Chapter 1 #2
It’s the dream, though. Even if my bank account sometimes reflects my older brother’s concern that this is just an expensive hobby, just like Jackson’s many intramural teams. Somehow, our younger brother’s pickleball, flag football, and basketball leagues don’t seem to drum up the same level of disapproval.
Still, I do okay enough… Enough to keep me going. To reach for the dream of days spent crafting my stories and seeing my book on the shelves of all bookstores instead of just a few indie ones in Southern California.
“In the meantime, I’m a hospice social worker. Not sure I’d want to give that up. It’s a tough job, but I love it.”
His smile dips. “All that death must be hard.”
“It’s not a giggle-fest, but it fills me up. The end is just the beginning for so many, and I get to help those left behind find their way.” I slosh out a breath at Davis, whose gaze is fixed to his phone. “What do you do again?”
“I work with your brother at No Boundaries, remember?”
That’s right, Mr. Glued To His Phone works at the new startup where Jackson is deputy chief financial officer. My love for my younger brother is unquestioned, but he’s a finance bro.
Forbes and spreadsheets are my brother’s porn. No doubt Davis shares that same predilection. I’ve interacted enough with Jackson’s finance bros to know the type. In every romance novel, Davis is the man the main character drops for the grumpy mechanic with a heart of gold.
“You must enjoy writing if you’re paying to do it.” He takes a long drag from his habanero strawberry cider.
“I do,” I say, determination tightens my expression. “Everyone needs a heart to live. Writing is mine.”
It’s something my dad says. Nolan Lane isn’t the sitcom dad with pretty speeches and sage advice outside the belief that a life without passion is not worth living.
This truth is rooted so deep inside me that it’s almost the steady beat pulsing me toward my passion.
No matter how many times the voices, both inside and outside, try to steer me away, I always come back to writing.
“I get it,” he murmurs.
“You do?” I say softly, my gaze linking with his.
Something akin to understanding glints in his dark pupils. So few people in my life seem to get this, let alone understand my passion for writing.
Davis blinks out of our tethered gazes. “Surprised you’d keep doing it, even though you don’t make a living at it.” He dips a fry he’s already bitten into the ketchup.
Eww… Double-dipper. My stomach twists at both his action and question. “Most authors don’t make enough to support themselves. A lot of us keep our day jobs to supplement.”
“You’re not George R. R. Martin or J.R.R. Tolkien level yet.”
Not a single woman or marginalized author.
Perhaps shared french fries were too hopeful for this date.
Rem lectures that my standards are too high, which is why I’m single, but there is a bare minimum.
A man who doesn’t double-dip into the joint condiment before we’ve even had our first kiss and whose writer references aren’t only white, heterosexual, cis, non-disabled men isn’t too much to ask.
He juts his chin at me. “What do you write?”
“Romance.”
“Really?” He snorts.
Brows knitted, my smile flattens. “What’s wrong with romance?”
“It’s all hitched breath and happy endings.”
“It’s about people. What drives us?—”
“Into bed,” he guffaws with a dismissive wave of his french fry.
“If you’re doing it right.” I lift a brow.
“There’s more to life than sex.”
“Said no man ever,” I retort with a huffed laugh.
Challenge flashes in his eyes, and his mouth flexes into a teasing grin. “Someone’s judgmental.”
“Says the man that judges an entire genre of novels that he’s never read.”
His forehead creases. “What makes you think I’ve never read a romance novel?”
“Have you?”
He leans back. “Well…”
“Just as I thought.” I pick up my drink.
He grabs another fry from the basket. “Romance has just never appealed to me. I prefer to read things with more substance.”
A scowl forms on my face. “But you’ve never read a romance.”
“I know what I like. I don’t need to try something to confirm that.” He dips his fry and then bites it in half.
“But we’re not talking about you liking it, we’re talking about you not liking it…
About you denigrating an entire genre, one that makes billions annually, without having read a single romance novel.
You don’t need to try peanut butter to confirm you like Nutella, but you do need to try it to confirm you don’t like it. ” I motion wildly between us.
The corners of his mouth quirk. “Your brother says you’re choosy.”
“Excuse me?” Face scrunched, I tilt my head.
