Page 9 of Just One Chance
“No, more like he thinks you’re supposed togivehim one.”
Avery searched her memory. Had she agreed to give someone a tour of the aquarium? She glanced at her watch. She had an hour before she had to meet with her boss and update her on the new hands-on program they were launching for the local elementary schools, but she’d hoped to spend that hour going over her notes and finalizing her budget numbers. “You’re sure you don’t have any idea who he is?” she asked Shelley.
“I’ve never seen him before. Youngish. Blond. Dorky glasses?”
Avery searched her mind but came up with nothing. Who could it be? “Okay.” She stood up to follow Shelley from her office. “I’ll come see who it is.”
They walked side by side down the long corridor that led to the aquarium offices. “I actually wondered if he was your boyfriend when he first showed up, but I don’t know. I’m not sure he’s exactly your type.”
Avery looked at Shelley, feeling slightly affronted. “What? I don’t have a type.”
Shelley rolled her eyes. “You totally have a type.”
Avery stopped. She’d known Shelley a long time. As long as she’d been working at the aquarium, and they’d gotten to be close friends. It wasn’t so much that she minded Shelley having an opinion about her dating life. She’d earned that right when she’d brought ice cream to work every day for a week after Tucker had broken up with Avery. She was just surprised that Shelley seemed so certain. Was Avery really so predictable? “I need more information,” she said to Shelley’s retreating form.
Shelley turned around. “It’s not a big deal. I totally didn’t mean for that to offend you.” She must have read the not so pleasant expression on Avery’s face. “Lots of people have a type. It just means you know what you like.”
“Yeah, but whatismy type? How can I have a type if I don’t even recognize what it is?”
Shelley sighed and leaned against the wall. “Okay. The guy you brought to the Christmas party last year. The one with the hair and the Sperrys and the pink shirt?”
Avery thought back to the party. Charlie. Or, was it Chuck? She couldn’t remember. He’d been nice enough, but they’d only gone out a couple of times.
“Then there was Wyatt,” Shelley continued. “Up in Accounting? Same hair. Same shoes. Same preppy Charleston wardrobe. Well and then, Tucker, obviously. He totally fits the same mold.”
An image of Tucker flashed through Avery’s mind. Had the three men Shelley mentioned all been lined up on the sidewalk, they would have looked like fraternity brothers. Fraternity brothers who all did their shopping at Lacoste. Avery had never really made the connection before, but once Shelley pointed it out, she couldn’t deny it.
Her shoulders dropped. “I suddenly feel so . . . predictable.”
“It’s not a bad thing,” Shelley said. “I go for guys who wear boots and like hog hunting. You like yacht club boys with perfect teeth. Everybody has a preference.”
Avery hated stereotypes—growing up in the South she’d been exposed to her fair share—but she knew the type of man Shelley meant when she said yacht club boys. They were the kind of men who were privately educated, knee-deep in old family money, and possessed lifetime memberships at the yacht club. The kind of men that were always nice to their Southern mamas and liked their tea sweet with a splash of good bourbon.
What rankled was trying to figure out what it was aboutthatkind of man that made Avery take notice. Why did she pick the yacht club boys? The answer crystalized in her brain in an instant, filling her with a potent kind of shame. She picked the yacht club boys because of the first yacht club boy who had picked her.Tucker. Everyone else? They were just shadows of the first man she’d ever fallen in love with.
Avery thought of the dinner they’d shared the night before, sitting on her back porch, listening to the waves, feeling the ocean breeze. They’d mostly just reminisced about their relationship—they’d been together eighteen months and most of them had been pretty good—but Avery had detected the same something in Tucker’s eyes that said he was maybe looking for something more. When he’d left, he’d squeezed her hand then leaned in to kiss her forehead. “I’ve missed you, Avery,” he’d said.
What was that even supposed to mean?
Avery rounded the corner and almost bumped into Shelley who had stopped at the end of the lobby. She pointed across the vast, open space. “See him? Over there by the benches?”
“Oh!” Avery said. “That’s my new neighbor.” She searched her mind for his name. “David.” She almost called him Dave and the thought made her smile. He’d been adamant that he wasnota Dave, but Avery kind of liked it. “I did tell him I’d take him on a tour, but man, he couldn’t have picked a worse day to show up.” She bit her bottom lip, glancing one more time at her watch.
“There’s a Behind-the-Scenes tour of the Sea Turtle Center at eleven,” Shelley said. “That might keep him occupied a while.”
“That’s perfect,” Avery said. “I can spend the next half hour with him, then he can do the tour, and maybe I can buy him lunch after.”
“I’ll get him on the tour and bring you his pass,” Shelley said. She stopped, tilting her head and giving Avery a knowing look. “You know, heiskind of cute. What’s he do?”
“He’s a doctor at MUSC,” Avery said.
Shelley’s eyebrows went up. “Really?” She narrowed her gaze, studying him from across the room. “You think he likes hog hunting?”
Avery almost snorted. She didn’t know David at all, but ten minutes of conversation had been more than enough to convince her he was not the hog-hunting type. She’d put money on it. “Pretty sure that’s a no, Shell.”
Avery crossed the busy lobby, noticing the moment David saw her coming. He instantly stiffened and cast a worried look over his shoulder like he was hunting for the nearest exit. He held a drink carrier in his hands, two coffee cups perched inside, but had there been a trash can nearby, Avery was pretty sure he would have dumped them. He turned and placed them on the bench behind him, then immediately picked them up, before setting them down again. He moved his body in front of the cups, blocking her view, just as she arrived.
“Hey,” she said. “You came.”
