Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORA
Text conversation with UNKNOWN NUMBER
Hello, secret fake girlfriend.
This is Cormac.
I thought it was my other secret fake boyfriend.
Dammit. I was hoping I was special.
Did your dad tell you that? ;-)
No, your mom did.
OMG, you made a joke that was actually funny. Stop the presses.
Of course you’d laugh at a pedestrian joke.
;-)
Are you free on Friday at noon for the key handover?
Yep
I’ll have the manual on Cookie ready.
It’s Friday, less than a week after my mother’s wedding, and I’m listening to the radio as I drive to Cormac’s house.
I am ex-hausted.
I suspect I will only be more exhausted after reviewing Cormac’s manual for feeding his dog. Knowing him, it’s probably fifty pages long, with footnotes.
I should probably pay close attention to it, though, to make up for what I’m putting him through.
Our “ruinous double date” has been set for Thursday evening. It’s rare for both José and I to take the same evening off, but I’ll make an exception. It’s important for us to have our Scooby-Doo moment soon.
Pansy has texted me at least three dozen times over the past week. Some of them have been throwaway texts—dumb memes; dozens of variations on hi, hello, and how are you—and the rest were questions about my fictitious relationship with Cormac and unwelcome prods about Pads by Pansy.
I told my friends about the endless messages, and Hannah pointed out, “At least she’s not texting you anonymous threats anymore.”
True. But at least her anonymous messages required neither a direct nor immediate response. I have to keep the peace with Pansy until I figure out a way to destroy her, so I couldn’t outright ignore her.
Which is why I made the executive decision to offer Pads by Pansy the chance to present a proposal to The Ginger Station next week on a complete redecoration of our bathrooms—the least expensive and intrusive project I could think of.
She’s coming in on Wednesday.
José is going to have to watch the pitch with me, and if it totally sucks, which I have no doubt it will, I’m going to make him tell her no.
Maybe her reaction, which is sure to be unhinged, will force him to see reason, and the double date will no longer be a necessity.
Or maybe he’ll think her proposal is brilliant, the double date will pass without a blip, and I’ll have to actually hire her. If she steps in and treats everyone on staff like garbage, surely José will finally wake up and smell the vanilla perfume.
Speaking of José, things have been off between us all week. He did apologize for bailing on the wedding early, though, and acted like he was genuinely interested in getting to know Cormac. (BS. He totally suspects something is up and is trying to prove it, the same way I would.)
He’s the one who made the plans for our double date.
We’re meeting him and Pansy at the Laughing Leaf—a vegetarian restaurant in Apple Ridge, a small town about forty minutes south of Asheville.
My parents took me there for apple picking a few times when I was a kid, and also to choose a Christmas tree.
At the time, it had felt steeped with magic.
According to one of Pansy’s eleventy-billion texts messages, she has other “fun” plans for the night.
(When I told Hannah, she replied, Oooh. Orgy?)
José stopped talking about Cormac after filling me in on the double date itinerary, and I was more than pleased to put a pin in the subject, but the two of us haven’t been right with each other.
Usually we build off each other’s ideas like we’re a two-person improv team, each of us elevating the other’s ideas to brilliance.
That’s how we came up with the plan for our slightly savory Thanksgiving special last year—sage and cranberry with a hint of pepper.
But lately we haven’t been gelling at all.
Yesterday, we got into a disagreement about which of Silver Star’s beers to feature on our guest tap for fall.
Pumpkin ale was an obvious pick, but José kept making plugs for the porter, which I know even Liam, who brewed both of them, doesn’t like.
It felt like he was arguing just for the sake of arguing.
I pucker my lips at the thought and turn up the volume on the radio and crank open my window, enjoying the warm breeze.
“And now, a single from our own local band, Garbage Fire,” says the radio announcer.
I smile as the song comes on—one of several that Rob wrote about Sophie. The other day I heard it on a satellite radio station. Their reach is steadily expanding.
Beneath Rob’s voice and the strum of his guitar, I catch the thrumming of Cormac’s playing, steady and sure as a heartbeat. My focus latches onto it, and suddenly the rest of the song fades into obscurity.
