6
Anders sent over the restaurant and time without being asked, so I didn’t have to wonder if my linen pants and sleeveless top were appropriate attire for the dimly lit bistro stuffed between high-rise buildings downtown.
He sits at a table in a far corner, overlooking the other diners clinking glasses and laughing while a slightly too loud indie-folk playlist surrounds us.
I walk over and plant myself in front of him with a polite smile. “Anders.”
“Lucinda,” he greets warmly, and heat spreads at the tips of my ears.
“You can call me Lucy,” I offer as I hang my tote on the chair.
“I like Lucinda.”
I tilt my head and gaze at him. His hair is perfectly tousled, his light-brown button-up somehow makes the flecks of gold in his eyes glow a little brighter at the center of their pools of green, and he’s missing the slight five o’clock shadow that was present when we first met.
When I don’t say anything, he adds, “You look beautiful. Your hair is nice too. Different.”
“Ah.” I twirl one of the bouncy curls reflectively. I didn’t have enough time after my shower to straighten it. “I usually wear it flat.”
“Both styles look good on you.”
Wow. Three compliments back-to-back in the span of thirty seconds. Is he making good on his future endeavor promise? Or is he sweet-talking me into whatever favor he needs? I have no idea what I could possibly do for him.
The waitress arrives for our drink order, and Anders asks for a flight of their best wines for us to try.
“Okay,” I say when she leaves, “I am so incredibly confused by you reaching out that I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say right now. If you can get straight to the point so I don’t have to keep scrambling to try and figure that out, I’d appreciate it.”
His dimples appear. When he opens his mouth, I hold up my finger. “Actually, if this is going to be a stressful and/or confrontational conversation, do I still get dinner out of this? I’m starving.”
His small smile becomes a full-blown one. “I guarantee you can have dinner, no matter where the conversation leads. Dessert included.”
“Phenomenal.”
The waitress leaves two flights of mini wineglasses and asks for our order. Anders asks for a steak and then points to the menu laid out in front of me. “The vegan burger is supposedly very good.”
My eyebrows quirk. “Did I tell you I was vegetarian?”
“Do you not remember?”
I sigh and order the burger. When the waitress leaves, I grab one of the glasses and down the dry wine like a shot.
“I don’t remember much of that night,” I confess, grabbing the next glass over.
“I’m not sure of everything I rambled about to you.
I only remember the beginning of the evening, not the end. ”
“I see. Well, you didn’t say or do anything embarrassing, if that helps.”
I snort. “Sweet of you to lie, but I know myself, and that is absolutely what happened.”
“Not to me.”
I narrow my eyes at his sincere expression and bring the glass to my lips. His gaze briefly flickers to where my mouth presses against the glass before reaching my eyes again, and my cheeks flush.
“Did we sleep together?” I blurt out. I’m sure we didn’t. I’m sure I would remember that—my body would, anyway—but I need confirmation. Just in case. To be sure. “I woke up with a shirt that wasn’t mine.”
“I walked you to your room, and we ended the night.” He tilts his head in debate about whether to add the next part. Then, “You said you wanted it because I smelled nice, so I gave it to you before leaving.”
The way he frames it lets me know he’s politely omitting a more dramatic scene, one where I said something a lot more sexual, or, worse, yanked it off him before he gently turned me down.
He doesn’t sound like he’s lying about nothing happening, but drunk me is a little more adventurous—and shameless—than sober me. “Be honest, did I make a move on you?”
“If you did, it would have been more than welcome.”
Which is a polite way of saying yes. I groan and rub my hand over my face, freezing when I remember I layered on mascara. I already acted insane around him; I don’t need to look the part too.
“Why are you sitting here with me and not running away? You have at least five reasons to.”
“I don’t want to.” He grabs a napkin. He then reaches over and cups my cheek in one hand, wiping the cloth over my skin with the other. I blink as he pulls away, spotting the black mascara staining the cloth as he places it on the table and continues, “And I need a favor.”
I frown at him. “I bet you get yourself into constant misunderstandings.”
His brows bunch together, pulling down a scar at the side of his right eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
I gesture to the napkin. “You’re very affectionate,” I point out, but affectionate doesn’t seem like the right word.
Charming, maybe, but it doesn’t encompass what I mean to say, either.
“I can tell you don’t mean to be, that you’re just doing things in the moment, but it only makes you more endearing.
