Page 17 of Love and Other Champagne Problems

Sumner pocketed his phone without texting. “If we’re going to be around each other, we might as well know a bit about each other, yeah?” Sumner folded his hands over his menu. “So… tell me something about yourself.”

It was a clear, horrible attempt at a segue, but I allowed him the pass for now, raising an eyebrow. “What do you know about me?” Meaning:what have my parents told you about me?

“You just graduated college a week ago,” he said. “Business administration major. You’re a bit of a social outcast. You have an affinity for suits. You’re engaged—or, well, is that right? I don’t see a ring on your finger.”

I glanced down at my hand as if one would magically appear. “I’m sure I’ll be given some ugly rock, eventually.”

“But youareengaged?”

“Nottechnically.” Underneath the table, I began bouncing my foot, and it took me a second to realize I was unconsciously tapping it to the country song’s beat. “That’s why my parents enlisted your babysitting services, because they don’t want me scaring off the world’s best match.”

“What’s he like?” Sumer picked up his water and tucked the straw between his teeth. “Your fiancé?”

I wouldn’t know, I almost said. It wasn’t wholly true, though. I knew bits and pieces about him, things here and there that’d trickled down the gossip mine. “The mysterious sort.”

“Mysterious?”

“I don’t know what he looks like.”

I expected Sumner to have more of a response to this—more surprise, confusion, at the very least, asking more questions—but he just tilted his head to the side. “So, you’ve never met him.”

“A point to Sumner Pennington for his deductive reasoning.” Now it was my turn to pick up my water, though the thought of the most likely unfiltered tap deterred my thirst. I tried not to look too closely at it. “I didn’t know it was possible to be completely digital footprint free in this day and age, but Aaron Astor seems to be the exception.”

“I could say the same about you. You don’t have social media.”

A corner of my mouth tipped up. “You tried to dig up information about me?”

His eyes dropped back to his menu.With how quickly they bounced the surface, I doubted he truly absorbed what he was reading. With a nonchalant voice, he murmured, “Out of curiosity.”

It was true, like Aaron, I kept as much as my life possible off the internet. I wasn’t the extreme as Aaron, though. If one typed my name, or at least my parents’ names, my picture would eventually come up in search. For Aaron, though, it was like he was a ghost. His brother’s pictures came up, along with articles about their investments in the company, but Aaron was never in the lineup with them. He was mentioned by name, but always followed with “not pictured.”

I debated drawing out teasing Sumner, my foot continuing to bounce. Where was the waitress? “Did my mother give you a bonus for hazard pay yesterday? Play your cards right, and you could walk away from this little job a millionaire yourself.”

“Does that happen often? Your mom paying people off?”

“So, she did pay you.”

“She tried to.” Sumner met my eyes again. “Does she do that a lot?”

“I don’t often go around kissing people, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Just me?”

“Just you.”

Sumner returned to gaze down at his menu, caressing the corner of it with his thumb. I watched his lips press together, but I couldn’t tell with what emotion. Sumner was hard to figure out. There were times that it seemed as if he were laying all of his cards down on the table, andothers where it seemed like he held them close. When he seemed transparent, it almost felt as if he were leading me into a false sense of security surety.Or maybe that’s your paranoia talking.

“You have a staring habit, you know,” he said.

“I’m aware.”

Sumner stretched his legs out underneath the table, and my foot, which was mid-bounce, brushed against his pantleg. He yanked his leg away, jerking back into his seat, as if the slight touch had been scandalous. My eyes followed his movement as amusement bubbled within me, and I half-debated on stretching my leg out to find his again, if only to torture him further with the game of footsie.

I finally turned my attention to the sticky menus, scanning. There were no pictures to provide me any insight, though that was most likely a good thing—it could’ve ruined my appetite altogether. The list of items was mostly normal, run-of-the-mill diner food, save for— “Beans on toast.”

“What?”

“Beans on toast,” I repeated. “It’s a popular British dish, and exactly how it sounds. Baked beans in tomato sauce on toasted bread.”

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