More units, more money. And I've got a lot of units."
He leaned forward and wiggled his eyebrows as though the mere mention of cash would light my panties on fire. Unfortunately for him, money was good for heating my house but not my lady bits.
"Impressive," I said, forcing another smile.
I took no issue with the pride he gained from his work or earning a comfortable living.
It was the shallow arrogance soaking his every word and gesture.
He was pleased with himself but got more jollies out of other people being pleased with him.
"Really impressive. I love that for you. "
He jerked his chin in my direction, a smug grin pulling at his lips.
"Yeah, but I don't like talking about finances.
That's pretty far down the road. I'm not interested in commitment.
I'm not looking to wife anyone up, you know?
" He lifted his rum and Coke, sipping while he stared at me.
"You're cool with that, right? You're doing the casual thing, right? "
There was a long-suffering sigh gathering in my chest, a roll of impatient thunder.
I managed a quick, "Mmhmm" and shoved a ravioli in my mouth.
It was big and cheesy and delicious, and I took my time with it.
To my mind, some tasty pasta could drown out the teeth-picking, name-forgetting, boob-ogling, commitment-dodging disaster of this evening.
There were no two ways about it—this was a disaster.
He'd seemed fine in his messages. Funny and interesting, if not a little self-absorbed.
But that was the trouble of chatting in an app: anyone could manage some amusing conversation for minutes here and there.
Being affable and ordinary in person was a different ball game.
Dinner wrapped up without too many more comments about money or relationships, and I quickly shut down all talk of dessert. I didn't trust myself to share a slice of chocolate cake with this guy without wanting to gargle with muriatic acid. And let's be honest, I didn't want to share my cake.
The waiter cleared the table—including the steak knife, thank god—and left the check. Being the independent woman I was, I gestured toward it. "I'd be happy to pick this up," I said.
With a flippant shrug, he pushed the folio toward me. "Thanks," he said.
While I poked through my bag for my wallet, he snatched it back, opened it, and inspected each charge.
"I'm going to Aruba next month," he mumbled while he worked his thumbnail between his front teeth. Player really needed a dentist. "Me and my boys, we're all going." He tore his gaze from the bill and stared at my cleavage. "Ever been to Aruba? You might be able to pull off a bikini."
Aaaaaaaaand we're done.
As a rule, I wasn't fake. I didn't bullshit.
I didn't go out of my way to make people aware that I disliked them either.
I couldn't see how that helped anyone. But I wanted to smack this boy upside the head and tell him to find some manners.
It wasn't that I couldn't take a compliment because that statement had no markings of a compliment.
"Wow," I panted, plucking my credit card from my wallet's front pocket.
I didn't bother tugging my sweater up. If he was going to objectify my body, that was about him, not me.
I wasn't hiding myself because he couldn't have breasts in his sight line without being disgusting about it.
I tapped my card on the table. "I'll just get the waiter's attention for this and then we can be on our way. "
"Nah, I changed my mind. It's on me," he declared, reaching into his pocket and producing a card of his own. He chucked it toward the center of the table. "What kind of man lets a chick pay?"
I blinked several times, not understanding this tug-of-war.
"We'll split it," I said, twisting my voice into that perky, breezy tone I used when my clients freaked out halfway through a project because their yard looked nothing like the pitch designs. I sounded perky and breezy but you can believe I rolled my eyes like a motherfucker.
The waiter appeared and I shoved the cards into his hands. "Here. Here you go. All set."
"Great," he drawled. "I'll be right back."
It didn't take long to process our payments, and I added a healthy gratuity to my total. This guy seemed the type to leave a forty-nine-cent tip and a pompous comment about the knives not meeting his sharpness standards.
"You're a sports girl, aren't you, Margene?" he asked, sliding his copy of the receipt into his wallet with care.
That he recalled this detail but not my name was amazing.
"A bit, yeah," I hedged. I didn't want to agree to anything.
"There's a bar around the corner." Bahhhh. His old-school Boston townie accent flared to life with that comment. "Good spot to catch the game."
Of course, I wanted to catch the game but there was no justification for spending another minute with this guy. With my luck, he'd get the wrong idea and stick his tongue down my throat. Couldn't have that.
"I wish I could." I stood and shrugged on my raincoat. "My dog has been home alone all day. I have to get back and take him out for a walk."
"You have a dog? What kind?"
I swallowed a sigh. My dog was in my dating app photo with me.
Truly, he was everywhere. My holiday cards, my Instagram, my lock screen, my key chain.
Everywhere. "A Boston Terrier," I said, moving toward the door.
"He has some health problems and requires medication at a certain time, so I really should go. It was great meeting you."
He grabbed my shoulder—despite my obvious movement away from him—and pulled me into a one-armed hug. "Yeah, you're not too bad."
Not too bad. I couldn't tell whether he meant that as some sort of sarcastic endearment or he was being transparent about his assessment of me. "Mmhmm," I murmured, shaking out of his hold. My mother wasn't going to hear the end of it for swiping on this guy. "Thanks for, um—thanks."
We paused outside the restaurant, me pretend-busy with finding my keys and him tapping out a message on his phone.
I smiled up at him, feigning some exaggerated frazzle as I rooted around in my bag.
My fingers were folded around my keys but I wanted him to leave first. We couldn't walk together in painful, awkward silence until one of us reached our destination.
Couldn't do it. I needed to be free of this man and I'd do whatever I had to do to make my escape.
"Okay, yeah," he murmured, flashing the peace sign. "I'm out."
He took two backward steps in the direction I meant to go. Forcing down a groan, I waved at him. "Have a good night."
Walking five minutes out of my way to get back to my truck was worth it.
A few extra steps never hurt and it gave me a chance to burn off a bit of frustration.
I ducked into a corner market and bought a black cherry seltzer for the thirty-minute drive from downtown Boston to my aunt's house in Beverly.
I'd lived there for several years but it was still Aunt Francesca's house. There was some whomp-whomp associated with being thirty-four and subletting from your aunt. It didn't matter that she'd moved to New Mexico or that I'd renovated the place from top to bottom. It wasn't mine.
It was quiet here in the suburbs and I liked it. I got my fill of the city during the day and I liked coming home to my quiet neighborhood. The driveway helped too. Parking in Boston was on par with an Amazing Race challenge, and there was nothing more comforting than a dedicated spot.
Slowing as I approached the stone bungalow, I noticed a string of box vans and pickup trucks on the opposite side of the street. People streamed in and out of the old Cape-style home, and every interior light was illuminated.
The house had been vacant for almost a year and neglected for several decades before that.
It needed a ton of work. I knew because I lived across the street, but I'd also tried to convince my architect friend Riley to take it on as a pet project.
He declined. He was busy working on multimillion-dollar mansions and centuries-old brownstones and didn't have time for a cookie-cutter Cape with wood paneling.
Not that I blamed him. If given the choice between a high-budget roof garden in Beacon Hill and a tiny backyard redesign in Marshfield, I was taking the roof garden and I wasn't even going to complain about parking.
Now it looked like a team of flippers were fixing up the Cape.
With any luck, they weren't tearing it down to the ground.
More and more, house flippers razed houses rather than working with the original structures.
They'd rip it all down, build on the old foundation, and leave the character and charm at the curb.
One of the men waved from the sidewalk. It was late, and though it was March and spring should've been springing, the temperature hovered around freezing. But he seemed immune to this cold snap in his jeans and hoodie. I lifted my hand in response before turning into my driveway.
I didn't have the energy for neighborly chatter tonight. Once the weekend rolled around, I'd bake some Portuguese sweet bread and introduce myself. With any luck, they'd spill the beans on their plans for the Cape.