Chapter 2
Chapter Two
PAIGE
Dave looks just like his photo, which I appreciate. He’s not striking, not like Benji, but his combed hair and rounded features are welcoming. Safe.
“I’m going to be honest with you,” he says, leaning in to share a secret. “I’m not really good at these things.”
“Me neither,” I share back with relief.
It’s nice, being on the same page. The lamplight curls around his smile. Huh. Maybe this won’t be as bad as I thought.
The stakes of the bet simmer in the back of my mind.
He doesn’t lean back, and our hands are resting close to each other on the table.
“Do you come to these often?” he asks.
“No, definitely not,” I say, and his smile falters.
Shit. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but”—and I probably shouldn’t admit this—“I kind of hate doing things where I don’t know anyone.
My cousin can’t believe it. I mean, she’s fearless.
Dinner, shows, you name it—she’ll go by herself and have the best time. ”
Of course, she’ll also end up with twenty new friends after.
I know; I know. I’m a strong, independent woman, with my own business. It’s been successful for two years. That’s impressive! And I’m proud of myself, but it doesn’t change the fact that the idea of going to a concert by myself makes me so nervous that I could vomit.
“Speed dating should be easy then, right? We might be strangers, but we’re all here, looking for the same thing.”
“Right.” I take my first deep breath since Benji walked in. “Let’s hope we can borrow a little of Bellwether’s romance tonight.”
The hotel’s founder, Belle Wether, casts a long shadow over Playa de Oro.
Everyone who lives here knows of her legacy, and all who visit are summoned by it.
A widow and a romance novelist, Belle might have outlived her one true love, but she dedicated herself—in person and in prose—to helping others find theirs.
I’d kill to meet the love of my life. Not literally, of course—I don’t even like using bug spray—but I’d definitely, um … huh. I guess I don’t know what I would do for that kind of love.
I don’t need a hotel. I just want someone to do things with, even if that thing is folding laundry together. Silly, right?
Dave smiles and brushes my hand as he reaches for his drink. Nothing lights up when he touches me, but the last man who did that tore my heart into a hundred pieces and then waltzed in tonight, looking annoyingly handsome and not like the heartbroken husk I’d secretly hoped he’d become without me.
I think about all the things I keep putting off because I’m too scared to try them alone.
Maybe I need a man with less fire.
As the silence extends, I reach for one of the conversation starter cards that have been laid out for us. Thank you, Sheree.
“What would you say is a typical Sunday?” I ask. Anything but sports. Anything but sports.
He shrugs. “Well, I wake up at four a.m. and head straight to the gym.”
Oh. I can’t remember the last time I worked out voluntarily, but that’s okay; people have different interests all the time.
“I follow that up with an ice bath and sauna. Then I meal prep for the week before meeting some of the boys for a friendly game.”
“What do you play?”
“Bit of everything. Tennis, basketball, you know.”
I don’t, but nod anyway.
“How about you?” he asks.
I should be honest, but somehow, the words just don’t get past my tongue.
The truth is, last Sunday, I would have stayed in my pajamas all day if I hadn’t ordered food and couldn’t stomach the thought of the delivery driver seeing me in my inside clothes.
Then I ate on the couch while watching a three-part video essay on a guy who had tried to fake his way to a Nobel Prize.
He almost managed it, too, until his audacity caught up with him.
If I’d known the world of superconductor research was so dramatic, maybe I would have pushed myself to do better in school.
It was, quite simply, the best Sunday ever. But I don’t think Dave’s going to agree with me.
“Spending time with my cousin,” I finally say, as close to the truth as I’m going to get.
“You should come to a game sometime. You’ll like it.”
I try to picture it—on the sidelines, learning whatever a macro is and how many of them I should be having, missing my bed and the bleary-eyed recap of Skye’s weird dreams over brunch.
I can’t decide if I like or hate that he apparently knows what I’ll like when he doesn’t even know me yet. I think I hate it.
Dave picks the next card. “What’s the best way to win you over?”
