Chapter Ten
Ivy twisted her arms into unnatural angles to zip up the red dress she’d bought at the boutique in town. It was a marvel. It hugged her where she wanted to be hugged, forgave the bits of her she’d rather not emphasize, and made her boobs look incredible.
She stared at herself in the full-length mirror attached to her bedroom door.
Austin had finally texted her the previous evening to set up their date.
He suggested a nice restaurant in town, the kind with linen tablecloths, free bread and butter, and a wine list that came in its own book.
This dress was perfect. It shouted to the world that Austin fucking Underwood had asked her on a date, not a friendly neighbor catch-up.
The dress started to feel tighter and tighter as she stared at herself in the mirror.
When the sensation refused to pass after a solid three minutes, Ivy clawed at the zipper, yanking it down as soon as her fingers found purchase on the small piece of metal. The dress dropped to the floor, the velvet pooling around her ankles. She could breathe again.
After digging through her bag and closet with no luck, Ivy invaded her mother’s closet, pilfering a rust-colored, knee-length corduroy skirt to go with a wine-red sweater she’d brought.
She looked a bit like an elementary school librarian when she was done, but her chest didn’t feel like it was going to cave in, so it was great.
Ivy did her makeup and twirled her curls—which were having a worse time than her—into a twist that she secured with a claw clip. Not too dressed up, not too dressed down. Practically perfect.
Her phone vibrated on the vanity.
Austin: I’m outside.
Ivy grabbed the French boots she loved and headed downstairs, peeking through the peephole.
No Austin.
He’d said he was outside…
A detour to the front window showed her that “outside” meant sitting in an idling car at the curb. It was cold, but it wasn’t don’t come to the door to pick up your date cold in Ivy’s opinion. If she was brave enough to wear a skirt, he could’ve handled standing outside for two minutes.
Ivy trudged down her front walk, taking careful steps even though it was shoveled. She’d slipped on enough invisible ice to last her a lifetime.
“Hey,” she said, letting herself into the passenger side.
“Hey,” Austin said, tapping out a few more words on his phone before putting it in the cupholder. It was a good thing she’d taken off the dress—he was in jeans and a haphazardly ironed button-down shirt. In the dress, they would have looked more mismatched than they already were.
“Did you see it’s supposed to snow tomorrow?” she asked, trying to drum up some conversation after they rode out of their neighborhood in silence.
“Oh, really? I hadn’t looked.”
Ivy waited for some attempt at a follow-up question or a change of subject, but the radio filled the gap in conversation.
And continued to fill it, all the way to the restaurant.
Austin parked near Marcello’s. Ivy undid her seat belt and accidentally kicked over her purse. The contents scattered on the weatherproof floor mat. She sighed and bent forward to corral the items back into her bag. Austin was probably going to be halfway through ordering before he realized—
Her door opened, and she nearly flung her freshly repacked purse in shock. Austin held out a hand to help her from the car.
“Mind the curb. I might have misjudged the distance.”
It was an awkward gap, not quite wide enough for her to put her foot on the street, but a little too far to gracefully get on the sidewalk without assistance. She took Austin’s hand and used his steady strength to leverage herself out of the car.
A few butterflies tickled her belly. Maybe this wasn’t the disaster she’d thought it would be. He’d probably meant to come to the door but got caught up with something right after he texted her. It was only just five o’clock back in Los Angeles.
Austin held the restaurant door open for her, and any smoldering embers of indignation died.
“Reservation for Underwood,” he told the hostess.
“I know,” she said, and her face immediately flushed. “I mean, of course.” She quickly gathered menus. “Right this way.”
They followed her through the restaurant. Ivy could feel eyes following them the whole way. It wasn’t every day that Coeur-de-Lac produced an honest-to-goodness celebrity.
Austin pulled out her chair and sat opposite her. Ivy glanced around the restaurant.
“It’s a nice table,” she remarked, unsure of how to get a conversation going with Austin after her failed attempt in the car.
“It is,” he agreed and opened his menu.
Okay, straight to business. Ivy opened her menu, too, like she hadn’t studied it in great detail on their website. There was a glass of reasonably priced sauvignon blanc in her near future.
