“That’s exactly what I’ve been doing.”
“No, you’ve let him know you’re going on a date. You have to figure out how to let him see you in action.”
I straightened. “Maybe you’re a genius.”
“The maybe is cute. And, hey, if any of your HeyThere dates are decent, send them my way in case I ever surface from my grading stacks long enough to enjoy a meal with another human being.”
We hung up, and I stared at the ceiling for a half hour, running different scenarios through my head. The nagging feeling that I was manipulating Will hadn’t gone away, and this felt like more of the same. But there was no working around the fact that Will wouldn’t see this on his own.
It’s not like I could make him choose me. But at least if I made him see me as a choice, and if he still walked away from me, I’d know he did it with all the facts.
Chapter 8
I spotted my date, Jared, as soon as I stepped into the Sun Grill. He looked exactly like his picture, which gave him bonus points. Most people were smart enough to figure out the game was over if they met their date looking significantly different from the picture they’d posted, but according to my online-dating veteran friends, it still happened.
Jared was a square-jawed, all-American type, with sandy blond hair and intelligent eyes. They crinkled up at the corners when he saw me. “Hannah?” he asked.
I stuck out my hand for a shake, and he gave an appreciative smile at the firm grip. Dave had taught me that. It was amazing how far a strong handshake could get you. But since it wasn’t a business dinner, I leaned in and planted an air kiss near Jared’s cheek. It would make me seem warm and approachable but communicate that I had boundaries. I was kind of funny about hugging people. There were not a lot of people whose whole selves I felt like having smooshed against my whole self.
“It’s great to meet you,” Jared said. “Have you eaten here before?”
“No, but I’m excited to try it. I see a couple of waiters walking past with things I feel like I need to have right this second, so if the food tastes as good as it looks, I might not be able to stand it.”
He laughed and turned to the hostess. “It sounds like we’re ready for our table.”
“Great. Give me a moment to make sure it’s set up, and we’ll get you seated.” She signaled to a server behind her and waved us to the side. “Go ahead and wait right here, and we’ll take good care of you.”
The door opened behind us, and Will walked in with a strange brunette. Strange to me anyway. I blinked, but it was still him smiling at me. “Hey, Hannah.”
“Uh, hi? What are you doing here?”
“You made it sound so good, I decided I should try it too.”
Mother of pearl, was he kidding me? I didn’t need him to “see me in action” with zero mental prep.
“This is my date, Raina. Raina, this is Hannah and . . . ?”
“Jared?” the waitress called before I could answer. “We’re ready for you.”
“We have a reservation,” Will said. “I’ll see if they can seat us at the same table.”
Before I could object—and how was I supposed to do that in a mannerly way?—he was at the desk, smiling at the hostess, whose head bobbed three times in quick succession. My stomach bounced along with it, dropping further toward my knees each time. Please, no. I darted a quick glance at Jared, who looked confused but game, and Raina, who was measuring me with assessing eyes, like she was trying to figure out if I was behind this change of plans or not. I couldn’t fault her for that, but I offered her a friendly smile. Yes, she was dating the guy I wanted. But right that second, I didn’t. He was all hers, and good thing too, because if I had him to myself, I’d probably choke him.
Will rejoined us. “Great news. They’ll seat us together.”
I made a play to save myself from an evening of watching Will charm this Raina girl. “You don’t have to do that. I’m sure you were looking forward to a quiet evening of talking. Go ahead and get your own table. It won’t hurt my feelings.”
“We don’t mind,” he said. “Besides, with four people, someone should always be able to keep the conversation going, right?”
The hostess cleared her throat, and four heads turned her direction. She stood with an armful of menus and a polite smile. “Ready?”
Jared nodded, and giving up, I followed him. He shifted to let me ahead of him and then placed his hand on the small of my back to guide me through the tables. It was a good move for two reasons. First, it suggested someone had raised him as a gentleman. And second, it was a cue that he liked what he saw so far since he was making physical contact.
