Page 2 of Scary Suitor

We were great friends when we were children; then my family moved, and we lost touch. I met her again under strange coincidences: same company, department, and apartment complex.

We’re next-door neighbors. We got close again, reconnecting as if no time had passed.

“Invalid defense.” I scowl lightheartedly. Maybe she thought the flowers on my desk were from my boyfriend. They weren’t. The flowers were from the swanky man from administration two floors down.

She says people our age are meant to have fun, date around, and charm the pants off handsome frat boys, or snag a rich second-generation son instead of their dad because being a homewrecker is ugly.

“Totally is,” she agrees with a firm nod of her permed head. “You’ll still go.”

“I will not.”

She has the guts to slap an offended hand over her chest. “What am I going to tell my boyfriend when you ghost his best friend?”

“That I ghosted a stranger.”

This won’t be the first or the last time she tries to set me up with people she knows. I ran out of excuses to decline on the fifth blind date. Finny won’t give up, convinced I’m waiting for prince charming and his horse.

Dating is the last thing I can do. That awful man will terrorize me even more if he finds out another man got closer to me than he is.Cassio—even his name breaks my resolve and has agitation rioting under my skin.

Knock on wood just in case, I think through a puff of white and flick Finny’s wooden earring.

“Ow,” she hisses and glares through her curled lashes. “Please, sacrifice a Friday night for me. You owe it to me.”

She motions to the earring, eyes gleaming wickedly.

“Only this once,” I mumble, regret promptly weaving through my frozen joints. “I hope he stands me up.”

“You’d rather be embarrassed than sit through a date?”

I pout and squish the puffy jacket that makes her look like a stack of dinner rolls. They are abs, as she had claimed this morning, and rubbed the sewn grooves with a brow wiggle.

Instead of telling her the real reason, I retort, “Better than an awkward dinner.”

“He’s a nice guy,” Finny defends, hilariously impassioned. “Not that kind. A genuinely good man.”

She goes on to make a list of husband-material qualities, each word filled with more desperation before she finishes with: “He makes a mean rollatini.”

My brow jumps at the specific ricotta-filled eggplant dish. “Sounds like you want to date him.”

“My boyfriend isn’t into sharing.” My crestfallen friend frowns, lips wobbling dramatically.

“The more eggplants, the better. It has antioxidants that protect against cell damage!” Finny shouts, startling the passersby.

I’m positive the woman was taken aback by what Finny said, and not the volume.

“A facial has the same effect,” I quip, unthinking.

Finny chokes as we stop in front of our apartment building. “What are you talking about?”

“What areyoutalking about?” I ask back, equally amused as we hold back a laugh.

I punch in the door’s code by muscle memory, laughing after Finny can’t hold in hers.

“We’ll pretend that conversation never happened.”

“We’re classy.” I nod in agreement as I watch her saunter to the rows of mailboxes to collect her overflowing mail.

I go to bring the elevator down to ride up together. The yellow light shows it is on the fifteenth floor, so Finny should have time to catch up.

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