Page 54 of Lovesick
He dashed out the door. Lizbeth glanced up, then back down. I turned back to the kitchen, completely confused. What was different? Wait, were our curtains a different color? At one point they’d been Mark’s old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle pillowcases, but we’d swapped them out for the far classier old beige.
As I poured my coffee, stumped, Lizbeth broke the strained silence. Words flew out of her like they’d been stuffed inside waiting to get out.
“It totally sucked.”
My head popped up.
She stood behind Mark’s desk, hands planted on the papers in front of her, glaring at me.
“What?”
“The date.”
She straightened, arms folded across her middle. Her eyebrows knitted together as she swallowed hard.
“He ... Tyler ... might as well have walked out of a romance novel. Everything was perfect. His hair. His voice. He evensmelledthe way I’d imagined an alpha billionaire—or maybe just a millionaire—would smell.”
To give myself something to do, I had a sip of hot coffee. Analpha billionaire?What was she talking about? The scalding feeling in the back of my throat felt better than the one inside my chest. Lizbeth, on a roll, kept going. Except now she was pacing behind the desk and making almost no sense at all.
“He gave me roses. There were candles on the table. Curtains. Can you believe that? Curtains, JJ. And rose petals. The violinist?”
My brow lifted.
“Oh yeah,” she said before I could utter a sound. “Rose. Petals.”
Another hot sip that burned, burned, burned.
“Then he was so intense and ... he ordered for me in French ... and he insisted I was safe. I mean, elk chop? C’mon! I’m clearly a pasta girl! But, of course, I probably wasn’t safe. Or maybe I was and we just weren’t suited? I don’t know, he was angry at the end.”
“He what?”
She waved a hand. “He didn’t touch me. But . . . that freaking walking violin was distracting me and ... it was ... soweird. I’ve read that date a hundred times. I used tolovealpha-billionaire novels—”
What was she talking about?
“But now?”
She threw her hands in the air.
I paused, my mug halfway to my lips. The silence told me she wanted me to say something, but I could barely keep up with her fragmented thoughts.
“Can I get this straight?” I asked.
She gestured with a wave of her hand again.
“So he was handsome?”
Emphatic nod.
“He gave you flowers.”
Another nod.
“He picked a romantic setting. There was a violin playing in the background?”
Another nod, this one more tentative. She chewed on her bottom lip.
“And you hated it?” I asked.
