Page 9 of Simply Irresistible
“I’ve never done an escape room before. I thought I’d feel claustrophobic or something, but I didn’t. Not at all.”
“I did one once with my sister.”
“Are you two close?” she asked.
“Very. She’s older than me by a few years. She…uh…she took me in when my parents passed away.”
Melanie squeezed my hand. “I’m so sorry you lost them, Tyler.”
“Thanks,” I squeezed her hand back and moved to the right side of the sidewalk as we approached the restaurant. “I hope you like Greek.” This place had the best gyros.
Melanie laughed. “IamGreek, of course, I like Greek food.”
Oh shit. Wasn’t there some unspoken rule that you never ever took someone to the ethnic restaurant that was their ethnicity? Like bringing an Italian to an Italian restaurant? Or a Greek to a cheap gyro place?
Melanie laughed, the sound like tinkling bells. “I see that look on your face. Stop panicking. I’m not a Greek food snob, I promise.”
“Are you sure? Because we can go somewhere else.”
“I’m positive,” she said and tugged me through the open door.
It wasn’t a fancy place. We placed our orders at the counter and found a table where we waited for our number to be called. Melanie told me about growing up with her huge Greek family on Long Island, and I told her what it was like living with my sister and her husband in Manhattan. She was as fascinated as everyone else when I told her how long Hannah and her husband had been together.
“Since fifth grade? Like twenty years already? Wow! That’s amazing.”
“She always tells people ‘When you know, you know.’”
“I guess so. That’s amazing.”
“That’s one person for your entire life.” I said and immediately regretted the words. Maybe Hannah was right, maybe I did self-sabotage. But maybe I didn’t realize I did it.
Melanie just rolled with it. “But that’s what fits for her and her husband. I think if I’d foundtheguy in the first guy I’d ever dated, then I’d probably be content only ever being with him. I’d feel fulfilled, you know? If I had everything I needed in a partner, I wouldn’t want anything else. There’d be no lusting for another man because I’d have it all. And, well, if I did lust for someone else, then it wasn’t meant to be.”
Was that what my problem was? Was I still lusting after something? I looked at the beautiful woman sitting across the table from me in this dive restaurant, smiling at me like I’d taken her to some five-star place. I didn’t feel like I wanted anything else in that moment. I felt…good…complete.
“Oh,” I said remembering about the tape. I pulled a cassette tape out of my back pocket and slid it over the table to her. “I made you a mix tape.”
She looked at the plastic cartridge on the table like she’d never seen one before in her life. But I knew she had, we established that we graduated high school one year apart, so we were close in age. If I knew what it was, so did she.
“Wow,” she said, and I wasn’t sure if it was a good wow or a bad wow. “It’s so very nineties of you to make me a mix tape.”
I let out a breath at that. She was teasing me. That was good. “That’s exactly what I thought when I decided to make it.”
She laughed.
She was good.
We were good.
Everything was good.
6
Melanie
One thing I could say about Tyler’s taste in music was that he sure was eclectic, especially considering it was all nineties. It flipped from “No Scrubs” by TLC to “Lovefool” by The Cardigans and several oddities in between. It wasn’tterrible, just weird. I hadn’t heard Ini Kamoze in years; talk about a blast from the past!
I’d had a great time on our date the other night. I loved how Tyler kept the evening low key with the escape room and a simple dinner, it was like he knew I’d be anxious with something fancier. I honestly wasn’t quite sure how I was able to keep it together. On a scale of one to ten, my baseline nerves were usually a five in social situations, but with him I was just comfortable. I couldn’t explain it.