I have to wonder how Cormac feels about the band’s growing success. He obviously didn’t join because he loves attention, so it must be something else that does it for him.
I’m surprised by how much I’d like to ask. After all of these years, I’m interested, yet again, in figuring out what’s going on in Cormac Peebles’s overactive gray matter.
The song is still playing when my GPS alerts me that I’ve arrived.
I glance out the window and take in the little white bungalow with red shutters.
It’s tidy, but the tree in the front lawn is overgrown, and the paint looks like it could use refreshing.
The house is surrounded by a tall, new-looking wooden fence.
I reach for the door handle, then pull my hand back and lower the visor instead so I can survey myself in the mirror.
My face is shiny, and my lipstick probably faded away two hours ago.
It shouldn’t matter. This is Cormac, for goodness’ sake. He owns at least five novelty video-game-inspired T-shirts. He’s the last person who would care about whether someone looks stylish or put-together. But I haven’t forgotten what he said to me at the wedding.
My cousin Hazel is one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met. But when I offered to set him up with her, he said—
She’s not prettier than you.
As much as I hate to admit it—and oh boy, I hate it a lot—I don’t want him to change his mind.
So yeah, I blot my forehead and swipe on some fresh lipstick.
When I open the gate, a deep-chested bark booms from within the house, muffled by the thick walls typical of all of the century-old houses in Asheville’s older neighborhoods.
It occurs to me that I never asked Cormac what kind of dog Cookie is. I assumed from the name that she was little—possibly one of those neurotic, fluffy white dogs everyone seems to own—but the sound coming out of the house suggests she’s huge.
The barking continues but grows more distant, as if Cormac has ushered her into a different room.
Sweat beads at the back of my neck as I approach the red door and knock.
It opens so abruptly, my knocking fist almost punches Cormac in the chest.
A surprised laugh rattles from my mouth, then cuts off.
Cormac looks different.
He’s wearing a white button-up shirt, rolled up at the forearms—bad for the weather, good for the eyes—linen pants, and a new pair of horn-rimmed glasses that give new meaning to the phrase slutty little glasses. His hair has been freshly trimmed too.
He looks like a sexy poet. Or an intense, unfeasibly sexy scientist in a movie with atmospheric cinematography and tons of monologues.
I feel a hot flush stealing over me.
No, not happening. Nope.
I am not attracted to Cormac. I am repelled by him.
Well, repelled is a strong word. But if I found him attractive, surely I’d know by now.
I mean, yes, there was that little blip in high school, but I stopped finding him interesting like that when I was seventeen.
That was well over a decade ago, and anyway, I found plenty of questionable people attractive back then. Give a girl a break.
And yet, my eyes keep gravitating to his forearms. They look really solid. Like you could bounce a quarter off them.
I can almost hear Cormac telling me, You could bounce a quarter off anything solid, Nora.
And the world truly has transformed, because instead of annoying me, the thought makes me smile.
“Nora?” he says, jostling me back to the present.
Cookie issues another bark from within the interior of the house.
“Sorry, it’s the heat.” I wave a hand dramatically in front of my face. “It’s gotten to me.”
“Come in.” He takes my arm and leads me into the house, shutting the door behind me.
The front room is large and airy, equipped with a red sectional couch, built-in bookshelves, a flat-screen TV bracketed to the wall, and an old-fashioned fireplace that has hopefully been blocked off, since a plush dog bed sits nestled inside of it.
Cookie continues to bark, until Cormac sighs and grabs a remote control propped up on the mantel and presses a button.
She instantly stops.
“What’d you do?” I gasp. “Zap her?”
He looks offended. “I don’t torment people into doing what I want.”
“Says the man who has suckered me into dog-sitting a demon.”
His lips twitch before settling into a reluctant smile. “Is that really the tack you want to take right now? I’ve agreed to the double date.”
The man has a point.
He continues, “I triggered a chew to be deposited into a translucent chute in the spare bedroom. She knew it would be released if she stopped barking.” He waves toward the adjoining room, which has a big round table with mismatched wooden chairs pulled up to it.
A little notebook sits on top. “It’s all there in the manual.
