Chapter 18
CARSON
This man is polite and kind and clean, and he smells like fresh laundry, and he is boring.
“And then I clicked the wrong Zoom link, so I’m sitting in a meeting trying to talk about crypto markets when these guys are only interested in bonds. Bonds!”
Oh my god, he is so boring.
For about five minutes, I thought this date was going to be good.
Jack pulled out my chair, then asked what I wanted to drink and ordered it for me.
He told me that my dress, a fluttery little white number with a pattern of blue hydrangeas, brought out my eyes.
I was already starting to plan how I could get back to his place.
I was starting to imagine him without clothes, imagine his hands on me.
And then I asked him about his grad program.
I haven’t spoken since.
The beer on the table in front of me is half gone, completely flat, and warm. My stomach is growling. And all hopes of getting laid are drifting away like my attention as this man continues to talk.
Men sleep with women they don’t care about and aren’t particularly attracted to all the time, so for the past few minutes, I’ve been giving it the good old college try.
What looks like studious attention to his jabbering is actually me focusing really hard, trying to imagine what it would be like to sleep with him. Could I get it up for this man?
Unfortunately, every time I try to imagine him hovering over me, all I can picture is his sunglasses—which are on a red neoprene leash around his neck—slapping me in the face.
Even in my smuttiest fantasies, he remains the kind of guy who wouldn’t take his sunglasses off to have sex.
I bet his dirty talk is about pivot tables.
I bet he comes to the sound of the New York Stock Exchange opening bell.
I bet his kink is a good midyear review with HR.
Kill me.
I hope I remembered to charge my vibrator.
“And so the earnings report said the DOW was in spaghetti and sneezing the treasury yield dropped the price of ham.”
Okay, that’s not what he just said, but the actual words make about as much sense to me as those.
Would he like it if I held him hostage at this table and talked to him about IEPs and curriculum benchmarks for an hour?
I doubt it! But that’s not stopping him from yammering on about the DOW and blue chips and an “epic run” on precious metals.
Oh my god, this man is boring.
There is no way I can sleep with him.
I can’t even pretend to pay attention to him anymore.
I give up on pretending to listen and let my gaze drift. Which is when I spot him. Shoulders hunched, jaw ticking, he’s bent over the bar, a pen in his hand.
Jack is still talking, something about derivatives and absolute returns, and I don’t even bother to hide it as I pull out my phone and tap out a text. Luckily, Jack is so far up his own ass, he doesn’t seem to notice.
I watch Dan receive the text. Watch the way his body uncoils. Watch his smile unfurl, the dimple in his left cheek deepening.
I sit back in my seat, take a swig of my warm beer, smile at Jack, and wait.
It doesn’t take long.
“Carson?”
Dan is standing over our table, his broad shoulders blocking the light from the window, casting a shadow over the us.
All at once I have absolutely no trouble imagining what it would be like to have sex with this man.
In fact, a series of images flashes through my mind like I’m looking through one of those old-fashioned viewfinder toys.
His hands, his lips, his muscular ass. Oh god, asking him to save me might have been a mistake.
“Yeah?” I say, the word scraping up my throat, coming out breathy and filled with all the need in my body.
“I thought that was you,” Dan says. He bites his lip, dropping his eyes to the floor. His thick dark lashes brush his cheeks. When he slowly drags his attention back up to my face, there’s a light in his eyes. A playfulness I’ve never seen before. “I’ve missed you.”
What?
“Oh,” I breathe, feeling heat climb up my chest. I was prepared for him to claim a family emergency or just wordlessly drag me out of here. But a fake dating ruse?
I’m in.
“Yeah. I never should have let you go,” he says.
I nearly leap out of my chair, throwing myself at him and locking my legs around his waist. I don’t know exactly what he has planned, but I’m ready to commit to this bit. I’m in it to the bitter end, baby. Yes, and.
“I’m sorry, who is this?” Jack asks, his eyes moving between Dan and me.
“I’m the sorry-ass idiot who let her get away,” Dan says, never taking his eyes off me. His voice sounds like a roll of thunder before a summer storm. I feel it deep in my belly. “Tell me it’s not too late, Carson. Please.”
“Carson? What’s going on?” Jack asks, but it sounds more like a whine than a question. Which means I have absolutely no problem letting a smile spread across my face.
“I could never say no to you, Dan,” I say. I rise from my chair, then look down at Jack, who looks like the stock market just tanked. “I’m so sorry, Jack, but this is the love of my life.”
His mouth drops open. “Are you serious?”
Dan slips his hand into mine, his long, strong fingers giving me a squeeze.
“Sorry to do this to you, man,” he says. “But you spent some time with her. You know she’s special. I just couldn’t go another minute without hearing the sound of her voice.”
I nearly bark out a laugh. I’m not sure Jack could pick my voice out of a lineup.
I’m surprised it didn’t come out as a croak when I finally got to use it upon Dan’s arrival.
I’m surprised Jack isn’t hoarse from all the talking he’s done.
But I bite down on my lip and gaze up at Dan, trying to mask my laughter with a lustful look.
Which, let’s be real, isn’t too damn hard.
I’m afraid if I open my mouth, I’ll laugh, so it’s good that Dan gives Jack a shrug and then turns, still holding my hand, and tugs me through the brewery.
By the time we get out on the sidewalk, I can’t contain myself anymore.
I break into a fit of giggles as the hot, muggy June air envelops me.
It’s a welcome reprieve from the overly air conditioned brewery. It’s also blissfully quiet.
