You’re so happy together you decided to pick up a random stranger to sleep with you?!
Good God, does no one believe in fairy tales and happily ever after anymore? I’m pretty sure if Prince Charming came home to the castle one night and suggested he and Cinderella should spice things up with a third party, she would shove her glass slipper up his ass.
“Well . . . um . . . thank you for calling, I guess,” I reply lamely.
I end the call after Stephanie makes me promise that we’ll go for coffee sometime soon. I walk back into the living room with a confused expression on my face and quietly explain to Ariel what just happened.
“Seriously—when you get home tonight, the first thing you’re going to do is march your ass up to Vincent and kiss him. If you have to go on one more of these dates, your head is going to explode.”
As we wait for Cindy to finish up, I sneakily grab my discarded notebook and pen from the floor, flipping to a new page and writing down a list the pros and cons of making the first move with Vincent. The cons definitely outweigh the pros, especially the item at the top of that column, which I’ve circled ten times: He doesn’t care about me even a little bit.
* * *
I set my purse on the kitchen island and let out a tired sigh.
“Another bad date?”
I scream and whirl around at the sound of Vincent’s quiet voice. He’s sitting on the couch with his feet propped up on the coffee table and fire in the fireplace. There’s a book sitting next to him on the couch, and I feel my heart start to flutter with the picture he makes. He looks so good lounging on his couch that I kind of wish I had seen him sitting there reading as soon as I walked in. That mental image is something Ariel would call “great spank-bank material.”
“No, not another bad date,” I finally answer. “I was with Cindy and Ariel.”
“Did you happen to get a phone call tonight?” he asks, turning to look at me.
I narrow my eyes at him, wondering how in the world he would know that.
“What did you do?”
He pulls his feet down from the coffee table and pushes up from the couch, walking over to stand in front of me, sliding his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Did you get a phone call?” he asks again.
“Yes. And I’ll ask again: What did you do?”
“I took care of it,” he says with an easy shrug.
“What do you mean you took care of it? Took care of what?!”
“I didn’t like the idea of you going on another date with a fucking stranger, so I followed you to that Mexican restaurant. I saw you run out of the place like your ass was on fire. After Ariel picked you up a few minutes later, I went inside and had a nice little chat with Steven and Stephanie,” he explains.
“YOU WHAT?!” I screech. “You can’t just do something like that!”
“Did they apologize?” he asks with a raise of his eyebrows as he looks down at me.
“You are ridiculous! That’s not how this works!”
“Did they apologize?” he asks again.
“Yes! They apologized! Oh, my God. I can’t believe you did that! Why would you do that?”
“I took care of it,” is all he replies.
With that, he turns and walks away from me, scooping up his book from the couch cushion and disappearing down the hall.
After a few minutes of angrily pacing back and forth in the kitchen, muttering to myself about creepy stalkers who sit outside a restaurant while I’m on a date, and then say God knows what to Steven and Stephanie to get them to call me and apologize, I stop pacing when a lightbulb goes off in my head.
“Oh!” I gasp, covering my mouth with my hand.
He sat outside the restaurant while I was on a date. He saw me run out of there all freaked out, and he went inside to find out what happened, and lord only knows what kind of intimidation tactic that man used to make Steven and Stephanie call me tonight.
Oh, my God. Maybe he really does care about me a little bit.
Grabbing my purse from the counter, I quickly pull out my notebook and pen and cross out all of the cons about making the first move with Vincent.
Chapter 15: I Don’t Trust Strippers
My foot nervously taps against the rung of the barstool as I absentmindedly look down at the notes I took the other night during our stripping-party field trip. With a frustrated sigh, I push my notebook away and start tapping my fingers on the countertop as well. I’m anxiously waiting for Vincent to come out of his room, and it’s impossible for me to concentrate.