Page 123 of Keeper
She laughed. “Look, I told you before, I don’t know anything about hockey, so you can’t be mad at me.”
“I’m not.” I squeezed her against me. “In fact, I think it’s cute that you’re not into hockey. Like, who would’ve guessed we’d end up together, y’know?”
“Definitely not me,” she said.
“And hey, we’re going to watch so much hockey together. Because I’ve gotso muchto teach you now.”
“Oh, boy,” she joked. “Can’t wait.”
I waved my hand at her. “Ahh, hell. You’ll learn to love it. You’ll see. It’s a great sport.”
The waitress brought the bill. I whipped out my credit card and paid, and the waitress wished us a good night. But before she left, something stopped her in her tracks. She came back to our table, leaned in, and lowered her voice.
“I’m sorry,” the waitress began, “maybe I shouldn’t mention this, but I just want to say, keep your heads up, okay?”
Ainsley and I exchanged glances—was she really talking about what we thought she was?
“I can’tbelievewhat that crazy bitch did to you guys,” she said. “That girl issopetty and trashy.”
“You know her?” I asked.
“Pft.Yes,” the waitress said. “Shecomes in here all the time and treats us like shit, because she’s some hotshot Instagram model.” She rolled her eyes. “So, yeah, we have the misfortune of knowing Marta Mansour. We couldn’t believe the story she posted.”
“Me neither,” Ainsley and I murmured in unison.
“Yeah. Too bad about her page, though,” the waitress said with a simper. “How’s she going to ‘influence’without an Instagram account?”
Ainsley and I looked at each other, then back at the waitress again.
“Her Instagram is gone?” Ainsley asked.
The waitress nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah! It got taken down about an hour ago before you guys came in.” She gestured in the direction of the wait station. “I should know, because we were constantly reporting her page until it got taken down.”
“No shit?” I pulled out my phone and loaded her page. I got the screen that read:
“Sorry, this page isn’t available. The link you followed may be broken, or the page may have been removed.”
“Well, well. How about that?” I handed my phone over to Ainsley so she could see it for her own eyes.
Relief flooded her face. “Thank God that’s over.”
The waitress beamed. “Oh man. I’m like, so pumped that I got to be the one to break that news to you. Hope you two have awonderfulnight, okay?”
We thanked her and wished her a goodnight, too.
“You guys aresocute together, by the way,” she said with a wink as she left us.
Hand-in-hand, I walked Ainsley out to my car.
“Thank you for dinner,” she said.
“Don’t mention it,” I said. “Can I take you anywhere else? Ice cream? Coffee? Something harder?”
“I’m so tired,” she said, covering a yawn with her hand. “Can we just go back to your place? Maybe pick a movie to fall asleep to?”
I smiled. “Sounds great.”
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