Easy. “Don’t ignore me,” I joke, turning a card over in my hands. Except it’s not a joke at all. Listening is a lost skill. “Be interested in who I am and be willing to be vulnerable.”
“Best way to win me over,” he says because I guess I was done talking, “is with a home-cooked meal at the end of the day. Do you cook?”
Maybe I should say no, just for a laugh. I love cooking. I’m no chef, but nobody puts cheese and crackers on a plate better than I can.
He probably has a list in his head. Rules for Females—because he definitely calls women that: Must be young and beautiful. Must cook all meals and clean up after me and service me and never complain.
That last one is always very important to guys like Dave.
The bell sounds.
“It was good to meet you, Paige.”
Wish I could say the same.
The next date is worse.
“Well, aren’t you a sweet thing?” says Robbie, a man whose forehead could hold a charity ball for male pattern baldness.
This is a man whose dating profile is all shirtless selfies and lines like, Looking for someone who isn’t caught up on the little things. The open buttons on his shirt expose angry red skin that I’m hoping is the result of poor sunscreen use and not something I’ll need a prescription for.
“So, what do you do?”
I perk up. “Oh, I own a candle shop with my cousin.” We’ve been attached at the hip since we were born a week apart, and we aren’t sick of each other yet. No part of my life hasn’t included Skye, so it surprised no one when we started a business together. “It’s Calm Candles. Have you heard of it?”
Robbie’s smile disappeared while I was speaking. “No.”
“We are in an alleyway in North Park, behind the main strip, so you really have to know we’re there to find us.”
People do though. It never fails to amaze me how far some people have traveled for our candles. What started out as a dream has become a rock-solid reality—one with utility bills, a vat with a personality of his own, and a point-of-sale system older than both of us combined.
“Can you even make money in that?” he asks with a sneer. “There’s a little thing called electricity now—don’t know if you’ve heard of it.”
I swallow back my frustration. “Candles are softer, calmer, and more reliable. And the ones we make smell amazing.”
“You know, most new businesses fail in the first year.”
I stare at the crown chandelier hanging in the center of the room to avoid looking at him. “Well, we’ve been running strong for two years, and—”
“What you want to do is diversify your assets. I can’t even imagine the kind of debt you are in.”
Excuse me?
I wish it were socially acceptable to throw a drink on a bad date. Skye would do it.
I could kill her for talking me into this. I’m seconds away from texting her all the ways that five minutes with Robbie is the equivalent to purgatory. Maybe that would distract me from the sexy linen-wrapped shadow sitting three tables away.
Damn, Benji looks good.
It’s a relief when the bell chimes.
The next hour is a mix of Matts, Zachs, and Joshes. Was there a discount on four-lettered names tonight? Some make me laugh, some are pretty, some are kind. None kick up the butterflies in my stomach—shut up; he doesn’t count.
None of them look at me the way Benji does.
Which is why it’s so much harder to ignore him when the last table I get sent to is next to him.
The woman sitting across from him is gorgeous. Glowing skin, silky black hair cut in the perfect bob, kind eyes. A little older, close to thirty, like Benji. If I wasn’t as straight as an arrow, I’d want to date her.
“You must be Benji,” she greets warmly. “Carla. Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
I should be paying attention to my own date. Peter, or Mike, is explaining the splint on his left hand. Something about a game of pickleball, and I’m trying not to zone out, I swear, but I can’t help it. Benji is here, inches away from me after a year of haunting my dreams.
No one else stands a chance.
“Tell me about yourself,” Carla suggests, trailing a perfect nail down the stem of her wineglass.
Good luck with that, I want to warn her.
Getting personal information out of Benji is like getting me to agree to karaoke. Not going to happen.
“Not much to tell.”
See?
“Oh, I doubt that. Why don’t you tell me …” She reaches for a card. “What’s your favorite way to unwind?”
That’s easy—work. As long as he can lock himself away with his tools, he’s happy.
“Being in my workshop relaxes me.”