Summer in Bloomington has always been my favorite, which made it extra sad that I always had to move home during it, since I lived in a dorm and then a sorority house.
I’d work at the church nursery, help with Vacation Bible School, and babysit, but Cardinal Springs was still deadly boring.
Grace was there, of course, and it was great to be reunited with her.
But every chance I got, I’d drive the forty-five minutes back to Bloomington, enjoy the quiet, sleepy college town, empty of students, and wish I had an apartment or a room in one of the old craftsman bungalows in Vinegar Hill.
The summer before my senior year, I planned to sublet an apartment and get a job working with the orientation office at the university, but then my mom broke her ankle right before the end of the semester, so I ended up moving home to help her.
“I hope that was okay,” Dan says, his bravado from inside the brewery melting into nervous energy.
“It was great!” I assure him. “You have no idea how much I appreciate you right now.”
“From your text, I wasn’t sure if I should come over swinging or not.”
“Oh god, no. He was fine, just really boring. Like, so boring. And into crypto, which he kept talking about like I had any clue what he meant.”
“Crypto is just multilevel marketing for white dudes without personalities,” Dan says. “It’s the Amway of international banking.”
“How do I keep matching with these losers?” I groan, then raise my fist at the sinking sun.
“Which god have I angered? Did I kick puppies in a past life? Burn down an orphanage? At this point, I don’t even know what a good date is supposed to be like anymore!
” I look around for something to kick, but all I find is an empty Dasani bottle discarded on the curb.
I pick it up and toss it into the trash can, but hard.
You know, to make a point. “Ugh, I wore good underwear to this. What a waste!”
“It doesn’t have to be.”
I spin on my heel so fast my dress flutters. Is he still doing a bit? Is this more of the You’re the love of my life, Carson thing he was doing inside? Because I would be happy to riff on that idea all night.
“What do you mean?” I ask, because I want this to be clear. I don’t want to embarrass myself by assuming. I want him, but only if he wants me.
Dan shrugs, looking casually past me, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallows. He seems to weigh something in his mind, engage in a little mental tennis match, before taking a deep breath.
“You want a good date? You can have a good date.”
“With you?”
“Yeah. So you can see what a good date is supposed to be like. I’d hate for you to get duped again.” He swallows, then shrugs. “If you want.”
I want. I am made of want. Want is coursing through my veins in such a high concentration that I may simply combust right here on this sidewalk, leaving behind a charred black circle on the pavement and the lingering scent of desire.
Luckily that doesn’t happen, because as Dan just pointed out, this isn’t a real proposition. It’s basically research. Desire is not a factor.
I mean, it shouldn’t be. It very much is for me, but I’ll shove that down like all the other feelings we Midwesterners are so good at ignoring.
Though when I open my mouth and something that sounds like “Ummughhhhyes” comes out, its doesn’t feel significantly less embarrassing than the combustion thing.
“Good. Meet me back at the house,” he says. He pulls his keys out of his pocket and spins them on his finger, then gives me a lazy grin that’s hot as fuck. “I’ll take it from there.”
Because I learned my lesson from my date with Goober Gabe and drove myself to meet Jack, I have a forty-five minute drive back to Cardinal Springs to think about what the hell is going on.
The drive is torturous.
If this proposition had come from anyone else, I’d call Grace and ask her for a pep talk.
But I’m not entirely sure she wouldn’t try to talk me out of whatever is about to happen with Dan—a good hang?
A real date? Something more?—and I don’t want that.
I know all the reasons why crossing the line with Dan could be a bad idea.
He’s my best friend’s older brother; he’s my temporary roommate; he’s going through some heavy shit that I still don’t understand.
But what about all the reasons it could be a great idea?
He’s my best friend’s older brother, which means I know him.
I know he’s not going to yammer on about bond markets or intermittent fasting or some questionable ideas about vaccinations.
I know he’s not looking for anything serious, and I know that his time here has an expiration date.
I know him.
And I trust him.
And I want to see where that little spark in his ice-blue eyes might take us.
I beat Dan home, thanks to my nervous lead foot, so I dart into the house and double-check that I didn’t spill anything down the front of my dress or sprout a new zit I need to cover up. I figure he’ll come in when he gets here, so the knock at my front door comes as a surprise.
“What are you doing?” I ask when I find him standing on the stoop.
“Showing you what a good date is like,” he says. “It doesn’t start with a man sitting in his car and honking his fucking horn.”
The way he glowers as he refers to Gabe makes my heart skip several beats. So many I damn near pass out on the stoop.
And then there’s the fact that he said this was a date. Not a real one, obviously. But still…a date.
“Such a gentleman,” I say. It’s very hard to keep the excited trill out of my voice.
It’s harder still when he doubles down, reaching for my hand and leading me down the front steps.
He closes the door behind me and locks it.
Then he trots past me so he can open the passenger door of his BMW.
The buttery leather seats are as comfortable as I remember.
The last time I was sitting here, I was too drunk to appreciate how fancy the car is, but now, as the engine purrs and we glide away from the curb, I can see that it’s a really fine piece of machinery.
And I’m deeply grateful that he doesn’t seem to want to tell me anything about it.
“If this were an actual date, I’d take you to a good restaurant, but you’ve already eaten, so instead we’ll just do dessert,” he says. “Sound good?”
My brain snags on the words actual date, a reminder that this is all just pretend. I seem to keep forgetting.
“Sounds great,” I say, hoping that my body will get the message that this is just a dry run—emphasis on dry.