Page 11 of My Grumpy Sweetheart
I didn’t look like that. I. Did. Not.
“Oh… wait, I have another question I was dying to ask you.” He clapped his hands and turned his whole upper body to me. “Are you in marketing?”
“What?”
“Are you in marketing?” he repeated as if that were the most logical question in the world and not completely unprompted and out of left field.
We drove by one of the thousands of apple orchards within Connecticut and I secretly wished it wasourapple orchard. Because that would mean I could get out of this car and get a little distance between us. But it wasn’t. And according to the app on Bailey’s phone, it’d take another three hours and twenty-eight minutes to get there.
“No, I’m not. Why would I be?” Fuck. He got me. I’d actually answered one of his questions.
I hadn’t thought that it was possible, but his smile widened even more, and he jumped up and down in his seat. If it weren’t for the seat belt, he’d probably hit his head on the ceiling. “Ohh… it was just something that crossed my mind when I saw your profile. I knew it was a long shot, but your profile is like a perfect example of the AIDA method, so… I thought I’d ask. But… if you aren’t in marketing, what is your job?”
“None of your business.”
He laughed again. Fucking laughed at the answer.
“You know, if you keep up being all secretive and evasive, I’ll start thinking you actually are an axe murderer. Though… I highly doubt you can make much money off of that, soo… hitman? Oh, oh, oh… do youwork for the government?” He clapped his hand, wiggling his eyebrows as if guessing my profession were his favorite game. And I had to admit, I almost laughed at the ridiculousness of his guesses. Almost.
“I’m not a murderer,” I said, shaking my head because… was this guy for real? If he even considered me to be a criminal — a murderer at that — why would he get anywhere near me? Let alone get in a car with me to spend a whole fucking weekend together. That’d make two days until anyone would miss him.
Was this guy a lunatic?
“You didn’t say you don’twork for the government.” There was that adorable brow wiggling again.
Nope.
Not adorable.Annoying. Both started with ana. Easy to confuse, especially if you had to keep up a weird-ass conversation with a lunatic that left my head spinning.
“I’m self-employed,” I finally said just to shut him up. I should’ve known better.
He giggled again, brushing a strand of his bright blond hair out of his eyes. “So… not a murderer, but… what about a mercenary? Bounty hunter? Or… ohh, I know: private investigator. There’s this really amazing thriller series featuring a jaded private investigator who used to be a cop — because apparently, all private investigators had to be cops before something bad happened which made them quit. It’s one of the rules of publishing… anyway. It’s still an amazing series…”
And off he went.
I let his excited voice wash over me and tried to focus on the road, which was really hard because I could see him wildly gesticulating out of the corner of my eye, his head occasionally bobbing up and down, his smile never faltering.
“Do you read? I mean, sure you read, duh. Who doesn’t like to read? The question is: what do you like to read?”
This was going to be a long fucking weekend.
* * *
The apple orchard was… cute, I guess. To me, it looked exactly like the hundred other apple orchards we’d passed on our way to this specific one. Lush green grass, knotty apple trees carrying a variety of different apples — green ones, red ones, striped ones — and a long, very narrow road that led us through the apple meadows to the big farmhouse that also happened to be an LGBTQ+ friendly B’n’B.
The whole thing looked very quaint. There were people picking apples in the field, putting them in big, wooden baskets like we were still living in the nineteen hundreds.
“Wow, it looks amazing! So cute,” Bailey gushed next to me, pressing his nose against the passenger door window. “Oh my god, do you think we’re gonna get to pick apples?”
I sure as fuck didn’t hope so. “We’re not free labor,” I reminded him. “This is supposed to be a…” I stopped, not wanting to say the worddate. Everything in me revolted against the word because I still wasn’t over the stunt my friends had pulled.
After I’d taken off from our camping trip, they’d left text messages, voicemails, emails, and hell, one of them had even written me a fucking letter, but I’d ignored them. I didn’t want to because they were my friends, but whenever I even thought about what they’d done, my blood began to boil, and I just got so damn angry.
I hated getting that way. Really. I didn’t enjoy screaming at people. I didn’t enjoy the feeling of my blood rushing through my veins or my heart beating so hard it felt like a sledgehammer was sitting in my chest.
And yeah, maybe I was being petty or a stubborn bastard or whatever, but I just didn’t know how to get over the betrayal. Yeah, they’d made a dumb, drunken mistake, and had they actuallytalkedto me about it after they’d sobered up, I… fuck, I’d have probably been mad for a couple of minutes, but in the end, I’d have laughed about it.
But they hadn’t.
