“I just don’t want to get my hopes too high, ya know? As far as I know, he might even be a jerk.”
“Oh, sure, but he’d be a hot jerk nonetheless!” Becca cries out, exasperated.“That’s just like you… You won the lottery and are complaining about it! Cheer up and enjoy it. Some women would straight up commit murder to switch places with me… And I have to be honest, I kinda would've done it last night if that placed me in the same room as Danny Manning.”
“Thanks, Becca. It’s nice to know that my roommate is a psycho.”
“No problem,” she laughs, “I thought you'd already figured that out by now.”
“And here we are,” the driver tells me, looking at me through the rearview mirror with a smile. I look out the window again, the Time Warner Center twin towers towering over the traffic. I thank him with a nod and a smile and, as the car halts to a stop right in front of the entrance, I step out onto the street. “Good luck with your date!” The driver waves at me before driving off. Am I some kind of celebrity for the day?
“So, I’m here. Which is the Per Se floor?” I ask Becca as I blend with the crowd.
“The fourth! You’re gonna love it, Fee,” she continues in that excited tone. She seems as excited about the fact that I’ll be having dinner at Per Se as she is about my date with Danny. According to her, it’s not that easy to get a reservation at Per Se.
I head straight through one of the elevators, my heart suddenly deciding to pick up the pace. Okay, calm down, Fiona; this is just a date, I try and tell myself, but I’m not sure if it’s working.
When I finally see the entrance to Per Se, I suddenly feel my heart sinking. The place is completely deserted and, for a restaurant as acclaimed as this, it can only mean that it’s not open for the public today.
“Becca, remember when I told you he might not even show up?” I start, feeling as if someone kicked me in the stomach. I mean, Danny has my phone number, but I doubt he’ll even bother to call.
I’m glancing at the empty dining area, and about to turn on my heels to leave, when I finally see him. He’s sitting at a table in the center of the room, wearing a tailored black suit that fits his built frame perfectly. In his hands there’s a rose.
“Yeah, what’s happening, Fee?”
“Oh, my. Gotta go, babe. I’m about to be swept off my feet.” Without waiting to hear Becca’s reply, I end the call and stuff the phone inside my purse.
With a deep breath, I walk inside Per Se and head straight toward the man I spent the whole night dreaming about.
26
Danny
Do you know how hard it was to book a whole restaurant like Per Se on a day’s notice? We’re talking 3 fucking Michelin stars.
Not easy, that much I can tell you. But after last night’s game, my name carries some weight in New York. I just had to pull a few str
ings and now here I am, the whole dining room to myself.
It’s five to eight, so Fiona should be here soon. I don’t know what came over me to ask her out like that yesterday, but that’s just how I do things. I can be impulsive. If something feels right, I do it without a second thought.
It’s funny, though; I have models and actresses dying for a few minutes of my time, and I don’t really care for them and their fake plastic tits. Sure, you know, it feels good for a fucking night … but that’s it.
Now, with Fiona I’m even wearing my best suit. My lucky suit, in fact, the one I was wearing when the Nailers picked me in the draft. I even bought a rose on the way here, and I never do stuff like that. I don’t think most women deserve to be treated like princesses, to be honest—at least the ones I know. Most of them are just pampered socialites looking for a free ride, trying to leech off my success. But this Fiona … she’s just a regular girl, and I want to do this right. Okay, fuck, I’ll admit it; she also looks hot as hell, and that helps. But I’m not saying I’m going to fuck her, okay? I just want to do something nice for a change.
I look at my watch; it’s eight o’clock sharp, and then I turn my gaze toward the entrance. And there she is—and fuck, she looks completely stunning. She’s wearing a tight dress that makes her look even hotter than she looked back at the stadium, and her straight blonde hair looks perfect for grabbing when I bend her over and—fuck, I need to chill out.
She’s talking on the phone, peeking at the dining area and, when her eyes meet mine, her whole face brightens. She places the phone in her purse and walks inside the restaurant, elegantly swaying her hips in a way that makes my cock twitch with a kind of raw instinct.
I take a deep breath as I hear her heels clicking across the floor, and I go up to my feet before she reaches our table.
“Glad you could make it,” I say, and her cheeks grow red before I’ve even finished speaking. I pull her chair back, acting like a true gentleman (no matter what the newspapers say, I can act like one), and then go back to my seat.
“I don’t think you’ve left me another choice, you know? After you asked me out on live TV, I think I’d end up looking like an idiot if I turned you down,” she tells me with a confident smile. I can tell that she’s feigning her confidence; she’s trying hard not to look me in the eyes, and that tells me she’s a nervous wreck right now.
“Who cares?” I shrug. “Looking good, looking bad… It’s all the same, Fiona. I don’t live my life according to what the media expects of me, and you shouldn’t either.”
“Yeah,” she agrees, finally looking straight at me. Her eyes are of a clear blue, a little piece of heaven hidden in her iris, and I almost forget that I’m on a date with her. I just prop my elbows up on the table and lose myself in how beautiful she looks. Forget about all these top models; they have nothing on this girl.
“I hope that asking me out wasn’t just a marketing stunt or something like that,” she says with a smile, slowly looking more confident with each passing second.