“For seven weeks,” she said, flipping her hand. “My point is that to win, all he has to do is be himself with one person. You have to be someone else with many. The math doesn’t work for me.”
“If he’s himself, he won’t last with the same person for seven weeks,” I reminded her. “In his default setting, he’d flirt with a parking meter.”
“This is true.” She opened her bag, taking out a lipstick. “But I just worry about you suddenly plunging into the dating pool. I don’t think I’ve taught you enough.”
I looked at her through the mirror. “Then why have you been encouraging me to do just that for all these months? Are you forgetting that you said I should do this earlier today? What happened to swine before pearls and rolling the dice?”
“It’s not the same thing, though,” she said. “What I was suggesting was just getting back out there and seeing what happens, with the knowledge that it might not be Ethan all over again. This is aiming for that. It’s totally different.”
“But it’s something,” I pointed out. “Which is more than I have been doing.”
She sighed. “Look, you know I’ll support you no matter what. But is it so bad that I do want another big, perfect love for you? I feel like it’s the least the universe can do, after what you lost.”
“I’m only seventeen, Jilly. This is seven weeks. The universe has plenty of time.”
With this, she bit her lip, a rare emotional response, then put out a hand, squeezing my arm. “Well, if you need a lot of dates that will probably not be great, you came to the right person. I have sort of a knack in that department. And I would like to see Ambrose go down, if only for the sport of it.”
“I’ll let you help pick whom he has to date when I win,” I promised her. “I’m thinking maybe a Tyler or Devon type girl. Lots of high fives.”
“Too bad for now that’s what we’re stuck with.” She dropped her lipstick back in her bag. “You know, that waiter’s kind of cute and he’s been super friendly with me. Wonder what he’s up to later?”
“You’re going to ditch the sport coats right here at dinner?”
“Oh, please. I doubt they’d even notice if we didn’t go back to the table.”
I pushed open the door, glancing back into the restaurant. Tyler and Devon were now building structures with the silverware and leftover plates, both of them clearly focused. “We can’t just leave,” I said.
“Spoken like a true person who gets found,” she told me. “Us seekers have no patience for lost causes.”
Maybe this was true. But in the end, she would give them another thirty minutes—during which time we as a group exchanged about six words—before pleading a headache and early morning the next day and getting us out of there. When Tyler asked me for my number, I was surprised to say the least, and almost told him I didn’t see the point. We had zero chemistry and the last thing I wanted was a repeat of this dinner or some variation of it. But Jilly was more right than I’d known: when you’ve only been found, you can’t become a ruthless seeker just like that. So in the end, I gave it to him anyway.
“Seriously? Anagrams?”
I looked around me, wondering if I’d misjudged how loudly Ambrose had asked this question. Nope. Even Phone Lady, at a table a few feet away, had given us her attention, briefly pausing her own high-volume conversation.
“Yes,” I said in almost a whisper, like this would compensate. “Aggressive ones. It was cutthroat.”
“Whoa.” The line inched forward, slowly. Lately, the coffee order had become Ambrose’s job, but with Elinor Lin and her mother back for yet another meeting, it was that much more important, so I’d come along for backup. “So I’m guessing the night did not end with a hot make-out session.”
“No,” I said flatly. “He barely spoke to me the whole dinner, actually. But then he asked for my number, which was weird.”
“Why?”
“Why did he ask for my number?”
“No,” he said, “I know that. You’re a hot girl and he loves word games. What I’m wondering is why you think it was weird.”
I barely had time to process being referred to as “hot,” which was a first, before answering. “Why would he want to see me again if he had no interest in me when I was right in front of him?”
“Well, I wasn’t there,” he replied as the line moved up a bit more, “but if I was a betting man, I’d say he had no idea you didn’t have a good time.”
“I think it was pretty obvious.”
“Maybe to you. But some people—guys in particular—are oblivious. It’s what makes dating so easy when you aren’t that way. It’s like having a secret power.”
From behind me, I now heard Phone Lady talking, saying something about steep vet bills and highway robbery. “And that’s you,” I surmised. “Superman.”
“No,” he said, tossing that curl out of his face. “But the bottom line is, all anyone really wants from another person is their attention. It’s so easy to give and counts for so much. It’s stupid not to do it.”
Hearing this, I thought of all the times I’d seen Ambrose leaning into a girl while she talked, his interest rapt and evident. Starting with that very first night in the parking lot of the club when he was AWOL for his mom’s wedding, all the way up to . . . well, moments earlier, when he’d made Emily, one of the stationery store owners, blush when he complimented her dress. Would I have felt differently the night before if between word games Tyler had focused entirely on me? I couldn’t say. But it wouldn’t have hurt.
“I think I’m going to win this bet,” I announced as we moved up in line. “If you give attention to every female you meet, there’s no way you’ll be able to keep a girlfriend.”
“There’s nothing wrong with attention,” he said easily. “I just can’t openly flirt. Luckily, I know the difference.”
I turned, facing him. “Does this mean you’ve already met someone with possible life-partner potential?”
I was pretty sure he winced at this last part, but he recovered quickly. “First of all, my life is not seven weeks. Or at least I hope it isn’t. Second, finding one person to be with for that time isn’t as easy as a dinner date. It takes time and focus.”
“Or,” I countered, “you could just take the first girl you would have that one perfect first night with and see if she can go the distance.”
“True,” he replied. “But the only girl I met last night was a total train wreck. I basically had to dodge out the back door of a club and take off on foot. Long story.”
“Was this before or after you gave her your full attention?”
He ignored this, instead moving up to the register, where we’d finally arrived. The Lumberjack was behind the counter, in red-and-white plaid this time. “Long time, no see,” he said, giving me a nod. “Where’ve you been?”
“She’s dating everyone,” Ambrose told him. “It keeps a girl busy.”
I blushed instantly, then cleared my throat. “I have someone else to do the coffee run now,” I said, nodding at Ambrose. “Except on special occasions.”