“The Asian places,” he explained, dead serious. “I’ve always wondered if the fortune cookies taste different there.”

Kinda what I thought. Very, very pretty, but not exactly bursting with brains. I didn’t know if that made me feel better or not. “Fortune cookies,” I said slowly.

He nodded. “You know, those cookies that have the little pieces of paper in them? Sometimes they just give you numbers for some reason, but other times you get ones that say things, like, ‘Your beauty helps make the world go round.’”

“You got a fortune cookie that told you you’re beautiful?”

He nodded. “It was kind of weird, but I just rolled with it. I seem to get those a lot for some reason.”

“Maybe because you’re beautiful?” I blurted out, unable to stop myself.

Vince grinned at me and blushed a little. So unfair. “You think I’m beautiful?”

I winced. “That wasn’t what I meant to say.”

“Oh, so you don’t think that.”

I blushed. “It’s not… ugh. Shut up.”

His smile widened before he narrowed his eyes and scowled toward the front of the restaurant. “Was that your boyfriend?” he growled.

The conversation felt like the equivalent of whiplash. “My what now?”

“That guy. Who kissed you. That you spit on. You seem to do that a lot, by the way. Was that your boyfriend?”

“Sandy?” I said incredulously. “No! Er. No. That’s my best friend. You’ve seen him before. We’re not dating. We’re not together. I mean, we tried it once, but it didn’t work out. I kissed him yesterday just to make sure, and there was nothing.”

His scowl turned to me. “You kissed him yesterday?”

“Yeah. Dude, you know him already. You’ve seen him before.”

“What?” He looked adorably confused again, and I hated myself for using words like adorable and beautiful to describe him. I was pretty sure I was about to flop my vagina on the table.

“That’s Helena Handbasket.”

“The drag queen?”

“Yeah.”

“But… he looks so little as a man.”

I shuddered. “Don’t let him hear you say that. Helena will come out before you know it, and that bitch is fierce. This one time, some big leather daddy tried to start some shit with him, and then Helena came out to play, and the daddy ended up on his knees with a collar around his neck, apologizing to Sandy, who held him on a leash. They ended up dating for two weeks, but then it ended because Sandy figured out she wasn’t meant to be a Dom.”

He watched me for a moment, looking for what, I don’t know. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. I didn’t know if he was still with me or if something I’d said had confused him. I felt like a jackass then, at least a little bit.

And then he spoke, and I understood that he wasn’t confused per se, he was just still stuck on a point a few turns in the conversation back. “So do you have a boyfriend?” he asked. “Or a partner or whatever?”

I started getting nervous and shy again, but I allowed myself a brief moment to feel awesome about myself when I realized I’d been having a conversation with him for, like, five minutes. Even if I’d told a pedophile joke, it seemed to be going better than I ever thought it would. This, of course, caused me to shut down just a bit further.

I looked down at my feet. “No,” I mumbled.

“Thank God,” he said, sounding extraordinarily relieved. “Can I take you to dinner?”

Uh. What? “Uh. What?”

“Din-ner,” he said slowly, as if I was stupid. “Can. I. Take. You. Out?”

I was starting to get defensive. “Why?”

Tags: T.J. Klune At First Sight Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net