Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 87942 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 87942 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 440(@200wpm)___ 352(@250wpm)___ 293(@300wpm)
Ethan Howe, another server, came over and set a glass of white wine down in front of me.
I shook my head. “Sorry, Eth, but I didn’t order this.”
“Compliments of the gentleman in the back,” Ethan said, wiggling his eyebrows significantly toward the back of the restaurant. He ruined the effect by snorting and adding, “Saw that on TV once. Always wanted to say it.”
“Well done, you,” I approved.
I didn’t have to turn around to know who “the gentleman” was, but I did anyway, just so I could glare at him. Dunn Johnson sat alone at a booth, eating a giant cheeseburger with one hand and drinking a chocolate milk with the other. When he saw me looking, he smiled around his mouthful and raised half his burger in salute.
No one should look sexy drinking chocolate milk. Ever. It defied reason. It had to be against the law. And yet there was that big man, taking up half the booth, smiling at me like I was the sun after a long, long rainstorm, and he wanted nothing more on earth than for me to smile back.
I was going to kill him.
Literally kill him.
Possibly using the straw from my eleventh weekly tonic water.
“Thanks, Ethan,” I said, summoning half a smile.
I grabbed my phone off the table and fired off a text to Dunn.
Tucker: Leave. Now.
Dunn’s reply came more slowly, probably because he was typing with only his burger-free hand.
Dunn: Who, me? I’m just enjoying a meal. Best burgers in the Thicket.
I ignored this, as well as his next messages.
Dunn: What time’s your date coming?
Dunn: You look real nice in that shirt.
Dunn: Bernadette’s been asking for you.
Dunn: How’s your water?
Seriously, the only thing worse than enduring this farce was having Dunn watch me endure it.
“Hey, Ethan?” I asked, as he strode past my table. “See that potted fern over there?” I gestured to a plant about ten feet away, directly between me and Dunn. “Could you do me a huge favor and move it, like… six inches to the left? I’m having an allergic reaction.”
Ethan looked at the fern and blinked. “To the… to the fern?”
“Something like that.” I smiled widely. “I’d so appreciate it.”
He smiled readily. “You got it, Doc!”
My phone vibrated a second later.
Dunn: Rude and uncool.
I shut my phone off before I could type out something blistering and friendship-severing like, “No, what’s uncool is the whole freakin’ situation you engineered”… but then, that wouldn’t be true, would it?
It was Dunn’s fault, sure, in the sense that he’d set me up on all these fucking apocalyptic dates, but whose fault was it for allowing it? It was like people who claimed they cared about the environment but still littered. Or people who claimed they hated graphic violence on television but still let their friends con them into watching Game of Thrones…which was another thing I’d done because Dunn had flashed me those big green eyes and had lived to regret.
All in all, Operation Healthy Boundaries was going swimmingly, thanks for asking.
I tapped my finger on the table and glanced around the restaurant. It was packed with the usual crowd of Thicketeers as well as a few of my Shamin’ Greatest Hits.
Leon the Lecher, date number nine, sat at the bar. He’d greeted me on our date with an “I’d like to see you wearing nothing but a smile and my cum,” which I’d thought was a bit of a forward response to “Leon! Nice to meet you! I’ve heard you play golf,” but apparently he’d gotten the wrong impression of me after Dunn had spent forty minutes bragging about my honest, direct nature while the two of them were waiting in line at Levon’s Lucky Lube for an oil change.
Kevin, sitting with his back to me by the window, had looked sweet enough, but he’d opened my sixth date with, “I like to get creative with my nuts,” which had killed the conversation quickly. It recovered for half a second when I realized he’d literally meant nuts, since his family owned a peanut farm just south of town that used the same alfalfa distributor that Dunn used, and that Dunn had gone on and on to him about how open-minded I was. But the conversation had withered and died for good after he’d spent two and a half hours extolling the virtue of the humble legume, which could be used in place of all kinds of things, including conditioner, shaving cream… and lube.
And there in the booth by the door was Devraj, date ten. He’d returned my “Hello” with a breathless ramble of “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t even be here, I’m still in love with my boyfriend—ex-boyfriend, oh my God, Jeremy’s really actually my ex-boyfriend for good this time— and I wasn’t gonna come, but Dunn said you were a really good listener, so I figured what the hey and I’m sorryyyy.” That date hadn’t actually been too awful. We’d spent a long time commiserating about men we couldn’t have, and after I’d counseled him a little, he’d said he was going to try to work things out with Jeremy. Considering he was sucking the face off his booth-mate, I was pretty sure it had worked.