Chapter 7 #2
Maddy’s eyes trailed across the table. White pillar candle, lit.
Two glasses of red wine. One appetizer in the middle of the table, a fork resting on each side.
They landed on the woman across from Aspen.
Tall. Light brown hair that stopped just above the shoulders, straightened into a shiny, flawless curtain.
Smooth, pale skin she had visibly taken care of.
Eyes and nose perfectly symmetrical with her mouth.
A mouth that was currently in a warm, open smile despite the interruption.
Maddy hated her.
Jake did not seem to share the sentiment. His usual smile not missing a beat as he addressed Aspen. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
Aspen swallowed visibly as her eyes continued to shift back and forth between them. “Yeah. Same.”
“I would say what are the odds, but I guess on Coronado pretty high.” Jake chuckled at his own joke. He turned to the other woman with a grin and held out a hand. “Hi. Jake.”
Aspen’s mouth opened. Her hand lifted toward the woman. “Sorry, this is—um…”
The pause was a second too long.
“Danielle.” The woman supplied into the gap with smooth grace. She took Jake’s hand with a smile. “Nice to meet you.”
Aspen had forgotten her companion’s name. That was oddly satisfying.
“You too.” Jake gestured toward Maddy. “This is Maddy.”
Maddy offered a tight-lipped smile in lieu of her hand. Aspen’s eyes had flicked to Maddy and stayed there.
In her periphery, Maddy noticed the hostess, still waiting two feet away in the middle of the aisle, menus tucked under her arm.
Maddy lifted her hand and wrapped it around Jake’s bicep. “Jake. We should head to our table and let them get back to their… dinner.”
Aspen’s gaze locked on Maddy’s hand.
Danielle waved. “It was nice to meet you. You should try the seabass, it’s divine.”
“Thanks for the tip.” Jake’s smile widened.
Maddy gave Jake’s arm a light tug and led him away.
The hostess seated them at a two-top by the back window. Maddy took the seat with her back to the wall. She liked knowing where the door was. Being able to see who was coming and going. If it happened to place Aspen in her direct eyeline behind Jake’s right shoulder, that was entirely incidental.
“Small world, huh?” Jake opened his menu.
Maddy picked up her menu and turned a page she did not read. “Yep.”
Jake gave the menu his full attention. “I have to admit I’m not much of a sea bass kind of guy.”
“You don’t say.”
Thirty feet away, Aspen’s hand was still on the stem of her wineglass, finger absentmindedly tracing a slow line up and down.
Her eyes were on the woman across from her, but the way her eyes kept drifting to Maddy and Jake’s table indicated she was as focused on what her companion was saying as Maddy was on the list of entrees in front of her.
Maddy shook her head and committed to ninety seconds of menu attention. She made it to forty-two before her eyes drifted up again.
“Mads?” Jake’s menu lowered an inch. He had been watching her not-read hers for at least ten seconds.
“Mm?” She forced her eyes back to the appetizer column.
“You’re shaking the table.” He placed a hand on top of the table to steady it.
Maddy’s leg immediately stopped bouncing. She would not meet Jake’s inquiring eyes.
The hostess dropped off a basket of bread. “Your server will be right over to take your drink orders.” And then she was gone again.
Jake tilted his menu down. “You decided?”
One thing she had always loved about Jake was how he never pried. The polar opposite of Bunny Sterling. Perhaps that was why they had worked so well as a couple in high school—he brought a balance to her life she was lacking elsewhere.
She gave the entrees another two seconds for etiquette’s sake. “Filet mignon and a salad.”
“Wow.” Jake’s brows lifted. “I thought you’d take longer.”
“I’m decisive.” She set the menu down at the edge of the table.
“Yeah, clearly.” Jake closed his menu. “I’m getting the burger.”
The corner of her mouth pulled. “Of course you are.”
Jake’s eyes narrowed, but she could see the smile hiding underneath. “What does that mean?”
