Page 10 of The Love Interest
ME: Please stop.
SISSY: Meet someone wonderful yet?
ME: Tons of someones.
SISSY: Fiona.
ME: I’ve only been here a week, Mother.
SISSY: Don’t you Mother me, young lady. How’s the writing coming along?
ME: Great!
SISSY: Really? Because you sound uninspired.
ME: I don’t know how you could get that from a text convo, but I’m fine.
SISSY: Pah! You can’t write a worthwhile romance novel when you’re just “fine.” When was the last time you did a Tibetan singing bowl meditation for your heart chakra?
ME: Good question! I need to get back to my prologue. I love you. Please get some sleep.
SISSY: Love you more. I’m doing well, I promise. Sending light and love to your heart chakra and your yoni, little lamb.
ME: Please don’t send anything to my yoni when I’m in public kthxbye!
Speaking of my yoni—I look up from my phone to find Handsome Guy grinning at me from his table. Maybe it’s the light and love my mother is sending to my heart and vulva right now, but I’m feeling tingly all over the place. When he realizes I’m smiling back at him, he instantly frowns and looks away. Which is weird and rude, but I’m still tingling.
“Here’s your check, whenever you’re ready,” Ellen mutters, sliding the bill onto the table. Except she doesn’t saunter off so that I can pay whenever I’m ready. She stands right there, with her hands on her hips, looking down at me. So, I guess I’m ready now.
“Thanks, Ellen!” I reach for my cross-body bag. “You clocking out soon?”
She just blinks at me, stone-faced.
“Okay, cool.”I’m going to make you love me next time I come in, Ellen, you’ll see.I fish around inside my bag, but my hand can’t seem to find anything shaped like my wallet. “You always work the late shift?” I ask in an attempt to disguise the growing sense of panic as I stare down into my bag.
“Nope.”
There are five thousand different kinds of pens in this bag and exactly zero wallets. I know exactly where my wallet is. In my other purse. I was so fixated on my brilliant decision to bring a notebook instead of my laptop so I could stay at the diner longer that I completely forgot I’d need money for the coffee and pie—my excuse for taking up space in here. “Um. Ellen? My wallet’s at home in my other purse. I don’t have any money or cards on me. I’m so sorry.”
The eye roll that this woman executes is slow and exaggerated and GIF worthy. I sort of want to high-five her, but then she’d just roll her eyes at me again. “Uh-huh.”
“But let me just call my roommate and ask him to bring it over. Or else I could run home and get it and leave some collateral? Like…my shoes?”
Ellen pulls her head back and glances down at my foot, which I’m sticking out from under the table.
“These are my favorite wedge sandals, so trust me, there’s no way I won’t come back for them.”
“What size are they?”
“Seven.”
She shakes her head. “I’m an eight. What else ya got?”
“I’ve got this, Ellen,” says a deep voice from behind her.
I think they must have turned down the thermostat all of a sudden. There must have been a blast of extra-cold air from that vent. I casually tug at my top so Frowny Handsome Guy can’t tell that my nipples are trying to claw through the fabric to get to him.
He takes a step to the left so I can now see him beside Ellen, andgood Lord. I’m being ambushed by glowing blue irises and spray-painted skin and the perfect amount of stubble for scraping against my— “Let me get this for you,” he says, pulling out his wallet. We both reach for the check at the same time, and our fingertips touch.