Their waitress appeared and placed two ice waters in front of them. She couldn’t have been any older than Piper, her sleek, dark hair in a high ponytail that bobbed and swung with every motion of her body.
“Good evening, my name is Harper and I’ll be taking care of you tonight,” she said to Austin. “Can I get you started with something to drink? Maybe an appetizer? Our oysters are very popular.”
“Oysters sound excellent, and I will have an espresso martini,” Austin said.
“Excellent. I’ll be right back.”
Harper started to walk away. Ivy waited a beat for Austin to say something, but he was studying the menu again.
“Excuse me,” Ivy said loudly, inwardly wincing. She hated trying to get a server’s attention. It felt like the restaurant equivalent of a flyer ringing the call light to hand off trash. “Can I get a glass of sauvignon blanc?”
Harper turned, and her eyes widened a little, like Ivy had materialized out of thin air in the chair across from Austin’s.
“Uh, sure. No problem,” she said, and hurried off.
Ivy looked to Austin for some confirmation that the interaction hadn’t somehow been her fault, but he was still deeply absorbed in the menu.
“Lots of choices,” Ivy remarked.
“And all in Italian. I’m going to have to use my phone to figure out what everything actually is.”
“I can help,” she offered. “I went through a stretch at work when I couldn’t seem to escape Rome.”
Austin acted like he hadn’t heard her. “Maybe I’ll just get Caesar salad. I know what that is.”
Ivy combed through the archives of her memory, trying to recall what she and Austin used to talk about when they were younger. Outside of homework and Austin’s athletic performance, she couldn’t remember anything. When was the last time they’d had an actual conversation? Fifth grade?
Her face went hot with secondhand embarrassment for her younger self.
Sixteen-year-old Ivy couldn’t have known she was feeding into the patriarchy when she let Austin believe his interests were fascinating and his every thought precious.
At the time, she’d been so overwhelmed by the sheer power of his Austinness that she let herself get sucked into his orbit whenever he deigned to speak to her, totally forgetting that she had her own gravity.
She pitied the girl who didn’t know she was helping create yet another clueless man.
Sickening dread swirled in her stomach. Had Grant been right?
Had she been so delusional that she’d somehow managed to craft a fairy tale out of spun sugar, in which Austin had not only noticed her but been secretly in love with her the way she’d been in love with him?
When all the while, the only person Austin had ever been in love with was himself?
Harper returned with their drinks and oysters.
Hunger. The doom and gloom trying to wreck her peace was no doubt caused by hunger.
“Is the bread coming?” Ivy asked.
“We don’t need bread,” Austin said, never looking up from the menu.
“Were you ready to order?” The question was once again directed at Austin only, like Ivy didn’t exist in the same universe as him.
“I’ll have the ravioli with short rib ragu.” Ivy spoke loudly and firmly, so Harper couldn’t possibly miss it.
“And I’ll have the Caesar salad,” Austin added. “No croutons. Dressing on the side.”
Harper wrote down their orders and left, but not without throwing a surreptitious glance at Austin that he didn’t see but Ivy definitely did.
“You look really nice,” Austin said, the compliment catching her off guard.
Not because she didn’t think she looked nice, but because they’d been together for probably half an hour already.
Usually, complimenting appearance was an easy icebreaker.
Austin had left her floundering in the cold since the moment he didn’t come to the door.
“Thank you. I needed to do a little improv to pull together an outfit, so I’m glad it worked.”
“Oyster?” He offered her the plate.
Ivy shook her head. “No, thank you.”
“But they’re so good,” he insisted.
“I’m allergic,” she said as nicely as she could muster.
“Oh.” Austin set the plate down. “I had the best oysters in Toronto and now everything else pales in comparison.”
“Oh, I love Tor—”
“Did you know a lot of productions are filmed in Canada? I’ve been considering getting a place in Vancouver or Toronto the next time I’m filming up there. Probably just a short-term rental to start, but something more homey than a hotel room.”
