Page 34 of Flirting with the Scrooge

“Huh?” She twists to look at me.

I nod toward her phone. “On your home screen.”

“Oh.” She shuts the screen off and places her phone down on the blanket. “It’s no one.”

“With a reaction like that I doubt it’s no one. Also, most people don’t keepno oneon their home screen. That’s like sacred ground. If you make the home screen, that’s official shit. So, I don’t believe it’sno one.”

“You’re just going to keep going until I tell you, aren’t you?”

“Possibly.”

She presses her lips together, before raising her eyebrows. “Would it be bad if I said it was my ex-boyfriend?”

“You still have a picture of your ex-boyfriend on your phone?” I rub my chin. “Wait. The douche at the mall? You still want to be with him?”

She fiddles with her phone case, ignoring me and not saying anything. That confirms my answer.

“You still want to be with him even though he dumped you for his younger intern?”

“Thanks for the reminder, asshat.” She throws her phone at me and it lands in my lap. “Yes. No. I don’t know. I can’t just flip a switch and have my feelings magically disappear. We were together for years and then out of nowhere he dumped me.”

“Don’t forget he fired you too,” I remind her. Not that she needs a reminder, but it doesn’t make sense to me. “Why would you want to be with a guy like that?”

“Because I’m a glutton for punishment.” She huffs out a humorless laugh. “He wasn’t supposed to dump me and then move on so quickly.”

“If he’s moved on, maybe you should too?”

“I know.”

“Let’s change this right now. Unlock your phone and pass it to me.” She eyes me wearily but does it anyway. I drop my arm from the couch to around her shoulder and tug her to my chest.

A sweet laugh bubbles out of her. “What are you doing?”

“Taking a picture.” I hold out her phone in front of us. “Smile.” I snap a picture. I tap the screen a few times and save the new picture as her home screen. Then I pass her phone back to her.

“This picture is actually cute.” She stares at the screen.

“So, what happened?” Her head shifts to mine and her eyebrows pinch together, so I elaborate. “With the ex?”

She drops her phone to her lap. “I’m not entirely sure. Everything was fine. Or I thought it was fine. We were together for five years, so to me it seemed natural the next step of our relationship would be marriage. One night he wanted to go to dinner at Le Uve—”

“What’s Le Uve?”

“It’s an upscale Italian restaurant.”

“Oh shit.”

“What? What’s wrong?” Her voice is frantic.

“He was giving you your last meal before your execution.”

Her eyebrows knit together. “What do you mean?”

I sit up, readjusting myself, but keep my arm around her. “Like how prisoners get a last meal, usually it’s something fancy like steak and lobster, before they’re executed. He was giving you a last meal before he dumped you.”

“Oh shit.” She parrots my words.

“It’s a textbook move. He was hoping you wouldn’t hate him too much because at least you got a plate of spaghetti out of it.”

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