Page 31 of April

Emily laughed lightly and said, “New to the whole app thing?”

“Yes,” she replied.

“How about I just sit down, and we avoid the whole ‘will she shake my hand, hug me, or kiss me on the cheek’ awkwardness?”

“That sounds amazing,” Asher replied with a chuckle. “Sorry.”

Emily sat down across from her and placed her purse at the end of the booth.

“It’s okay. These things are always awkward.”

“You do this a lot?”

“I joined the app about six months ago. I’ve been on about ten of these first dates since.”

“Wow. Really? Nothing has panned out?” she asked, looking down at her glass. “I’m being rude. I got here early, so I ordered myself wine at the bar, and I didn’t know what you’d want.”

“That’s okay. I’ll wait until the waiter gets here,” Emily said. “And no, nothing has panned out yet.”

“That’s not very encouraging, is it?” Asher asked.

“Well, the fact that I’ve had ten women interested in at least a first date was encouraging forme. After my divorce, I never thought I’d date again. I’m almost forty, was with my ex for fifteen years and married to her for seven, so there’s a lot of baggage there. I knowthat’snot very encouraging foryouto hear, though.” The woman laughed a little.

“I get it. My longest relationship doesn’t even compare to that – it was about ten years ago – and I still have baggage from it,” she said.

“Yeah?”

“We were together for about three years. We lived together and were in the process of buying a house, planning to get engaged and taking all those steps. Thankfully, before we closed on the house, I found out that he’d been seeing someone else for the past year.”

“No… Really?”

“Yes. Worse yet was thathedidn’t tell me.”

“You found out?”

“No,shetold me,” Asher replied.

“No!”

“She showed up atourfront door. She hadn’t known about me. She’d gotten suspicious when they’d started talking about living together, and he was non-committal. She had figured out that I existed and actually apologized.”

“Well, at least she wasn’t a home-wrecker.”

“She was also pregnant,” Asher added.

“What? Oh, my God!”

“I know,” Asher said before lifting her wineglass to her lips. “Three months along. She hadn’t told him yet. I ended it that day. He went to her. She ended things, too.”

“What happened after that?”

“She had the baby. A little boy. He’d be about seven or eight now. We had a loose friendship for a while there. I went to the baby shower, actually, but she moved to Oklahoma after he was born to be closer to family.”

“Wow!”

“So, see? Baggage,” Asher said.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not your fault. He cheated.”

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