“For your information, Fin is not seeing anyone and I don’t think it would do any harm to have coffee with him. Just coffee, Rory.” Coffee. I was NOT “having coffee” with Fin the way I’d “had coffee” with Lucas.
“What’s so funny?” Dad got up to help her with the dishes and I started clearing the salad plates.
“Nothing.”
They both stared at me, and my defenses started crumbling. I was no match for them.
“Okay, okay. Coffee.” I waved my pitiful white flag and started treating the wounded. There were many causalities.
But then Mom was beaming and Dad was jolly and the rest of the dinner they were all glowy and happy and I’d get over it. This was what happened when you were an only child. Your parents teamed up against you.
Hopefully it would be just actual coffee with Fin and it would be boring and we would both agree never to do it again and then that would be it for at least five years.
This was the plan.
Of course, the plan only worked in my head because as soon as I walked in the door from my parents’ house, my phone rang with an unknown number. I went to my bedroom, passing a curious Sloane before I shut the door and put the phone to my ear.
“Hello?” I didn’t usually answer unknown numbers, but I figured this was probably Fin, and I was right.
“Hello, this is Fin Herald.” I almost dropped the phone. The Fin Herald I remembered did not sound like that. This guy had a deep voice. Puberty had been good to him.
“Hi, Fin, this is Rory. Wow, you didn’t waste any time.” Stupid words. Why must you come out of my mouth at the wrong time? Just because I think you, doesn’t mean I need to say you out loud.
He laughed.
“Yeah, my mother wasn’t going to let a day go by. Look, I’m really sorry about this. Not that I haven’t wondered what you’ve been up to, but I don’t want you to feel awkward about this.”
I sat down on my bed and slipped my shoes off. “So your parents ambushed you, too?”
“Something like that. They did all but strap me down in the chair and hold a gun to my head to call you and ask you to coffee. You seriously don’t have to say yes.” Huh. The guy I remembered was not this confident. Or funny.
“No, it’s fine. If we don’t do this, they’ll never get it out of their systems,” I said.
“Good point. So, um, what have you been up to since high school?”
Thus began the catch up. He loved his job and he got to travel a lot and I told him about mine and how much crap I got for having a vagina and being in the tech field and we laughed and it was like we’d been close for years. We never got along this well in high school.
“Well, it sounds like this coffee thing is going to be no problem. I think we’ve got this,” he said twenty minutes later. Sloane was probably dying on the other side of the door.
“Thank God. I was hoping I wasn’t going to have to fake a broken ankle, or park my car in a no parking zone so it gets towed on purpose.”
He paused for a minute.
“You know, that’s actually not a bad idea. Thanks for that.”
“Anytime.” We finalized the details of our coffee date for the following Wednesday. I just had one meeting in the afternoon and then I could leave early and meet him.
I hung up and set my phone down. “Well, what do you do know about that?” I said and shook my head. There was a frantic knocking at my bedroom door.
“Well?” Sloane had been camped out on the other side and now was bursting for details. Because my life was her life.
“We’re going for coffee,” I said, pushing the door open. “That’s it. He actually was kind of funny and it wasn’t too awkward, so it might not totally suck.” Sloane raised and lowered her eyebrows and I pushed past her.
“Don’t get any ideas, Miss Sloane.” Too late.
“Rory’s got her very own love triangle. God, I’m jealous.” I got a coffee cup from the cupboard, filled it with water and put it in the microwave to make some Kava tea. I needed a little something to help me sleep.
“Oh come on! Let me live vicariously,” she whined. “All I have is work and nothing else to occupy my mind. Take one for the team.”
Take what? What team was she talking about?
“Have you been sniffing too much fabric glue again?” This one time in college she’d had a project due and not enough time to sew it and had to glue a lot of the seams together and she’d gotten totally looped out on glue. I wished I had a video of it.
“It’s either this, or suffer through marathons of reality television, and not the kind you like.” Ugh, spare me.
The microwave dinged and I took my tea to my room without another word.
7
“Have you narrowed down your candidates for assistant yet?” Dad said when he stopped by my desk the next morning. He usually tried to see me at least once during the day and sometimes we had lunch together.
I’d been so busy trying to put out fires and rearrange a meeting that had already been postponed twice that I hadn’t had a chance to even think about it.
“I will this afternoon.”
“I heard you had a very enthusiastic fellow that came highly recommended.” I looked up from my exploding inbox and blinked at him a few times.
“A young man by the name of Lucas Blaine?” How had he found out about this guy? Probably Mrs. Andrews.
“Oh?” I pretended I wasn’t super interested.
“I must say he doesn’t seem like the kind of boy to be interested in this type of position, but maybe he’s been looking to make his mark here and start moving up. He seems like a valuable asset. Something tells me that he’s going places. Anyway, I don’t want to tell you what to do, but I think he’d do really well here. Mrs. Andrews was also very impressed with him.” My phone rang, but I ignored it.
“Well, I haven’t made my decision yet, and I don’t think he would . . . fit well.” Really? That was all I could come up with? It wasn’t like I could tell Dad that I had amazing one-night-stand sex and I didn’t think I could ever look him in the face as my employee.
“Well, just something to consider. Not that I’m telling you what to do. Go with your gut. Coffee this afternoon?”
I quickly scanned my schedule.
“No can do. I’m booked today. Tomorrow?”
“It’s a date.” He looked around before he gave me a kiss on the top of my head.