By the time I got home and Lily still hadn’t messaged me to confirm that my date was off, I felt bad. I really didn’t want to go, but I wasn’t about to leave him hanging either. I forced myself to get dressed and head to the bar.
Worst-case scenario, I’d text Lenny and tell her to call me in an hour if things went bad.
Best-case scenario, he’d stand me up.
*
I’d been at the bar for only a few minutes when I accepted the fact that the teacher had either gotten my sister’s message and been too much of a butthole to write her back or he had died. It had to be one or the other. At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.
But on the very small chance that he hadn’t gotten her email and was only running late…
I was waiting. It was the nice thing to do.
About five minutes into sitting there, checking my phone about every minute to see if Lily had messaged me, I was kicking myself in the ass for not just staying home in the first place and running the risk that the teacher would be the one sitting around instead. But I had ordered a glass of Sprite and took in each person who walked into the bar, hoping one of them looked like the picture my sister had shown me of the guy.
After fifteen minutes, I would have taken anyone attempting to look around, so at least there had been some hope that someone was looking for me. But the only looking-around going on was people coming in groups looking for a table. I had taken up a two-seater in the middle of the room.
There wasn’t anyone though. Just me, sitting alone, watching other people. The story of my life.
I checked my phone one more time and didn’t even bother sighing when nothing had changed on the screen. One of the waitresses walked by me with a tray of potato wedges covered in melted cheese and what I was pretty sure was broken up bits of bacon. My stomach grumbled. I should have gotten at least a snack before I’d come.
Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes and I’d leave and not feel guilty because I had come. That was it. I wasn’t going to stay a minute longer; I was starving. If I wanted potato wedges, I could settle for a stop at the Jack in the Box on the way home.
Across from me were a group of men standing right by a dart board, already halfway trashed if how bad their aim was meant anything. One of them threw a dart that hit about three feet to the right, bouncing off the sheetrock covered wall that already had a bunch of holes on it from other drunk guys in the past trying to play the same game. The men in the crowd started laughing, but the same man went again and did just as bad.
I glanced at my phone.
Three minutes down, seven to go.
“All alone?”
I must have been that distracted that it took me a second to process who was standing there in front of me, holding something dark and amber in a glass. It was the big hand with fingers covered in tattoos that I caught onto first. Then it was the long sleeve ending right at the man’s wrist that I took in next.
There was only one person I knew who would wear a long-sleeved shirt in the summer. And when that wrist connected to a big, muscular arm, and then a wide chest, a thick neck, and finally a face I had seen countless times…
I’m sure my eyes were bugging out of my skull.
“Rip?” I might have gasped like I didn’t know his name.
Those teal-colored eyes didn’t shine, and his mouth didn’t form the shape of a smile. He went right on looking at me as he stood there, tall as ever, broad as ever, and just too handsome as I sat there, getting stood up. “You here alone?” my boss asked.
Was… was I here alone?
I had lost my mind. Crap. I must have been that surprised I couldn’t think straight. “Hi. Yeah.” I smiled, confused as to why he was here. “I was supposed to have a date, but I don’t think he’s showing up,” I babbled.
He scratched at the side of his nose with the thumb of his free hand. Then he pulled the only other chair at the table out and wedged that huge body into it. His forearms went to the top, and those eyes came back to me.
Did he have a funny look on his face or was I imagining it?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around—I wasn’t sure for what, a beautiful woman with giant knockers coming toward us or something.
But no one was even paying the smallest bit of attention toward our table.
Rip had his focus on the group of men throwing darts as he replied, casually, “Getting a drink before I head home.”
Well, that made sense.
Grabbing the tip of the straw in my drink, I fidgeted with it as I kept an eye on the man on the other side of the table. “Do you live close to here?”
He was still looking at the group of men. “No.”
So…. “Are you here by yourself?”
“Yeah.”
Rip turned that perfectly profiled face over to me as he took a sip of his drink. Lazily, those dark eyebrows went up a little. “This is a shitty place to meet a stranger, baby girl.”
See? There was that tiny bit of fondness again. “It’s public.”
“It’s dark,” he countered.
I blinked. “There’s a lot of people here.”
“A lot of people drunk or about to be.”
“The bouncer is almost as big as you are,” I told him.
That other eyebrow went up and he said slowly, “The parking lot is fucking dark.”
I’d swear on my life that he smirked, and I ignored the little pleasure I felt at it. At being the one he would do something like that with. But it didn’t mean anything. I couldn’t forget that. He was my boss, and… he was fond of me. He was. I knew it. He’d shared his lunch with me. If that wasn’t fondness, I didn’t know what was. I knew how to share, and everyone knew that. But Rip? Rip had hidden his birthday cake so no one else could have any.
“Why’d you choose this joint to meet up at?”
It finally hit me right then that he was here watching me wait around for my date. Watching me get stood up. Fantastic.
Absolutely fantastic.
Why was he always around when my Luna Luck kicked in at its worst? Literally, my cousin trying to hurt me? He was there. My sister kicking me out of her apartment after a four-hour drive? He was there. Me screwing up at work? He was there. Me getting lied to by the same sister? He was there.
I wasn’t sure I believed in signs, but if I did, those would have been major ones. At least that’s what I’d figure.
I sighed, shoved those worries aside, and sipped out of my straw just to kill time before I told him the truth. “Because it isn’t that far or that close to my house.”
I didn’t imagine that his look was pretty freaking close to him being amused. “Pretty smart.”
I tapped my temple.
Wanting to change the subject, and taking advantage that he’d come over to sit with me, I leaned forward and put my chin on top of my opened palm. “Will you tell me where you live or is that too personal? I can put it in our box of secrets, if you want.”
He moved his head from side to side before replying with two major streets I recognized being further up north.
“House, duplex, apartment, or complex?”
“Shithole.”
I shouldn’t have laughed… but I did, and when I caught him smirk-smiling, I knew he had said that on purpose. He was playing again. Why now? After all these years? I wondered, but did I care that much? No.
“It’s shit. Just somewhere to sleep and eat,” he explained, smoothly.
I took a quick sip of my Sprite. “How long is your lease?”
“I don’t have one.”
He lived in a shithole, but it wasn’t a rental. I didn’t want to say that didn’t make sense, but… it didn’t.
“It’s not that kinda place.” His mouth twitched, and he said out of the blue, “I got a mobile home on a lot.”
“It’s yours?”
Rip nodded.
“That’s not a shithole then.”
“Whatever you say,” he said, keeping an eye on me. “It’s shit, believe me, but it’s a place to sleep, shower, and make food.”
“That’s all mine has too,” I told him. “My place isn’t amazing or anything, but it’s mine, so I think it’s pretty awesome.”