Sophie had laughed at me when I’d pored over dating “how to” articles—how to decode signals your date was sending, how to carry on a good conversation, how to send your own signals. But I hadn’t had enough experiences in high school to figure stuff like that out, and once boys had started taking notice in college, I’d felt like I did every time I landed on the Spanish station while channel surfing: I understood the general idea of what was happening, but the specifics totally escaped me, since, like an idiot, I’d taken French in high school. On dates, I knew the basics of what should happen, but when and how to ask a well-timed question was like AP Spanish the first few times I’d gone out.
Sophie had come home one night to find me sniffling that one of my dates hadn’t called for a second date, but when she made me replay the dinner and movie we’d shared, she stopped me and said, “Wait, so he kept hogging the armrest in the theater, and you kept your hands in your lap?” Then she explained that I should have shared the armrest with him to signal that I wanted him to touch me. She’d hugged me and smiled. “He thought you were telling him you weren’t interested. That’s why he’s not calling.”
So I’d become a student of dating, even though it meant getting my tips from Teen Vogue and Seventeen since Cosmo readers were past those basics. Like, way past.
The studying had paid off. I knew that Jared’s hand near the small of my back was a good thing if I wanted it to be.
The hostess stopped at two small tables right next to each other, and Jared drew my chair out for me. I smiled at him. Not pulling a chair out at dinner wasn’t a dealbreaker, but doing it was a good sign. Chair puller-outers tended to be all around more considerate with other things too. But when Will pulled out his date’s chair, then took the seat by me, I scowled.
“Do you not like the separate tables?” Jared asked. “I can ask her to seat us somewhere else.”
“No! This is fine. I thought I felt a draft for a second, but it was my imagination.” The only chill had been in the look I’d shot Will. He hadn’t noticed. It was dumb to get mad. If he hadn’t pulled out his date’s chair, I probably would have picked on him for it later.
This was going to be an exhausting night. And we hadn’t even started the small talk.
Everyone hid behind their menus for a few minutes and only discussed the choices. “I can’t decide between the squab or the lobster,” Jared said.
I caught Will’s quirked eyebrows from the corner of my eye. I read it like a billboard. What kind of pretentious tool orders squab? But Captain Pizza and Nachos wasn’t exactly a foodie, so I pretended I didn’t notice.
Instead, I leaned toward Jared so I didn’t have to raise my voice over the murmur of the neighboring diners. “I’m stuck between the lobster and the citrus chicken.”
Jared closed his menu. “Why don’t you get the chicken, I’ll get the lobster, and then you can try mine?”
Will broke in, his voice amused. “Hannah knows what she wants. She’ll do fine ordering for herself.”
What? Did he just try to put Jared in his place? I closed my menu too. “I do know what I want. Your plan sounds perfect, Jared.”
Will shrugged. I couldn’t leave it alone. “Raina, we haven’t heard from you. What do you think?” Take that, Will. Which of these two women is on a date with a domineering male? Not me.
&nbs
p; Raina startled like I’d poked her. “Just choose whatever you think sounds good, and we can share it. I’m not super picky.”
“Cool,” Will said. “I think we should go with the blackened chicken pasta and the salmon.”
“You can’t get the chicken,” I told Will.
He skimmed the menu again and frowned. “You’re right. I’ll do the skirt steak. That still okay with you?” he asked Raina.
“That sounds great, but why not the chicken pasta?” she asked. “I’m not one of those girls who’s scared of carbs.”
I gave her grudging points for that. “He can’t eat mushrooms,” I said, determined not to sound smug or, worse, possessive.
“Allergy?” Raina asked, reaching out to cover one of his hands on the table like she was comforting him for having tuberculosis and not a food sensitivity.
“More like an aversion,” he said. “It’s a texture thing.”
“I totally get it. But I love skirt steak, so that’s a great choice.”
Somehow the way she said it made the subtext sound like, “Thanks for hanging the moon, Will.”
