Yours Truly (Part of Your World, #2)(26)

“I’d just do what our residents do to us. Act like I don’t know what I’m doing.”

She laughed. “It’s a time-honored tradition.”

I smiled. Then the server approached the table.

“Can you hold on a second?” I asked.

I put her on mute and ordered a salad and a club soda with lime. I wasn’t hungry, but I was taking up the table. And I got Lieutenant Dan a grilled chicken breast with no seasoning and a bowl of water.

“Okay, I’m back,” I said.

“So, what do you do for fun?” she asked. “Hector said he saw you at the Cockpit. Do you like bars?”

I shook my head. “No, definitely not.”

I’d had a nightmare once about being in a crowded bar that didn’t have table service and I had to order at the packed counter, squeezing in and shouting at the bartender. I’d woken up in a cold sweat.

“He must have seen me there last summer,” I said. “I’ve only been in there once. Jewel’s wife, Gwen, owns that bar. I went to the farmers’ market with her. She wanted to bring stuff back, I carried a watermelon.”

“You carried a watermelon?” She sounded amused.

“Yup. Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

She laughed at my Dirty Dancing reference and I smiled at making her do it.

“So if you don’t like bars, where do you take dates?” she asked.

“I’m not dating. I’m just trying to get used to the new job right now. You’re not dating either, right?”

She sighed. “I was trying to date for a little while. But it’s bad out there.”

“Really?” I asked. “How bad?”

“Oh boy, strap in. Bad. There was the guy who brought his three cats with him—”

“He brought his cats?”

“Yeah. I told him I like animals, so he brought his three tabbies. They were loose in the car. Then he realized they couldn’t stay in there while we went to go eat, so he tried to get me to come back to his house to drop them off and see his custom catio.”

“A what?”

“An enclosed patio for a cat. Which I was interested in seeing if I’m being totally honest, but I wasn’t going into some rando’s cat house to get murdered. The whole time he was trying to convince me to come he was wearing one of the cats around his shoulders like a shawl. It was so weird. Then there was the guy who wanted me to look at his rash—”

“I’ve had that date. Before my ex.”

“Why is it always a rash?”

“Sometimes it’s a mole.”

She laughed, hard.

She continued, still cracking up. “One time I met this guy online and he was just like you. Handsome, smart, funny—normal. I kept wondering what the catch was. We made plans to go to dinner and the second we got our drinks he went into a pyramid-scheme pitch.”

I chuckled. I also tried to hide how much I liked that she thought I was handsome and smart and funny.

“God, sometimes I think I only attract the weirdos,” she said.

“You’re a beautiful, intelligent woman,” I said. “You attract everyone.”

She went quiet at this and I wondered if I’d said something I shouldn’t have. It just sort of came out. Maybe it came off as flirting and she didn’t like that? But when she started talking again, she had a smile in her voice.

“It’s amazing how much this dating stuff wears you down after a while. I’m over it. At this point I’d be excited if someone just had their shit together enough to have a headboard.”

“Ha.”

“Do you have a headboard?” she asked.

“Yes. Absolutely.”

The server set my drink down in front of me.

“Congratulations. You’re the one percent.”

I was happy I seemed to have fallen into a category that she approved of, a man in possession of complete bedroom furniture.

“I’m a hair’s breadth away from just finding other like-minded women and starting a coven,” she said, going on. “Anyway, Lieutenant Dan is pretty cute.”

I looked down at my dog, sleeping under the table at my feet.

“The rescue almost didn’t let me have him.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t like men. We think he was abused by a man when he was a baby. He wouldn’t even let me get near him.”

“How’d you work through that?” she asked, sounding impressed.

“I showed up every day. I’d bring food for him and sit down on the floor and talk softly to him until he trusted me.”

“Awwwwww. And were you the one to name him?”

“I was. It seemed appropriate.”

“What happened to his leg?”

I squeezed lime into my club soda. “We think he was born that way. Probably at a puppy mill.”

“Ugh. That’s so sad. I used to get all the abused/neglected animal videos on TikTok before the algorithm realized I didn’t like them. Animals adopting orphaned babies or military service members coming home and surprising their dogs—I am not emotionally equipped to deal with that kind of energy right now. Are you on TikTok?”

“No,” I said. “Well, sort of. I watch videos on house restorations, but I don’t post anything.”