Gotta stay calm.
She holds my gaze without blinking, which is the most fucking annoying thing about her. That woman can silently dare you to a staring contest and then win it without getting the slightest twitch in her eyelids.
Is it because she drinks so much coffee?
Or does she have staring contests with herself in the mirror? Is that her third-favorite pastime after drinking coffee and using her toothbrush?
“I know I should regret what I did, but I—” she starts, only to be interrupted by the moderator calling time.
I look at the dude to my right, who seems to think he’s taking my seat. “This one’s mine. Go around.”
“Yeah, Sabrina,” the dude says. He holds out a hand for a fist bump. “We knew it wouldn’t end with a one-night stand.”
“Jesus effing Darwin on a honeycomb,” I mutter.
She stifles a giggle while she waves the fist bump away. “Oh my god, that was adorable. And quite the mental image.”
I suck in another deep breath and down the rest of my water.
She refills the glass before I can move.
Fuck.
I am not in control here.
“I didn’t call her to talk about you,” she says as everyone else settles around us. “I mean, yes, you came up. Possibly I should say I didn’t call her only to talk about you. You’re the reason I went down the rabbit hole in the first place, but ultimately, it had very little to do with you.”
“Very little to do with me.”
“Correct.”
“She said you told her I almost passed out in my entryway.” I’m keeping my voice as low as I can. I swear there’s not as much noise in here as there was five minutes ago.
Are they watching?
Are they listening?
“She asked how you were doing, I said you were doing great, she asked if you’d had any more of your dizzy spells, and since you’re the only person I tell lies to, I told her the truth.”
“That’s a lot of words for I called your grandmother to guilt you into not doing what you want to do here.”
She refills my water again.
Shit.
Didn’t even realize I’d drank it.
I lean even closer. God, she’s gorgeous. The green eyes. The cute nose. The slightest hint of freckles on her nose. The hair. That hair on her black sweater that I want to pick off and don’t dare in public.
Or private.
Or anywhere.
There are a lot of worst things about this situation.
At the moment, my worst thing is that I trust her with Mimi.
I clear my throat. “Mimi thinks I’m a fucking savior here because everyone in this damn town told her I saved the café and not a single one told her I’m planning to gut it from the inside out.”
“You still can be the savior here. There are other buildings that I could get put up for sale for you. Give Emma time to heal, and we can find something appropriate to make sure someone knows his time of playing the charming guy in public while being an asshole behind everyone’s back is over.”
“I’m no one’s savior.” But I fucking want to be.
“When you look at all the ways a person can let you down, the bar to be a savior is exceptionally low these days. I don’t think you’re a savior. I think you’re a complicated man who deserves some closure.”
“Time!” rings out again.
Sabrina rolls her eyes and waves the next guy past. “We both know how this would end, right, Jeremy?”
“I’m not opposed to another fun night,” he replies.
I look up.
The dude’s lanky. Wearing glasses. Big nose. One eyebrow hair is twisted up onto his forehead wrong.
“Appreciate the offer, but you’ll do better in about three tables,” Sabrina replies.
“Change your mind, you let me know.” He winks.
I almost come out of my chair to slug him.
“You slept with him?” I hiss at Sabrina while the guy heads to the next row.
“Small town. Slim pickings. I’ve slept with a lot of these guys.”
I remind myself she’s trying to get my blood pressure to do its thing and take another long drink of water.
She leans over to grab the water carafe from the table next to us, then gestures something to someone behind me.
“I called your grandmother because I found a picture of her with my grandpa in his college yearbook,” she says without ceremony.
My jaw comes unhinged. I snap it back shut.
“I can show you too, if you want. They looked friendly. And my grandpa’s been lonely since my grandma died, so since you were here, and everything I could find online suggested your grandmother was a widow, I called her to see if she remembered him and if she wanted to come see both of you.”
“You…called my grandmother…to set her up…with your grandfather.”
She frowns. Squints up at the ceiling. Taps her finger to her chin while she wiggles her head back and forth like she’s debating if she wants to tell me that’s exactly what she did, or if she wants to stretch her story closer to whatever it is if I’m wrong.
And then she shrugs. “Sure. Close enough. In the interest of honesty, yes, I also called her to see if she can talk you out of converting my café into a kombucha bar. But a big part of it is that I hate seeing people lonely. I don’t care if they become friends or if they do something romantic, I just thought it would be nice to connect two old people who I thought might like to see each other again in a time when they’ve each lost someone important to them. I’m sorry about your great-aunt, by the way. She sounded like a lovely person.”
“You looked up my aunt too?”
“No. Zen was telling me about her. Anyone Zen adores has to be a good person.”
“Time!” rings out while someone replaces the water carafe at our table.
Sabrina refills my water before I can move to do it myself.
I don’t push back from my chair.
She doesn’t wave me on.
“You gonna finally move, you old bastard?” Chandler Sullivan says entirely too close to my head.
Before I can react, Sabrina’s out of her seat and in his face. “Leave.”
“Make me,” he replies.
“The quiet way or the loud way?”
I shove out of my seat too.
I am not letting someone else fight this battle for me, and I am not letting him get away with any more shit like he pulled last week either.
And that little voice in the back of my head telling me that this isn’t fake hatred that Sabrina has for the man who bullied my scrawny ass in college can shut up.
Not the time.
Chandler turns to me.
Takes a step back.
Looks up.
Up.
The asshole is looking up at me.
Didn’t used to be like that.
“Fuck, dude, you got tall,” he says. “Couldn’t see that when you were sitting down. You wanna tell this bitch—”
I have him lifted to eye level before he can finish that sentence. The prick’s not light, but I have rage operating on my side. “You will walk out this fucking door, then walk out of this fucking town, and never fucking come back if you don’t want every single person in this room to find out every single way you’ve ever been a complete and total shit in your entire life. Go fucking bully someone else. Better yet, go fucking bully yourself and leave the rest of the world in peace.”
I drop him.
He teeters on his feet and doesn’t fall, but to my utter satisfaction, he’s gone whiter than a ghost.
“Do I need to repeat myself?” My vision is getting foggy again. My head is getting light.
But I fucking did it.
I stood up to him.
“So you sleep with a woman—” he starts, but he doesn’t finish.
“You’ve already used that line, you twatopotamus,” Sabrina says. “Say one more syllable and everyone finds out what you did the night your wedding didn’t happen.”
“What did he do, Sabrina?” one of the triplets calls from one corner.
“You haven’t told us yet,” another of the triplets calls from the opposite corner.
Iris bustles over to us. “Chandler Sullivan, you are booted. Get out. Get out, before I get your grandfather. And your parents. And Emma.”
Sabrina sucks in a breath.
So do half the people in the room.
Chandler blinks.
Then blinks again.
“Where’s Emma?” he asks.