The Dating Proposal(17)

Like, Can I touch your chest?

And, yeah, that’s probably not cool.

“Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Thanks for meeting me here,” he says, as a wet shock of hair falls across his forehead. He pushes it back.

“Thanks for being a surfer,” I say, then I want to kick myself for coming across so googly-eyed.

“No problem.” He flashes me a grin and walks to his car. He stows the wet suit in the trunk then slides the board into the rack on the roof, stretching his arms to lock it in place. My God, this is better than Tumblr. This is almost like the best parts of Tumblr weren’t shut down.

“I have the bills. You sure you want to do this in plain sight?”

I return to our routine and do my best to stop perving on the man who’s already said he has trust issues and isn’t dating. “No, man. I’m gonna take you down a dark alley. Now, c’mon.”

He laughs, and I reach into my purse and hand him the screwdriver. He clutches it to his chest. “I missed you, little buddy.”

“Okay, that’s it. Forget the whole surfer mystique. You’re one hundred percent geek.”

He winks. “Told you so.” He smiles then runs a hand through his wet hair. There’s something so effortless about the way he moves, so natural. I don’t think he’s even aware of the effect he has on women. Of the effect he has on me.

I put on my best cheery face so it’s not totally obvious I was checking out every single line, divot, dip, and hard-AF muscle in his body. “How were the waves?”

“Great. I surfed, and my buddy Cooper went for a run.”

“So you sort of worked out together, and sort of not.”

He taps his nose. “Bingo.” He clears his throat. “How was your date?” His voice is stiff again, as if the words taste like vinegar. His reaction makes me a little bit happy. Fine, a lot happy. But I’m not ready to let on yet, so I stay in the friend zone.

“Let’s just say I had to go home and wash the salty tears out of my shirt before they stained.”

He cocks his head to the side. “How so?”

“He spent most of the time crying over his ex-wife.”

Chris cringes. “Ouch, that’s brutal.”

“Indeed. I hope to track down his therapist and demand half of her last session fee.”

“Want me to tell her what you did to my screwdriver? That might intimidate her.”

“That’d be grand. I’d appreciate that so much.”

“I guess this means he won’t be getting a second date.”

I shake my head. “Nope. But Hayden—she’s one of my good friends and my next-door neighbor—has a guy for me.”

His jaw ticks, and then he smiles. “Awesome. Hey, any chance we could talk later? I have a business thing I wanted to discuss with you. But I should probably wash the sand off first. Dinner? It’s on me.”

I’m thrown.

A little flummoxed.

I can’t imagine what he wants from me, but I definitely want dinner with him.

So I say yes.





12





Chris





“Stare much?”

As McKenna peels off, I turn around to see my buddy Cooper jogging toward me on the sand. He probably ran eight miles, like he usually does.

“Not at your skinny ass.”

He scoffs and flexes an insanely buff arm. “Please. There is nothing skinny about me.”

He’s right. The dude is the starting quarterback for the San Francisco Renegades, and he’s fit as a fiddle. As he should be.

He tips his chin in McKenna’s direction. “Did she turn you down?”

I play dumb. “What are you talking about?”

“The woman you were gawking at. Hello?” He waves in the direction of her car. “I saw you as I was jogging back. You were ogling her like you wanted to bang her.”

“Classy.”

“Just like you, man,” he says, clapping my shoulder, his breath coming fast now that he’s stopped running. “So what’s the deal?”

I shrug, making absolutely nothing of it. “We have a business meeting later. She’s a cool gal.” Yup, I’m the king of nonchalance delivery.

“Translation: you dig her.”

“She was returning my screwdriver.”

He laughs, clutching his stomach, doubling over. “That’s a good one. That’s the best one.”

“Whatever.” But I’m laughing too. “I fixed her hard drive but forgot a screwdriver.”

He holds up one hand, cackling more. “Hold on. I can’t handle the sheer level of innuendo in what you just said.”

I concede his point. “There is a lot of it in that statement, I’ll admit. But why don’t you break it down line by line, like I know you want to.”

He bites out the words between laughs. “Hard. Drive. I bet you want to—”

“You’re such a dick.”

He sets his hand on the roof of my car. “Of course I am. And of course you’d say the same thing to me if I claimed I was dropping off a hard drive.”

“Speaking of dropping things off, didn’t you bring some of your patented chocolate chip cookies to your friend Violet at her hair salon a couple of weeks ago?”