She looked up at him for the first time since they sat down. “It means you are reliably, identifiably, monetizably yourself, Jake.”
Jake reached for the bread basket with a satisfied smirk. “I’m putting that on the football team’s t-shirts.”
Maddy laughed.
Across the room, Aspen’s gaze shifted from Danielle’s to Maddy’s and back to Danielle’s in the time it took Danielle to reach for her wine. Maddy forced her eyes back to Jake.
She had told herself, when she sat down, that she was not going to ask. Then she leaned forward in her chair, lowered her voice, and asked anyway. “Hey. Do you know that woman Aspen is with?”
Jake glanced over his shoulder. “No, no idea.” He shrugged. “Glad to see her getting back out there, though, after Tess.”
Maddy mentally ran through everything she knew about Aspen from twelve days of observation, eight mornings of eavesdropping on PT sessions, and a full day spent in a twelve-by-nine cramped storage unit together. Tess was nowhere on the list.
She kept her face neutral. “Tess?”
Jake popped a piece of bread in his mouth. “Her ex. They were together for—what, five years?”
Her ex. The ex she had mentioned in her bedroom last weekend. Maddy had assumed it was a man.
“So, Aspen’s…” She left the sentence open and waited.
Jake glanced up from his bread plate, brow lifted. “Single? Moving on?”
She shot him an incredulous look. “No, Jake.” She leaned forward slightly. “Gay.” She whispered the word, afraid it might carry thirty feet across the room.
Jake caught up half a beat later. He laughed louder than he should have. “Oh. Yeah.” He studied her. “You really didn’t know?”
“How would I know?” She kept her eyes on him. “I’ve been gone fifteen years. She wasn’t out in high school.”
She caught the half-question her mouth almost asked next. Was she? Maddy’s attention had been focused in other directions. Maddy quickly sifted through four years of memories.
Jake’s brow furrowed and he drew breath.
The waiter appeared at the corner of their table. “Can I get you folks started with some drinks?”
Whatever Jake had been about to say, would have to wait. “Vodka martini, dirty, three olives. Tito’s. Please.”
The waiter wrote it down in shorthand. “Yes, ma’am. And for you, sir?”
Jake leaned back. “Whatever IPA you have on tap is fine.”
The waiter’s pen hovered. “Anything else?”
Maddy gathered Jake’s menu and stacked it with hers. “We’ll place our food orders as well. The filet mignon for me, medium rare, with a Caesar side salad. The wagyu cheeseburger for him, well done. And we’ll get the spicy tuna to start.”
“Coming right up.” The waiter collected the menus and was gone.
Jake shook his head with a smirk. “Still like to be in control, I see.”
Maddy gave him a half-shrug.
She had five seconds to bring the thread back to Aspen and collect more data. She decided to let it go. The three new pieces of data she did not have ten minutes ago were still running on a loop in her mind.
Aspen was gay.
Aspen had a five-year relationship with a woman named Tess.
Aspen was on a date right now. Thirty feet away.
She didn’t know what to do with any of it.
The waiter returned a few minutes later and carefully set the martini in front of Maddy with two hands and a smile. Then he set Jake’s IPA down with a clunk that sloshed beer over the rim.
Jake sipped his beer. “So. Tell me everything.”
* * *
Maddy hadn’t let her eyes drift over Jake’s shoulder once since the waiter had set the spicy tuna down between them.
Their conversation was flowing. They reminisced about high school. They talked about Jake’s dating life over the past fifteen years—he’d had three serious girlfriends, one of which he proposed to on his thirtieth birthday, and she said no.
Jake told her about Noa, how she had lived in Honolulu for a while researching the coral reefs, and came back last year.
That she was now a project scientist at Scripps with her own research program—something to do with kelp conservation.
He also told her that Noa was a serial dater now, which she had a hard time wrapping her head around.
The Noa she knew had been the biggest hopeless romantic she’d ever met.