Take a seat. I’ll get you something to drink. ”
I sit, feeling unmoored. Here’s more evidence of Cormac’s superior brainpower. His whole house is probably rigged up with little tricks. “Do you do research on your dog?”
“Of course not,” he scoffs as he heads into the kitchen, which is connected to the dining area by yet another open archway. “I do research for her.”
My gaze lowers to the thick notebook in front of me.
I suppose the answers lie within. I nudge it with my finger, then flip through it. The pages are covered in messy cursive. My finger traces the loops as I try to work my brain around this—a man who loves his dog so much that he wrote a whole manual to help someone else take care of her.
I glance at him through the opening into the kitchen, feeling a sudden lump of emotion in my throat. “You may be a genius, but at least you have bad handwriting.”
He smiles as he opens the refrigerator. “That might hurt if I hadn’t seen your handwriting and didn’t know it’s just as bad.”
I can’t help but smile at him. I’m not sorry I’m here. The brewery is usually my safe space, but lately it feels off-balance.
Cormac glances over. “Your choices are water or your own nonalcoholic ginger beer.”
My smile stretches wider. “You buy my ginger beer?”
He peers at me, light from the kitchen window winking off his new glasses.
“Will you think less of me if I say my father gave it to me for free?”
“Yes. I was about to be impressed with your good taste.”
He shakes his head. “I gave up on impressing you a long time ago.”
It’s all I can do to keep the surprise off my face.
Never have I ever gotten the impression that Cormac cared the slightest bit about impressing me.
Or anyone, for that matter, other than his AP Physics teacher and his one and only high school friend, Kenji, who was also a genius and sold his first app for millions when he was nineteen years old.
When I was nineteen, I got a C-minus in bowling. Bowling.
Cormac is still watching me, waiting for my answer.
“Uh…I’ll take the water.”
His eyebrows wing up, but he doesn’t provide any commentary as he pours my water and brings it over. I thumb through the guide, doing a commendable job of keeping my laughter to myself.
Cookie will eat her pills if they’re given to her with a spoon of peanut butter. But it has to be the probiotic Buddy Butter with the dog on the label.
“You really love this dog, huh?”
“Of course,” he says without hesitation, leaning against the wall and crossing his arms. “But I trust you with her. I have it on good authority that you’d be an exemplary pet owner.”
I take a sip of water to hide my expression. It’s charming, seeing a guy get this worked up over any woman, including a canine one.
“Is it time for me to meet the little hell-raiser?” I pause, glancing around the space, which is tidy but features several interesting eccentricities that bear further investigation. “Actually, I think I was promised a meet-and-greet with a robot too.”
He shifts against the wall, and my attention is again drawn to his forearms. Have they always looked like that, or am I just weirdly horny? The breakup with real Marco wasn’t even that long ago, not that he’d been too exciting.
“You don’t think I tucked them all away to save them from you?” Cormac asks.
I meet his wry gaze, and he laughs and adjusts his glasses.
“New glasses?”
He shrugs self-consciously. “Cookie destroyed the other ones.”
I thumb through the handwritten guide again, smiling. “Is that what I have to look forward to?”
“You don’t wear glasses, but you might want to keep an eye on your shoes, purse, and anything else you care about.”
“Let me guess. That’s in the manual too.”
“Of course. I believe in being thorough.”
He doesn’t say it in a sexy way, but the word is inherently sexy. Or maybe I’m just turned on by the thought of a man who doesn’t like leaving anything half done. No dishes half washed, no tasks half finished, no orgasms half achieved.
He peers at me for a second, almost as if he can read my mind, and then holds out a hand to me. “Come on.”
For a confusing second, I think he’s about to lead me into his bedroom, but he just helps me—unnecessarily—out of the chair and leads me down the hall to a closed door.
As soon as we stop in front of it, something bumps forcefully into the door from the other side, shaking it.
I give him a sidelong look, taking in his easy posture. “What kind of dog is Cookie?”
“She’s a corgi,” he says.
Another deep-chested bark booms through the door.
“I thought corgis were small.”
He quirks his brow. “So are you, and you’re still capable of making a lot of noise.”
My lips part.
Before I can gather myself and think of an appropriate clapback, Cormac opens the door, and a furry orange ball of energy barrels into him.