Page 72 of We Met Like This
“Just me,” he said.
The house didn’t look like a bachelor pad. The walls were a warm olive green and the television stand and bookcase were a rich chocolate with decorative knickknacks on various shelves. A big gold-trimmed mirror hung on the wall just inside the door. I found myself wondering if this was the house he’d lived in with his ex-fiancée. If she had decorated. “I like your style,” I said. A passive-aggressive way to ask the question my brain had just come up with.
“Thank you,” was his only response.
“I thought you didn’t have physical books.” I walked to his bookshelf on the opposite wall.
“Those are mainly for show,” he said with a smirk.
I scanned the titles. They were mostly nonfiction was what they were. I turned and my eyes collided with a book on the coffee table. The book he had borrowed from me. A bookmark stuck out from the pages about halfway through. “You’re actually reading it?” I asked.
He cleared his throat. “After the excerpt, how could I not?”
“I should’ve taken out my tabs for you.”
“Pretty sure I have decrypted your color coding,” he said, picking it up and fanning through the pages, all the colors flipping past his fingers.
Of course he had. With a job like his, how could he not?I hoped he also took the time to stop thinking and actually enjoy the words. “Which color is your favorite?” I asked with a wink.
“You’re trouble, Margot,” he said, then nodded toward the hall. “My office is back here. Also, my favorite are the red ones.”
I laughed. “Good choice.”
We passed through a farmhouse-style kitchen, the colors from the living room flowing through the backsplash and cupboards. “You could have a social media presence with a place like this. Especially if you did the work yourself.” I would know; my sister’s house and style garnered her hundreds of thousands of followers.
“I’m not big on social media.” He paused before we reached the hall at the end of the kitchen. “Would you like something to drink?”
“Yes, please,” I said. “And I know. I tried to stalk you. Twice now, and nothing.”
He chuckled as he backtracked to the fridge.
I followed him, needing to know if the inside of his fridge was as clean as the rest of his house. I peered inside. Bottles of beer and hard lemonade and water were lined up perfectly. All the food items were stored in uniform containers.
“What would you like?” he asked.
“I’d like to mess up your life a little,” I teased, moving a beer to the lemonade row and a water on its side. “This is why you were shocked by the state of my bed and clothes chair, isn’t it?”
“I was not shocked.”
“Shocked,” I repeated.
“I had next to no reaction,” he said.
“That’s what you think, but your face is very expressive.”
He gave me an amused look. “What am I thinking now?”
“You’re wondering why you agreed to help me,” I said.
He laughed. “You’re terrible at this game.”
I helped myself to a beer and then raised it in a thank-you. He took one as well and we resumed our walk toward the office. “Do you really not have any social media outside of dating apps?”
“I have a LinkedIn.”
“Doesn’t count,” I said as we stepped into his office.
Unlike the greens and dark woods of the rest of the house, this room was bright white. A long table with silver accents lined an entire wall. Beneath it was a walking pad on one side and a fancy chair on the other. There was an uncomfortable-looking leather couch along another wall. A single potted plant sat in the corner, too small for the space.
