Page 68 of Heating Up (Nugget)
“What?”
“I’m allowed to smile at you if I want. But the truth is, you light up when you talk about real estate.”
Most people would probably find it boring, but she loved finding the right house for the right person. Whether it was a starter home or a multimillion-dollar property, she played a role in helping people find their dreams.
Burning with curiosity, Dana couldn’t help herself. “If you don’t mind my asking, what does Sue do?”
“She’s a middle-school teacher.”
Their drinks and appetizers came. Aidan served her a few spring rolls, grabbed one for himself, and stuffed it in his mouth.
“Does she like it . . . being a teacher?”
“I think she does. We didn’t talk about work much.”
That seemed incongruent with the Aidan she knew. Perhaps they were too busy having sex. “What did you guys talk about, then?”
“She was social . . . had a lot of friends. She liked to tell me about their outings together, about parties, the theater. She gossiped a lot.”
“You didn’t go with her . . . to parties and the theater?”
“When I could, but I was gone a lot. Kind of the nature of the work I do.”
She bit into one of the spring rolls. “Do you think that’s why she left you?”
“I think it was part of the reason, yeah.” Understandably, he didn’t want to talk about it and she didn’t want to pry. “What about you? Anyone serious, besides Griffin?”
“There was a developer in Tahoe. We met through real estate, obviously. But it didn’t work out.”
“How come?”
“It turned out he was in love with his partner’s wife. When she dumped her husband, he dumped me. Sort of the story of my life.” She didn’t know why she’d told him that. It made her sound pathetic.
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.” She started in on the other spring roll and realized she’d broken her self-imposed rule of not eating after six two nights in a row.
“You’ve got plenty of life left; make a new story.” He winked.
“How old are you?” She’d wondered for a while.
“Thirty-seven.”
The rest of their order came. They’d decided to go family style; that way they could sample a little bit of everything. The waitress put the food on a lazy Susan in the middle of the table, the kind found in Chinese restaurants. When Aidan didn’t think she was looking he held the tray so that it wouldn’t rotate when she tried to turn it. He thought it was hysterical.
They talked so much she didn’t realize two hours had gone by. She also felt tipsy from the Thai mojitos, which seemed to keep coming.
“What movie do you want to see?” he asked.
“I don’t know. What’s playing?” She wasn’t up on her movie releases because she never went to the theater anymore. Especially now that Aidan had ordered Netflix.
He got out his phone and searched the film listings in Reno, ticking off a few. They’d already missed the first evening showings of the ones that sounded interesting. The next viewings didn’t start until close to ten. That was a lot of time to kill.
“We could go to my parents’ house.” The words were out of her mouth before she could take them back.
What a colossally bad idea. But she hadn’t visited them—or heard from them for that matter—since right after the fire, and they were due for a welfare check. It was a big house, she told herself. She and Aidan could sit in the casita, maybe take a dip in the pool.
“Sure,” he said, and flagged their waitress down, motioning for the bill.
