Page 43 of The Single Dad Grump Next Door

She glances at me like she’s trying to gauge my sincerity.

“Thanks.” Her voice is soft. “Anyway, it’s stupid. I feel like all I’ve been doing lately is whining. Other people have it worse than me.”

“True.” I shrug. “But that doesn’t mean that the difficulties you’re experiencing aren’t difficult. We all have our own scales, our own limits to what we can handle.”

“And I clearly can’t handle it.”

“No, you’re handling it,” I argue lightly. “As best you can, I mean.”

Her response is a half-hearted, one-shouldered shrug. She’s fiddling with the edge of the napkin that her cocktail is resting on.

Just like that, it strikes me how pretty she looks right now.

Of course, Alina Sokolovalwayslooks pretty. She’s a very pretty person. It’s a fact of life, just like how the sky is blue and the grass is green.

But, in this precise moment, there’s something about the way the dim lighting is glinting off her gold-brown hair that makes her seem like she’s glowing.

The noise of the bar feels way too overwhelming all of a sudden, the laughter and clinking glasses grating against mynerves. I glance toward the door, longing for fresh air. Andy is who knows where, having clearly forgotten about me in favor of the twenty other friends he’s made in the past fifteen minutes.

“Do you want to get out of here?” I ask, the words spurting out before I can think twice.

Alina jerks her head back in shock. “What?”

“I mean…” I gesture toward the crowd. “It’s loud. Do you want to take a walk with me? Or something?”

What am I doing?

She hesitates, her gaze flicking toward the door. I’m certain that she’s going to snarl and tell me to leave her alone, but she surprises me.

Alina nods. “Yeah. Okay.”

***

The night air is cool and refreshing in comparison to the stifling heat of the bar. We walk in silence at first, our footsteps shuffling against the smooth boardwalk that borders the beach. In silence, we descend the wooden steps built into the sand. The ocean stretches out before us, dark and endless, the waves lapping gently against the shore.

Alina crosses her arms, her posture stiff.

“You know, I’m not usually the kind of person who drinks alone in bars,” she says suddenly. “I just—I needed to get out of my head for a while. I didn’t even know Andy was going to be there.”

“I get it,” I say.

She looks at me, her brow furrowed. “Do you?”

“More than you think,” I admit. “After my wife… there have been days over the past few years where I couldn’t stand being in my own skin.”

She clears her throat quietly. “I’m really sorry, Gabe.”

“Yeah. Thank you.”

We stop at the edge of the water, the waves licking at our shoes.

“I didn’t mean to be so standoffish yesterday,” she says after a minute, surprising me again. “At dinner, I mean. I know Wren looks up to you, and I shouldn’t have made it weird. I shouldn’t have left early.”

“You don’t have to apologize. It was weird, but not because of you. Honestly, that might’ve been the first time you and I ate dinner together, despite living in the same dorm for four years.”

She smiles faintly, her gaze fixed on the horizon. “Yeah… By the way, Wren’s a cool kid.”

“Thanks. She’s everything to me.”

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