Ivy could have started a conversation off any one of his sentences—how many celebrities she’d seen while working L.A.
to Vancouver, how much she enjoyed Canada, her vast knowledge of hotel brands—but she couldn’t quite manage to get a word in.
Austin kept talking, which was preferable to his disinterested silence, but by the time their meals came, he still hadn’t asked her a single question about herself.
“Would you like another glass of wine?” Harper asked, which was when Ivy realized she’d drained her first. While she wasn’t normally the kind of person to run up a bill on a date…
“Yes, please.”
And when the bill finally did come at the end of the meal, after Austin declined dessert for both of them, Ivy faked a huge yawn.
“Aaaaah… Oh man. My body is not taking kindly to the time change,” she said. “I am sleepy.” She wasn’t sleepy. It was only an hour earlier than normal for her body, which was accustomed to taking big time shifts in stride.
“Oh really? I was going to see if you wanted to go to the Christmas Walk in the Park.”
The Parks and Rec department’s most successful annual fundraiser was sectioning off a portion of the park and creating different scenes with Christmas lights.
Ivy had loved it when she lived here. But after watching Austin dip the tip of one fork tine in dressing before stabbing each piece of lettuce, she couldn’t imagine him drinking hot chocolate or eating warm candied nuts, which was half the fun.
“That sounds like so much fun, but I am just s’darn tired.” She yawned again for emphasis.
“Second date idea,” he said and winked. Ivy plastered on a smile she hoped was convincing even though she now had to think of a way to let him down gently.
The ride home wasn’t silent like the ride to the restaurant, but only because Austin waxed poetic about his favorite topic.
Himself. If she were the type of woman who sought revenge for bad dates, Ivy probably could have taken some of the insider information he shared and sold it to a tabloid.
Too bad she had yet to stop her moral compass from pointing true north.
Austin pulled into his driveway and parked. There was a dusting of snow on the concrete, and Ivy bit down on an exasperated sigh.
“I didn’t want to park twice,” Austin explained, like he suspected she was annoyed.
“That makes sense,” Ivy lied, not wanting to prolong the date by telling him how wrong he was for not parking in front of her house for the fifteen seconds it would have taken her to leap from the car and sprint inside.
“Let me walk you to your front door.”
“That’s—” But he was out of the car and coming around her side to open her door before she could tell him that it was okay, that she could find her way home. Oh well. She could let him exercise the single shred of chivalry in his body.
The air biting at her cheeks felt worse than normal after being in the cozy car. She crossed her arms to preserve a little more heat.
“You’d think I’d be used to the cold, living in Boston,” she said, rubbing her arms.
“You live in Boston?” Austin sounded surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
Of course he didn’t know that. He hadn’t asked her a single question about herself. A dozen or so more yards and she could call Brad and whine about the entire evening.
Ivy was surprised when Austin followed her up the stairs to her front door.
“I guess this is where I leave you,” she said, trying to infuse her sentence with as many hints as she could without saying the words, Please go home.
Austin was looking at the wreath on her front door. “Is that mistletoe?”
Ivy’s heart kicked into high gear, like a small rabbit fleeing from a sneaky fox. “Is it?”
“You know what mistletoe means.”
Oh no.
He leaned forward, and she was too frozen with panic to do anything but stand there.
Her crush on Austin Underwood died with a single kiss.
It wasn’t bad. It was just…nothing.
The worst part was that when he pulled back, Austin seemed oblivious to her indifference.
“Thanks for a great night,” he said, and went in to kiss her again, but this time, she was faster. She turned her head and gave him her cheek.
“Happy we could make it happen,” she said, toeing the line between lies and truth. She was happy they’d been able to make it happen, but fuck if she was happy about the date she’d endured.
Ivy quickly let herself into the house and shut the door behind her without a second glance. Brad had said the date would set her free no matter how it went, but she still felt trapped by the time she’d spent wishing Austin would pay attention to her. It was hard to let go of all that hope.
Maybe she didn’t have to? At least not yet.
She dug her phone out of her purse and texted Brad immediately.
Ivy: SOS SOS SOS GET YOUR ASS TO WISCONSIN NOW