Page 96 of Things We Left Behind
She unlocked her car. “Damn it! I’m gonna be late for my date.”
“Your date,” I repeated. I hadn’t meant to; the words had just slipped out. They were accompanied by an irrational burst of irritation.
“Yeah,” she said, turning to examine her reflection in the side mirror. “You know. Meet for food. Make awkward conversations about what you wanted to be when you grew up and what your favorite appetizers are. A date.”
She yanked the tie out of her hair and bent at the waist, shaking all that silver-tipped blond out.
“Who is this date with?”
Sloane flipped right side up, looking less like an innocent librarian and more like a bed-headed vixen. “Some guy named Gary? No, wait. Gary is later. This is…” She opened the door of her vehicle to grab a lipstick out of her cupholder. She uncapped it. “Massimo.” She slicked the red over her lips with an expert hand.
“Massimo?” He sounded like a man with a gold chain woven into his chest hair who wore sunglasses indoors. “You’re meeting a stranger from the internet alone?” Irritation was giving way to a simmering panic. It was hard to breathe again.
“That’s kind of how these dates work,” she said, grabbing onto my arm for balance while she toed off her sneakers. The socks with cats and books came next.
She released me to toss her discarded footwear in the back seat and produce another pair of shoes. Purple ones with stick-thin heels. The coat came next. This she threw at me. I caught it despite the feeling of anxiety that was blooming like a fucking flower.
“Have you really never done the dating app thing?” she asked.
“Do I look like I use dating apps?”
“You look like you hire high-priced call girls to act out your lewd fantasies.”
“Andyoulook like…”
I lost my train of thought when she whipped her black turtleneck over her head. She was wearing a thin-strapped, lacy camisole that dipped low over the tops of her full breasts.
“I look like what?” she prodded, sliding her arms through a hunter-green cardigan in a chunky knit. There were no buttons, nothing to close the sweater over her fantasy-inducing cleavage.
“What?” I repeated. My mouth was dry, and my headache was raging in full force now.
“You were about to insult me. Hit me with it, big guy, before I go meet the future Mr. Sloane Walton.”
I closed my eyes. Her nicknames for me the past several years had been limited to Lucifer and “Hey, asshole.”
“You can’t be serious with this emergency quest for a husband,” I told her.
“Spoken like a man who has all the time in the world to decide when to start a family.”
“I’m never starting a family.” I blamed the dark cleft between her breasts for my uncalculated confession.
She paused, mid-tug on the hem of her tank. “Really?”
“That’s not the point. You can’t go meet a stranger for a date. What if he’s a predator?”
She fluffed her hair out of the neck of her cardigan. It made the generous curves of her breasts threaten to spill over the top of her shirt.
Swarthy Massimo was going to take one look at her and do or say something stupid, and then I was going to have to ruin his fucking life.
“It’s fine. People meet strangers on the internet all the time now, and hardly any of them end up murdered.”
“Sloane,” I barked.
She grinned at me. A happy, smug, full-fledged smile. Jesus, between her breasts and the smile, Too Many Gold Chains Massimo was going to feel like he’d hit the fucking lottery.
“I’ll befine. Geez, for someone who doesn’t want a family, you’re sure acting Dad-like.”
“What if he doesn’t like to read?”