“Do you go on a date with every man who shows interest?” He dips his half-eaten fry back into the ketchup.
“Of course not. What does that have to do with anything?”
“If we follow your logic, how do you know you wouldn’t like to date them if you don’t go on a date with them?” He gestures with his fry before tossing it into his mouth.
My jaw slackens. Is he serious? These are two different things. Not to mention, staring longingly at his phone for most of this date and only asking me questions about myself to dismiss or insult me doesn’t scream I’m interested .
“You may be missing out on someone who gives you hitched breath and the happy ending you crave.”
“Who says I crave those things?” I purse my lips. “What has my brother been telling you?”
“A few things… Also, you write romance, and I’m sure you have an entire bookshelf filled with swoony page-turners.”
My mouth opens and then closes. He’s not wrong. But he doesn’t get to paint me as the lonely spinster—the patriarchy’s word, not mine—who writes happy endings and dreams of the day she gets hers. Even if he’s sort of right. Emphasis on sort of.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting a happy ending.”
“Our happiness shouldn’t be contingent on another person, especially when most people fail you or won’t always be there.” He leans back and his lopsided smile flattens into a firm line. A wisp of sadness shades his expression.
I bite back the urge to say, “Who hurt you?” The wounded male main character whose heart just needs a plucky love interest to heal him may cause a flutter in my belly in a book, but in real life, it’s a red flag.
We’ll add this to the many reasons there will be no second date with Davis.
Skeptical men with emotional baggage are for my books, not my heart.
It’s already been tattered by one commitment-phobic man. It doesn’t need another.
“It’s unrealistic to wrap one’s happiness up in a single person. Romance just feeds us the delusion that it is.” Forehead pinched, he waves another half-eaten fry between us.
“The happy ending in a romance isn’t just about the couple. Yes, that’s part of it. We root for them, but it’s about their individual journeys. It’s also about their relationships with others, not just each other or themselves. The best romances show that.”
“Again, that’s not real life. Most people are on their own.”
“It’s some people’s lives.”
“Not everyone is lucky enough to live in a fairy tale, Georgia,” he says, his voice a little gruff.
Indignation simmers in my bloodstream. What Davis knows about me wouldn’t fill a page’s footnote. My life is hardly a fairy tale. If it were, I’d be here with someone else—the someone else who, despite my hope and heartbreak, is now someone else’s Prince Charming. Instead, I’m here with Davis.
“I’m well aware.” I meet his stare.
“Are you?”
“Very much so,” I hiss through a tight smile.
So predictable. It’s as if it’s in one of my books.
He’s the jaded finance bro, and I’m the hurt but still hopeful romance author.
The girl who believes so much in happy endings that she spends hours crafting them.
Happy endings may be my business, but none of my characters get them without getting a little scrappy.
Scrappiness isn’t something I’m known for, at least with my friends and family. But Davis is neither. He’s just a bad date, and I’m done with bad dates.
My mouth curves into a sardonic grin. “You’re right, though.
Life isn’t a romance novel. In one of my books, a handsome stranger who turns out to be my love interest would have rescued me already from this terrible date.
From a date with a man who spent the first twenty minutes checking his phone and the next twenty insulting me.
” I drain my drink and slam the glass onto the table with a thwack .
“I didn’t insult you?—”
“Nothing makes me swoon like someone referring to what I write as lacking substance .” Expression tight, I scoot from my chair and grab my purse from where it’s hooked on the back. “But since this isn’t one of my books and it’s real life, I’ll rescue me.”
“Wait, Georgia… Are you leaving?”
“Yes. Whatever favor you did for my brother, please consider it paid.” I pull out fifteen dollars from my wallet and toss it onto the table.
“For my drink. You can pay for the fries since your double-dipping ensured I wasn’t touching them.
Manners dictate that you forgo double-dipping of a shared condiment until after the first kiss. Everyone knows that.”
“Wait? Kiss?” Befuddlement laces his words.
“ Never happening.” I sling my purse over my shoulder. “Though, maybe you’re right about that too… I’ve never kissed you, but I can say for certain I would not enjoy it… I like a man with more substance.”
And with that, I turn and march out.