Page 11 of Undone, Love Times Three

Ryan reaches out to the side and fiddles with the head of a carnation in a bucket full of them. He accidentally pulls the head off one flower and I wince. He stares down at it, then back at me.

“Sorry,” he mutters.

“Uh, that’s okay.”

He tosses the head back into the bucket. The door behind him opens, and a couple come in. We both watch as they look at us, then Renee comes over to help.

“We need to talk, Sylvie.”

I duck my head but lift my eyes to look at him. He’s frowning.

“Maybe we should step outside,” he suggests, his eyes going over my shoulder.

No need to ask why. My lips part but I clamp them shut and nod. Ryan’s frown deepens, but he follows me outside. We have displays here too and the air smells fresh and sweet as I walk past them to the small bench outside the barber shop next door.

“We should sit,” I say to him.

He looks a little exasperated but shakes his head and sits. I follow suit, leaving enough room for another person to fit between us. He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees and looks across the street.

“I got stood up,” I say, before he can ask questions. His head turns, and he looks at me, waiting. “I was getting ready to give up on my blind date, then you walked in.”

His brow creases. “You were on a blind date?”

I shrug one shoulder. “Well, I joined this app, where you don’t get see the picture of the person you’re talking with. It’s a way of getting to know one another without seeing a photograph first. Because you go off that initial attraction to a picture and sometimes people on dating apps don’t use their own picture…” I stop talking.

Ryan is staring at me like I have two heads.

“And well, he didn’t… I guess even our chat wasn’t interesting enough for him. He never came and then you were there, and you assumed I was the woman you were supposed to meet.”

He sits in silence for a moment, taking time to digest the word vomit I just dumped in his lap. This is horrible. I want the floor to open up and swallow me. Maybe some cars could crash in front of us, so he has to go save the day. Oh Jesus, did I just think that?

“And you didn’t think to tell me you weren’t Alison?”

No cars on the street. I’m not getting out of this.

“Yes, I mean. No. Well,” I flap my hands into my lap. Get a grip. You can handle this. He deserves the truth. “Every time Itried to tell you, we got interrupted by the server. Then we were talking, and I enjoyed talking to you and kind of forgot.”

“You just forgot that you were pretending to be someone else?”

I have to look away from those gorgeous, intense dark eyes.

“It sounds stupid now, but yeah. The more I talked to you, I did. I should have told you, it’s been driving me crazy for days. I was even going to tell you before we left but you got that call and… Oh,” I twist in the seat and look at him. “Was everyone okay, at the fire?”

He looks like he has whiplash. Yeah, I do that to people. His forehead clears and he nods. “Yeah, it was an electrical fire that got out of hand. There was no one home, so no one got hurt.”

“That’s good.”

We sit in silence for a moment. I’m about to tell him to forget we ever met, and chalk it up to a crazy anecdote to tell his friends, but he speaks first.

“It took me a while to figure it out,” he runs a hand through his hair and leans back. “You left my texts on read. Well, not you. So, I guess I got stood up too.”

“She didn’t answer your texts?”

“No. Go figure. She probably thought I was a weirdo, telling her how much I enjoyed our date and wanted to see her again.”

“You did? And you do?”

“Enjoy the date?” he asks with a brow lift. “Yeah, I did. Want to see her again? I guess that would only be possible if I met her.”

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