The Proposal(13)

“You’re telling me. She usually gives any leftovers to the employees at the other shops nearby, as a sort of goodwill/‘we’re all in this together’ kind of thing, but I guess today she thought my need was more important. I certainly wasn’t going to argue with her.”

They made small talk as they waited for their table, too surrounded by other people to talk about anything important. After longer a wait than he’d hoped, the host finally called his name.

As Carlos walked behind Nik on the way to a table, he admired her shape in her snug jeans. He was pretty sure this woman hated all men at the moment, but he could look, couldn’t he?

They both ordered beer before they opened their menus.

“You’re going to have to keep me from ordering everything on the menu, I’m starving,” he said.

Nik glanced over the menu and grinned.

“Luckily, I heard from you at just the right time before I dove into the box of cupcakes. And I’m glad you wanted to go to this place. I haven’t been here in far too long; Fisher didn’t like spicy food, so . . .”

He looked up at her with his eyebrows raised.

“Fisher didn’t like spicy food, and you went out with him for more than one date? How did that happen?”

She sighed.

“Excellent question, really.”

The waitress brought their beers, and she took a sip.

“Never again, though,” she said. “I’m swearing off actors. You think you’re just casually dating, and then bam, they spring a public proposal on you.”

Carlos shook his head.

“Is he a real actor or a wannabe one?”

She laughed.

“You always have to ask that question in L.A., right? A real one, but a terrible one. And that’s not even my rage talking; I thought that even while we were dating.”

Oof. This woman did not mince her words.

“How did you even meet him?” He shook his head. “You don’t have to answer that. You’re probably sick of even thinking about this. We can talk about work, or our last vacations, or baseball, or whatever.”

She widened her eyes in horror.

“Good God, not baseball, anything but baseball.” They both laughed. “As for not talking about this, honestly, I wish I could stop thinking about this. I’ve probably thought about Fisher more in the past two days than I did in the entire five months that we were dating, that’s the wild part. But wait, you probably don’t want to hear more about my disastrous love life; you heard plenty on Saturday.”

Actually, he’d left right when they’d gotten to the good stuff. And honestly, he was dying to know the details.

“If it helps you to talk about it, I’m happy to listen,” he said. Did that sound magnanimous enough? “I talk to teenagers all day; hearing a story about an adult disastrous love life will be refreshing after their stories, I promise.”

She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled.

“Okay, but you’re going to have to tell me at least one good work story afterward, so I don’t feel like such an idiot. You see teenagers; you must have some great ones.” She glanced down at the menu. “Wait, let’s order first. You already said you were starving.”

The waitress stopped at their table, and they ordered far too much food for two people.

“What did you ask?” she said when the waitress walked away. “Oh right, how I met Fisher.” She sighed. “Last year, I did a profile of Anna Gardiner for Vogue. She only really got big, like, last summer. Right before she got the role that led to the Oscar nomination and Vogue cover and everything else, she was in a terrible and short-lived TV show. Fisher was her co-star.”

He held up his hand to stop her.

“I’m sorry, but you got to meet Anna Gardiner? Most famous people are no big deal, a dime a dozen in L.A., blah blah, but Anna Gardiner? What was she like? Don’t tell me she was terrible; I loved that movie.”

He was so thankful none of his friends were here to witness him babbling about a movie star—they would make fun of him from here to eternity.

“She was honestly great! Which is the whole reason I met Fisher, actually. Anna and I got along really well, and she ended up inviting me to her birthday party, and that’s where I met Fisher. When he asked me out, I was positive that he just wanted to go out with me because he wanted me to write a puff piece about him for something. I sort of never stopped thinking that, actually.”

She shook her head and laughed.

“The funny thing is that whenever I went to industry parties with him, when people I knew through my work saw us together, they would look so confused. A few times, when he was on the other side of the room, they even said to me, ‘You’re here with that guy?’ I was never sure if that was an insult to me, or to him.”

The waitress set their spicy and sweet wings down on the table, and they both grabbed one.

“Anyway, going out with Fisher was very low-stress, until two days ago. I’ve had such a busy few months of work and Fisher was just a fun guy I hung out with when I had time. I even felt guilty about saying no to his proposal, because I didn’t want to hurt his feelings! That was, until . . . well, apparently, I’m not as good at reading people as I thought I was.”

He looked closer at her. He was pretty good at reading people, and she looked really stressed about this whole situation.