I glanced at my watch. Had it only been ten minutes? The rest of the evening yawned even wider. Boo hissssssss.
“How do you know each other?” Jared asked, and I smiled at him. “Will is my brother’s best friend,” I said at the same time Will said, “I’ve known Hannah her whole life.”
Jared nodded, and his face relaxed. “That makes sense. For a minute there, I thought maybe you two were exes, and I was sweating being in the middle of an awkward situation.”
“Definitely not,” I said, shooting Will a “shut up” look. “Tell me about your work. You said you’re an attorney?”
Will’s eyes immediately glazed over. He complained that the biggest jerks at his racquetball club were always the lawyers.
“Yeah, I am,” Jared said with a laugh. “Sorry.”
“Which firm?” Raina asked. “My brother is an attorney.”
“I own my own practice, but I do immigration law, so I make enough to keep the lights on but not enough to pay for anyone else to have their name on the door.”
“Wow. That’s really admirable,” I said, truly impressed. I’d assumed he was one of hundreds of hotshot Dallas guys who were gunning for top billing at the lucrative firms connected to the different oil companies headquartered in town.
“It’s not financially smart though.” Jared shrugged. “It feels right for right now.”
Raina cleared her throat. “What kind of engineer are you, Will?”
Will’s gaze had sharpened when Jared had said immigration law. His measuring gaze slid from Jared to me before returning to Raina. “I’m a rocket scientist.” It came out a little braggy. Tone it down, Will. Or maybe Raina would find it off-putting. Keep it up, Will.
“Awesome. I love aeronautics,” Raina said, leaning forward, her eyes bright. “Tell me what you do.”
I hated her.
“Right now I’m working on a project with jet-engine mounts,” Will said, fixing his attention on his date.
She could have it. I wasn’t going to compete. Jared was too nice for that, and there wasn’t much I hated more than watching an episode of The Bachelor and the women all becoming the worst clichés in fighting for the same man. It was much better when twenty-five men fought for one woman. But this table was evenly matched, and there was no reason for anyone to be fighting for anyone’s attention, and if anything, I owed Jared mine.
I also owed Will a chewing out, which he would get later when I pounded on his door to yell at him for crashing my date. I wasn’t sure yet exactly what I would say, but it would contain the words, “I’m a big girl now. Quit babysitting me.”
I kept my eyes on Jared and executed dating tips numbers three and five on the list I’d compiled after an awkward date when I was twenty-one. Smile like you mean it, and listen with interest. “Tell me about your work, Jared. Is it hard?”
Jared’s return smile showed the first sign of strain I’d seen on him, and a touch of tension stiffened the set of his shoulders. “It’s so hard, but I can’t quit,” he said. “There aren’t enough lawyers advocating for immigrants. There’s no pay in it. The attorneys in the legal aid offices are burnt out and overloaded, and the ones working for hire are predators, charging a big upfront fee, and then they don’t deliver results. They don’t even try.”
The waitress stopped by for our orders, and when she left again, I propped my chin on my hand and fixed my eyes on Jared. “Is it too exhausting to talk about?”
“It drains me, but I love it.”
“Then I’d love to hear more.”
He hesitated, but when I smiled, he nodded and detailed one of his cases. I listened, respect and guilt warring for the upper hand with my emotions. I related to people who loved their jobs and took pride in their work. Jared clearly did that. But at the same time, the stress of the work he did was bleeding into our dinner like the first cut into a rare steak, and it was clear that there would be more to come. And that there would always be more to come in his line of work.
I was not the woman he deserved sitting across from him, trying to listen to him but letting my mind wander to the man sitting next to me instead, trying not to flinch every time Will cracked a joke that made his date laugh. Jared needed a woman who could open her whole heart to him and help him carry the burdens he was shouldering alone. That woman was not me.
He at least deserved my fully present self tonight. I brushed my napkin to the floor to give myself an excuse to reach down and pick it up. I repositioned myself when I straightened to angle away from Will so that looking at him would require me to turn my head and force me to think about how often my attention was wandering his way.