You probably think you pass as friendly, but other people might believe you’re looking for more than that. ”
His gaze latches onto me. I can’t quite read the emotion in it. It’s a little darker than the easy warmth that seems to fill it most of the time. “I know exactly what I’m doing.”
I’m not entirely sure what he means by that, but for some reason, tiny circles of heat sear through my skin as he looks at me. I shift in my seat and take a fortifying sip of wine. “Anyway, what favor could I possibly do for you?”
“When you wrecked my friend’s wedding,” he begins casually, as if we’re talking about the weather, “I tried to find you but you left pretty soon after.”
I want to shrink inside myself for a moment, to become so small he forgets I ever walked into the restaurant, but his words don’t have any judgment in them. It’s enough to let me push aside the pulse of embarrassment vibrating under my skin and actually listen to his words.
“For a blissful moment,” I say, “I forgot I told you what I do.”
“Nothing wrong with trying to make a living.”
I hold up a hand. My pitch is a little too high not to hint at some mortification. “This is not to make a living but for a living. It’s not my life’s goal or anything. I stumbled into it, and one day, I’ll stumble out of it.”
Hopefully.
“Right, because you want to buy Save a Paw.”
What didn’t I tell him?
The bar is so low for men that Anders remembering this one detail sends a fluttering to the pit of my stomach. “Yeah, among other things.”
“I’d like to hire you.”
My hand stills on the glass pressed against my lips. Nothing about this conversation is going in any direction I predicted it to. “You’re engaged?” Being hung up on his first love marrying his best friend didn’t make it seem so.
“No, I’m not. It’d be for my sister’s wedding.”
My eyes widen. “Your sister?”
“You think less of me for it?”
“No.” I cross my arms against my chest. “It’s just, you didn’t seem the meddling type. You sat back and didn’t object to your first love and best friend getting married, but you’re inserting yourself into your sister’s relationship?”
He flinches, and guilt slices into me. I quickly add, “I’m sorry. That came out harsh. I’m just trying to better understand.” And, since the floor is open. “Did they set a new date? Your friend and ex?”
“It’s okay,” he says, sitting back, but there’s still a bit of tension in his shoulders. “They got married the next day. They’d reserved one of the halls for another night of celebration, so it didn’t stop them. Only made for some interesting speeches from the guests.”
Knowing I starred in those speeches isn’t too embarrassing. Aside from Anders, none of them know me, and it doesn’t seem like Anders told them anything. One day I’ll just be some deranged, faceless woman they tell stories about.
I down the final wineglass. “This is unexpected.”
The waitress comes over and drops our plates, pausing our conversation a moment before I ask her for another flight of wine, which earns me a chuckle from Anders.
“I’ll let you eat before I overwhelm you with information,” he says as I stare at the plate of burger and truffle fries.
“I can multitask.” I pop a salty fry in my mouth. “But before you waste your time—no offense, really—you should know that I am very expensive.”
He raises a brow. “And?”
I shuffle through the hazy and blacked-out files in my brain and pull out the folder of our first hour together when we participated in the official Get to Know You Handbook of asking: What do you do?
Where are you from? Do you have siblings?
Do you think the moon landing was fake? Want to get so drunk we forget our names?
“You’re a graphic designer, aren’t you? I’m sure you make a decent living, but my clientele is usually the annoyingly rich who couldn’t tell you the price of milk if you asked. ”
He looks at the ceiling and chews on his bottom lip like he is shuffling through our night’s files together.
When he finds what he’s looking for, Anders brings his gaze back down and catches me staring at his bottom lip.
“You need twenty thousand to buy your share of the shelter. I can pay you that.”
My eyes widen. “Excuse me?”
“Do you want more? Tell me a price.”
I drop my next fry onto the plate and hold up my hands. “Wait, wait, wait. You’re telling me you have twenty thousand dollars to spare? Are you a thief in the night? What exactly is it that you do?” I’ll have Taina vet his funds first thing, though he doesn’t seem like a liar.
“I’m not sure if I should take your shock about my wealth as an insult or not.” He leans back. “You must have been more drunk that I thought, seeing as we had this conversation before. But I own a share of Lightshop—”
“The search engine?”
“Yes.” He nods, casually, like having stock in the second most used search engine in America behind good old Google is no big deal. “Through pure luck of knowing Lucas, meeting him in college. His family created it. He gave me a share one Christmas, before it became as big as it did.”