Page 36 of Wild Ride

Then he waited.

11

Jerome

Likes: Coffee, Breaking Bad, U2

Dislikes: People who claim it was better in the old days.

Ashley held her breath as she watched Dex walk away. Of course she wasn’t going to put up with Jerome’s bullshit. In fact, she’d been about to say something suitably cutting and incredibly witty when Dex showed up and stole her thunder.

I’ll be over here if you need me.

She didn’t need him. She had this situation completely under control.

The moment she’d sat down, she could tell Jerome was not going to work out. He’d given her one of those up-down-what-the-fuck-are-you-wearing looks, then added a sneer which made her feel awful.

She thought she looked Spring cute, with her fun tights and corduroy skirt and cat whisker boots. It was a nod to her job and her love of animals, but Jerome obviously did not approve.

Then he’d said she looked like a mom.

Her profile was honest about her mom credentials, yet this guy thought she needed to know she had mom energy. Because that was what? His out when this didn’t go well? (Which he’d clearly already decided because she wasn’t sexy enough for a coffee date at two o’clock in the afternoon!)

Politely, they’d exchanged some words about the music playing in the coffee shop (Joni Mitchell, who Ashley loved, but who Jerome proceeded to label as “some whiny folk singer”), coffee prices, and using an app with no photos for dating.

Jerome was definitely regretting that part of his dating strategy.

And so was she because Jerome did absolutely nothing for her. Kennedy was right about that. Jerome was conventionally attractive, she supposed, but his eyes weren’t as blue as Dex O’Malley’s and his shoulders weren’t as broad.

None of that should have mattered. It was incredibly unfair of her to compare a forty-five-year-old realtor to a professional athlete in his prime, yet she couldn’t help thinking about her volunteer.

And why oh why had Jerome brought up the spreading of his seed? Curiously, it happened right after he asked why she was no longer with her child’s father.

Sometimes these things don’t work out, Jerome. You’re forty-five and unmarried. You do the math.

She hadn’t said that, but she’d wanted to. She wanted to quit this date before it sucked from her chest any more of her hope about human beings. Instead she’d listened, worried that this might be the best she could get. That she wasn’t attractive enough for a normal guy, so she would have to compromise and date weirdos.

And then Dex was there, looming over them and looking like he might want to repeat the fist-first actions that had landed him as a volunteer at the animal shelter. He’d seemed so outraged on her behalf, an almost youthful outrage that reminded her of a time when Ashley used to get mad at people and situations and the world in general. A time when she cared more. Dex’s outrage was really … nice.

Better than nice. Wonderful, and completely unexpected.

Now he was sipping his coffee and studying his phone, but every now and then he would raise his gaze and meet hers in a “you okay?” kind of way that made her feel wonderfully supported.

Jerome was staring at her, more interested now than he had been for any of the twenty excruciating minutes before Dex had walked over.

“You know Dex O’Malley?”

He didn’t need the specifics. She opened her mouth to say he was a friend and Dex’s voice came out.

“Yes, she knows me. I’ve been trying to bang her but she’s not having it.”

Ashley blew out a sigh, ostensibly annoyed, but really thrilled that Dex O’Malley didn’t mind an entire coffee shop knowing she was bangable.

“He’s a friend of a friend,” she explained.

Jerome looked confused. Over his shoulder, he spoke out of the corner of his smirking mouth in Dex’s direction. “I’m just being up front about my needs. You get it.” As if a fellow dick-owner needed the explanation instead of the woman who had to put up with those “needs.”

“We all get it, man,” Dex said without looking up from his phone. “You’re prepping the soil for your seeeeed.” He dragged out the word “seed” so much that it sent Ashley into a fit of giggles, which wasn’t like her at all.

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