Page 82 of Can't Help Falling

It was dumb that even the word socks made Fin’s pulse feel like it was racing backward for just a second. She thought of strong hands on her ankles, tugging her just so, competently stripping an article of clothing from her body. She thought of what it had felt like to wear an article of Ty’s clothing, how that pair of his wool socks had looked draped over the rest of her clothes in her hamper later that night. She scowled. How irritating. “The man doesn’t have a monopoly on socks,” Fin mumbled to herself. “Socks are a normal thing.”

“What’s that?” Donovan asked as he came around the back of her chair, his hand grazing her shoulders, as he slid back into his seat.

“Oh. Nothing. Everything all right?” He’d been gone for over ten minutes. Which was kind of a long time to be in the bathroom on a date.

“Yes.” His maple-brown eyes tightened with chagrin as he traced a hand over his dark, buzzed head. “Look. I wasn’t in the bathroom. I was taking a work call. I know that’s a really shitty thing to do on a date.”

“Yes,” Fin agreed immediately, making him smile. “That is a shitty thing to do on a date. But Winnie told me just how busy you are. I’ve been warned.”

Winnie was one of Fin’s clients and apparently one of Donovan’s good friends. She’d been the person to set them up.

“Right. But I’m still sorry I had to take that call. It’s a sad day when I’m too busy to pay attention to a beautiful woman at dinner.”

Fin knew it was a compliment. But there was something about his wording that got under her skin. Did that mean that if she were an unbeautiful woman it wouldn’t be a sad day if he were too busy to pay attention to her?

Was she just looking for a reason to be annoyed by this guy? Was it a bad sign that she found his bad-boy attractiveness kind of grating? Would it have killed him to iron his shirt before this date?

“I’m gonna run to the bathroom,” she said, bolting from the table and noting the fact that he hadn’t stood up when she had. She marched into the bathroom and pulled up Via’s phone number. Leaning back onto the counter, she dialed the number.

“You were right,” Fin said without preamble the second Via answered. “I mean, you never actually said it out loud, but I knew you were thinking it. And. Yeah. You’re right.”

“Uh. Hold on.” There were the sounds of chatting in the background that faded away when Via closed a door on her end. Fin remembered that her friends were all together right now at Seb and Via’s. She’d shirked on the invitation in order to go on this dud of a date. “Sorry. Okay, go on. What am I right about?”

“I’m into Ty.”

There was dead silence on the line for an excruciating ten seconds and then a victorious, very unladylike whoop that Via generally only made when she was romping the competition during a softball game. “I knew it.”

“I just said you knew. We both know you knew it. Now can we please move on to what a huge problem this is?”

“Uh. Not seeing many problems here, Finny.”

Fin hopped down from where she was sitting on the counter and listened to the sound of her winter boots clomping around the tile bathroom. “How about the fact that I’m on a date with another man right now?”

“Well, see, Fin, there’s this thing called dumping someone? It tends to work really well when you want to stop having dinner with them.”

“No. That’s not the point.” Fin tossed her braid over her shoulder, ignoring her own reflection as she paced past the mirror. She didn’t need any additional assistance confirming the fact that she did, in fact, look like was losing her marbles. “The point is that this guy, Donovan, is really hot. Brown eyes. Short, dark hair. Deep voice.”

“Just your type.”

“Right. But I can’t stop thinking about how his shirt isn’t ironed.”

“Since when do you care if a guy irons his shirt or not?”

“Exactly,”Fin hissed, scaring the crap out of an older woman who’d just swung through the door. The woman averted her gaze immediately and scurried into a stall.

Fin sighed, tried to calm down and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I have never, in my life, cared about ironed shirts, or hair gel, or plaid welcome mats, or matching cuff links, or opening cab doors or any crap like that.”

“And then you went and got a crush on Tyler and you found you kind of have a taste for it.”

“Via, we both know that Ty is a piece of work. He’s douchey, he’s—” But suddenly, Fin found that she actually didn’t have a list of complaints against Tyler. She had a list of fictional complaints against him. Things that she’d thought were true when she’d turned him down for a date. And maybe they had been true back then. But in the last few months of getting to know him, had she ever really seen him be selfish or thoughtless or douchey or entitled? With the exception of the floppy blond hair and the plaid doormat? No.

“But...” Via prompted.

“But he’s a really caring person and he shows it in a hundred different ways, and I am not interested in a man who’s not even going to iron a shirt for a date with me. And that’s Tyler’s fault.”

“You’re blaming him for raising your standards?”

“I don’t want standards! I don’t even want a man! I just want to—”

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