Page 29 of Sincerely, Your Enemy

TJ did mention it never hurt to be a good listener on a date, but Aaron’s been dominating the conversation for over forty minutes. I haven’t been able to get a word in, except for a few “Oh, reallys?” every now and then.

“That’s when my mom and her fiancé decided to stay in England. The two years I studied abroad were a blast, but I missed my friends and my dad’s side of the family, which is why I moved back home,” he explains.

God, I hate myself for saying this.

But he reminds me a little bit of me.

The girl I used to be.

A rich kid who’s out of touch with reality.

His mom married a successful businessman when he was five, and even though his family didn’t come from money initially, he grew up traveling with his mom and her husband.

Then there’s his dad, who owns a women’s clothing brand.

“Shit, am I hogging the conversation?” he asks ten minutes later.

At least he’s self-aware.

I’m being too harsh, aren’t I? He just got carried away telling me his story. And he did ask me about myself earlier.

Still, I can’t help but wonder if this is what dating is always like. Are we just expected to sit there in silence? To listen for an hour without ever really being part of the conversation?

“Oh, no, not at all,” I say to be polite.

He takes it as a sign to keep going.

He talks about his signed baseball collection for another twenty minutes, and then he excuses himself to the bathroom. TJ’s voice pops into my head from the moment Aaron walks away.

Watch out for the bathroom trick.

I didn’t even know that was a thing until TJ told me some people use it to bail before the check comes—usually, this applies to dinner dates more than coffee dates.

They say they have to use the bathroom but go straight for the exit when you’re not looking. And it’s not always to get out of paying. Sometimes it’s because the date is going so horribly they’re desperate to leave.

My phone ringing in my pocket interrupts my overthinking, and I grab it to check the caller.

It’s my brother’s best friend’s mom.

I dropped both Oli and Sierra off at their friends’ places for the afternoon, but not without telling their friends’ parents to call me if anything happened.

Damn it, Oliver.

What’d you do now?

“Areyou out of your goddamn mind?” I scold my brother from the driver’s seat.

I’m not going to lie, when I was in high school, I did some stupid things in the name of impressing my friends, and Oli’s always been an impulsive kid, but voluntarily eating some wild mushrooms growing off a tree?

Now,that’sa whole other level of stupid.

I glance in the rearview mirror. Oli’s lying on his side in the back seat of my car, clutching his stomach as though his organs are about to burst out of his body.

The unbearable stomach pain started just minutes after he ingested the mushrooms, and now, here we are, on our way to the emergency room after I bailed on my date with Aaron to go pick up my two-brain-cells brother.

He must think I made the whole thing up. Little does he know Oliver really is thatdumb. At least as far as his friends are concerned.

“Dude, why is that skunk looking at me?”

---