Page 142 of Ewan

“What did you do?”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

It works.

She tears her eyes away from me and looks around her kitchen,

“I’m so fucking hungry. This guy I met last night…”

A big smile hovers over my face.

“Wait a minute,” I say. “Didn’t you say you had to travel out of town?”

She laughs.

“I said. And I will. I’m flying out at 6 PM this evening.”

“So, is he the reason you couldn’t work last night?”

“Yes, he is.”

“Huh… Who is he? Please don’t tell me he’s just another guy you met online.”

She flicks her finger up before pulling out a loaf of bread from the cupboard and some cheese from the fridge and starting to make a sandwich.

“He is not,” she says, her back turned to me as she looks for a kitchen knife. “I met him in Manhattan last week. At therestaurant,” she says as if she just remembered I knew the place. “It was right before the night you filled in.”

“Who is he?” I ask, curious.

She puts her sandwich on a plate and sits at the table.

“You won’t like this, but it’s not what you think.”

“I’m listening.”

“He was on a date with a woman he met on a hookup app, and things just didn’t work out between them––he later told me. He made a comment when I brought their drinks to the table and she was at the restroom. And I thought it was tacky to share something like that with me, a stranger to him, but I knew it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility to be on a date with someone you didn’t click with. It’d happened to me, too. So, he joked and said he’d give that app another try. And if it didn’t work he’d call me and ask out. But I needed to give him my phone number for that. He was clever.” She chuckles, and I smile before she continues. “And I did. But I didn’t think much of it. Well, he called and asked me out, and this is the result,” she says around her food, laughing again.

“Things worked out for him in the end.”

“They did work for both of us. Man, I missed getting laid well.”

“Tell me about it,” I say with too much emphasis on my words, and I earn a curious look from her.

“What about you? How was the club tonight?”

“It was all right. The manager is a dick, though.”

Chewing, she lifts her eyes to me.

“Did he say anything to you?”

“Nothing worth talking about,” I murmur, aware of the fact that she knows nothing about what really happened at the club. “We argued about my costumes.”

She chuckles.

“Tell me about it. He wants the girls in the tiniest thongs. I know why we’re there, but please… We don’t need to look like a colonoscopy.”

I laugh, amused.

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