Page 38 of Guys Can't Write Romance
“What’s that?” Daisy asked warily.
“We kick things off tomorrow at my office.”
Daisy’s brow furrowed in confusion. “You want to write in a school gym?”
Chad shook his head, his smile widening. “Not that office. My other office. And bring lots of sunscreen.”
Chapter ten
Beers, Sticky Tables and Calamari
Daisy should have known she was in trouble the minute Chad said to bring sunscreen to his ‘office.’ And now, as she stood outside the beach-front dive-bar, The Salty Siren, looking up at the sign on the roof of a smiling mermaid holding a mug of beer, she was already regretting every decision that led her to this moment.
The bar stood less than a block from the beach at the end of a pedestrian street lined with dive-bars, coffee shops, cafes, souvenir shops, and dozens of tanned beach-goers taking in the warm afternoon. The smells of salt water, beer, fried food, and suntan lotion filled the air. Neon beer signs flashed in the windows, and a chalkboard outside the front patio advertised ‘50% off Taco Tuesdays.’ Jimmy Buffett and Beach Boys songs played over the clinking of glasses and chatter.
Daisy groaned. Whatever this was about to be, it wouldn’t be writing.
She paused at the entrance, checking her outfit one last time: modest-length shorts, light blue blouse, a wide-brimmed hat to protect her fair skin, and sandals that were definitely not meant for sand. She’d spent more time than she cared to admit trying to figure out what to wear to an ‘office’ that required sunscreen, eventually calling Chloe for advice. Chloe’s suggestion of ‘tiny shorts and a push-up bikini top’ had been promptly rejected.
“Fields!” Chad’s voice called out from somewhere on the patio. She looked around and spotted him waving his hand from a rickety old picnic table in the far corner of the patio. With his tanned skin, t-shirt, aviator sunglasses, and baseball cap turned backwards, he looked completely in his element. She, on the other hand, stood out like a pasty white sore thumb among the tanned crowd of surfers and girls in tank tops and cutoffs. She made a mental note to buy a bottle of spray-on tanner on her way home.
She squeezed through the crowd over to his table. His notebook and pen sat on top of it, next to a half-finished pint of beer and basket of fried calamari. A couple of beach volleyball players at the next table were loudly recounting their recent tournament victory, complete with enthusiastic high-fives that came dangerously close to Daisy’s head.
“You made it,” he grinned from behind his shades. “I’m actually shocked.”
“That makes two of us,” she said, adjusting her hat to shield her eyes from the sun. “Did you know there’s no valet here?”
“Yeah. That’d be weird if there was,” he said, biting off a piece of calamari and washing it down with beer. “This place is like aggressively not fancy. I take it you figured that out.”
“Yes,” Daisy said, hugging her tote bag tighter as a man with dreadlocks halfway down his back squeezed past their table. “I pieced it together after circling the block twice, and finally asking some man trying to sell me weed for directions.”
Chad grinned. “Not in Kansas anymore, huh?”
“Nope. Not by a long shot.”
“Where’d you park?”
“A side street a couple blocks down. Where’d you park?”
“The bike rack out front.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Of course, you did.”
“Don’t knock beachside living, Fields. It’s why we live here.”
“You do know there’s a world of culture on the other side of 405.”
“I’ve got all the culture I need right here,” he said, gesturing expansively at the crowded patio. “I’ve got my beer food group, my bar food, the beach just down the block, and babes in bikinis. The five B’s of bachelor life. And I don’t even need a passport to get to it.”
Again, she rolled her eyes. “It’s starting to make sense now.”
“What is?”
“Why your books are the way they are.”
“My genius mind?”
“Your chaotic mind. So how is this place going to help our writing?” She eyed a seagull that seemed to be strategically positioning itself over Chad’s calamari basket.