“That’s heartbreaking,” I said as Jared wound down describing his case of trying to reunite a deported mother with her children still here in Texas.
He groaned. “I’m so sorry. I have a bad habit of taking work home with me, but it’s inexcusable to drag it out on dates.”
The waitress arrived with our meals, and I ooh-ed at my beautiful chicken while Raina aah-ed over her salmon. That made me wished I hadn’t ooh-ed because I didn’t want to do anything the same as Raina. And then that made me feel about fourteen. No, twelve.
Jared dropped his arms to his side and gave himself a vigorous shake, like a swimmer about to mount the starting blocks. “I’m shaking off work. Tell me about you.”
“What do you want to know?” I asked.
“Besides the things in your profile, what do you do for fun?”
“She runs and watches Rangers games,” Will said. “That’s pretty much all you have to know.”
I refrained from elbowing him, only because I knew I couldn’t resist doing it hard and possibly causing a scene. “I have old-lady hobbies, mostly,” I told Jared, ignoring Will.
“What does that mean? Do you play canasta at the senior center on Thursdays or something?”
I laughed. “That might be more interesting than what I actually do. I keep a container garden because I don’t have a yard. Then I sit around sketching out the garden I’m going to have one day when I have a real yard. And sometimes . . .” I clapped my hands to my face, realizing what I was about to admit.
“What?” Jared asked.
“What?” Will demanded at the exact same moment.
I wouldn’t have answered Will. His tone was incredulous, like he couldn’t believe I had a hobby he didn’t know about. But Jared’s expression was so sincerely interested that I put my hands over my eyes and answered in spite of myself. “I order seed catalogs, and I read them for hours, memorizing planting schedules, imagining how they’ll grow.”
“Hey,” Jared said, his voice soft and warm. I peeked at him through my fingers and dropped my hands when I saw his smile. “I think that’s awesome.”
“I think that doesn’t make sense,” Will said. “Why order seed catalogs? You can get all that information online. And if you’re o
rdering the seed catalogs, they have the planting seasons printed on them, so you don’t need to look them up. You’ve got some system inefficiencies in your process.”
I took a deep breath and finally spared him a glance. “Do not make me stab you with a fork. Talk to your date, Will.”
He stared at me for another long moment, his brow furrowed, before he shrugged and turned back to Raina, whose eyes betrayed the first signs of tension. I smiled a “He’s your problem” smile at her and let it morph into something genuine when I refocused on Jared. “Anyway, old-lady hobbies.”
“Any kind of hobby sounds amazing to me right now,” he said. “I don’t have time. For that. For almost anything. I’m not even sure I’d ever get out on dates if it didn’t coincide with meals I had to eat.”
That made me laugh out loud. It was so lacking in game that I couldn’t help it. His cheekbones darkened. “I just played that back in my head and realized how it sounded. You’re not a convenience or a . . . system efficiency.” He darted a glance at Will, but I didn’t follow it to see what my watchdog thought of the dig. “I meant that I don’t come up for air sometimes, and only the fact that biology forces me to eat reminds me that I probably need to speak to nonclient humans too.”
Suddenly Will’s voice was in my ear, low and threatening. “His biology is going to have nothing to do with your biology.”
I pretended I didn’t hear him or notice Raina’s drill-bit stare, but I did lean away from Will and farther toward Jared. “I understood what you meant,” I assured him. “I’m glad to be a distraction.” His flush deepened, and I grinned. “I mean it. I take it as a compliment that I’m enough to pull you away from work you obviously love.”
Will coughed next to me, and I began a list in my head of all the ways I was going to exact my revenge on him over the week. First, hide his laundry detergent. Second, leave the following public message on his dating profile: “Hey! I didn’t know how else to reach you since you’re not returning my calls, but I have good news! The DNA test came back, and you’re NOT the father!” Third . . . third would be worse. Whatever it was.
Always Will Page 7