I sneak a look over at him; the lamplight highlights his best features, which is all of them.
Carla is unsurprisingly enraptured.
He’s going to win this bet. He’s all suave and sexy. The man works with his hands, for fuck’s sake. People trust him with intimate parts of themselves—personal photos and sentimental art—and he makes something special just for them.
Carla leans in, shortening the distance between them, and something twists in my gut. “Oh? What do you make?”
Picture frames.
“I’m a carpenter, but I specialize in framing,” he answers. His tone is pleasant but even, which gives me absolutely no way of telling if he’s interested in her. “What about you? What do you do to unwind?”
As she gives her answer—peppermint tea and a foot soak—I make encouraging noises to Peter or Mike (or maybe it’s Freddy?), who still hasn’t asked me anything.
“Do you really find work relaxing?” Carla asks. “You wouldn’t prefer to be at the beach or something?”
Ha. Benji hates the beach.
He shakes his head. “Too much sand.”
“That’s a shame,” she says. “I love an early morning swim to wake me up in the summer. It really gets the blood pumping.”
I know the exact feeling she’s talking about—the frigid shock that zaps through you with your first plunge, so cold that you can’t describe it, but it sets every nerve in your body alight. A lightning-quick adrenaline rush.
Benji prefers hotter, more intimate ways of waking up, if I remember correctly.
He won’t say this, of course. It’s too personal.
Freddy—because it’s too awkward to check my phone, so he’s just Freddy to me now—slams his drink down on the table with a thump. “Incredible, huh?”
“Uh-huh.”
No idea what he’s talking about.
“And, uh, what happened after that?” I ask because Benji said something I didn’t catch and I need Freddy distracted so I can keep listening.
Not that I care if he dates Carla. I mean, she’s beautiful and interesting. He’d be lucky to see her again.
Besides, he’s the one who walked away from everything with a vague it’s better this way text, as if that explained anything and wasn’t the cruelest way to end us.
But that’s Benji. Fucking allergic to feelings from what I can tell—or at least expressing them.
And now he wants to apologize?
Carla nods, her smile soft and fond. Is that how I used to look at him? “Interesting. And where do you see yourself in five years?”
I’m suddenly terrified Freddy is going to ask me a question because I have to hear this.
When we opened the shop, Skye and I sat down and wrote out our own five-year plan—pay off the business loan (we’re ahead of schedule), receive online orders from every state (we’re missing Arizona and Utah, weirdly enough), get a celebrity endorsement (Skye’s pie-in-the-sky addition), and earn a spot on San Diego’s Best of the Best list. It’s still taped to the underside of our register.
In my head, I added a fifth thing, my own personal wish. Fall in love.
Technically, I did, and now he’s sitting beside me and wooing someone else.
“Well …” he starts, slowly tapping his fingers on the table. He does that when he’s thinking. His nails are trimmed and clean, so he definitely scrubbed them before he came out tonight. Put in some effort.
It tugs at my gut before I realize I’m staring, and I immediately turn my head back to Freddy.
Shit. There’s no way that wasn’t noticeable.
There’s a pause before Benji speaks again.
“If you’d asked me that question a year ago, I wouldn’t have had an answer.
The things I wanted for myself? I just couldn’t picture having them.
Which is kind of a problem when you get a glimpse of the future you dream about.
But now? Now I know exactly what I want, and I’m not going to let anything get in my way. ”
“Cheers to that,” Carla says, raising her glass, and my stomach drops to the floor.
So, that’s why he’s here tonight. To meet his future.
Me being here is a coincidence. An awful, painful coincidence.
The bell sounds, and I can’t run out of the room fast enough, throwing a quick thank-you to the hosts as I rush out of the ballroom. I don’t care about the bet. I don’t want to hear Benji gloating about his dates or anything else he has to say to me.
The only reason he wants to apologize is so he can move on. I wish I could. I wish I could forget his stupid face and his rough hands and how beautiful he was when he slept.
I wish I’d never met Benji Collins.