Total pages in book: 103
Estimated words: 100523 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100523 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 503(@200wpm)___ 402(@250wpm)___ 335(@300wpm)
“I’ll be back shortly.” Elodie spins around and takes off. And even though the shop is bustling, we’re tucked away so it feels like just Rachel and me in this section of the little café. We’re right beside an older couple, quietly doing a crossword puzzle together on a tablet, while nibbling on a chocolate bar.
With her friend gone, Rachel stares at me, baffled. “You planned all this? Set this all up?”
I lean back in the chair, feeling pretty damn good about myself. “You didn’t want to pretend to be tourists, so I had to find something else to impress my date. And the big takeaway from my research last night was to focus on what your date likes.” I count off on my fingers. “You like sweets. You like spicy things. You like your friends. So I thought a little chocolate tasting at Elodie’s shop would fit the bill. Called the owner and asked her to save us the best table in the house.”
Rachel brings her hand to her mouth then shakes her head. “I can’t believe it,” she says, and though I like her date disbelief, I’m a bit mystified. Pulling out the stops doesn’t seem like such a big deal to me. Planning tonight was fun, and frankly, what a dude should do.
“Really?” I press.
“It’s so…thoughtful.” It’s as if she hasn’t spoken the word in ages. Like it’s unfamiliar to her tongue. She bites the corner of her lips then waves a hand in front of her face, her eyes shining.
Oh, shit. Is she going to cry again?
Instead, she takes a steadying breath. “It’s more than I expected tonight.”
Does being nice to her make her cry? No clue. Probably best to make light of the whole situation. “I told you I wasn’t an underachiever.”
She shakes her head vehemently. “I know you’re not, but that’s not what I mean, Carter,” she says, soft and vulnerable.
Her sincerity neutralizes my need to make her laugh. “What do you mean?”
She exhales shakily. “When Edward wanted to impress me, he’d always pick the hot new restaurant that a finance buddy had told him about. He’d usually have missed something I’d planned. A dinner at home. Or a birthday. Or a night out with friends. So he’d make it up to me with these fancy meals. A shabu-shabu place in Silverlake where you had to know someone who knew someone who had the secret handshake to get you in. An Argentinean steakhouse in Santa Monica run by a chef who’d escaped the country, one with a long waitlist Edward could bypass with money. A dessert shop in Los Feliz that was opened by a woman who’d studied under the next Gordon Ramsay, but then defected to do her own thing.”
“Okay,” I say, carefully, waiting for her to go on. I need to make sure she’s not suggesting that I’m doing that.
“And I’d go with him. Put on pearls. A simple black dress. The sommelier would bring over a bottle of wine and uncork it, and Edward would swirl it, and say it’d be my new favorite. Then he’d tell me about his business trip to London or Singapore or Milan, and the deals he’d struck, and the stories he’d heard. The endless stories from the road. The international banker he’d met who’d just trekked across Nepal in a life-changing journey. The financier who’d climbed Kalymnos in Greece and experienced god,” she says, with a derisive twist in her tone. “It was all just part of the deception.”
Don’t go there. Do not put me in the same breath as that scum. “That’s not what I’m doing,” I say, a warning in my voice.
“No, god no,” she says, flustered, then she sets a hand on my forearm, wrapping her soft fingers around me—skin against skin since my cuffs are rolled up. “I know that’s not what you’re doing. This is so different. This is…” She dips her face, shakes her head. “I feel so selfish saying this.”
“Say it,” I urge.
She lifts her face, holding my gaze. “This is about me. All the things he did were about him,” she says, a little awestruck.
“Good. This is for you. This is about you,” I say. It saddens me that Rachel sets the bar so low. That she doesn’t realize that considering your date’s wants and wishes is a minimum standard.
But that’s easy for me to say. I wasn’t the one married to a cheating charlatan who kept another family on the side. Rachel already beats herself up for having been bamboozled by him. The least I can do is show her what respect and decency look like.
And how it feels, too, to sit across from a man who listens to a woman.
And, most of all, that she deserves that.
She squeezes my forearm harder. “I don’t even know what to say except…thank you,” she says.