Page 22 of Not Your Shoe Size

“Nothing. I’ll wait and ask her about him tonight.”

“Are you…sure?”

Ty leaned across his desk and hit the kill switch on his computer. “Yup.”

“That’s un-Henderson of you.”

It would be if that was all I was planning.Ty logged out of his computer. “Thanks for calling, talk soon.”

There was a shocked silence before, “Are you okay? Do you want me to meet you at the office? Take you out for a drink or some crystal meth or something?”

“No.”

Georgie laughed, but it sounded more like a nervous whine. “Ty, you’re not going to confront her, are you? Because if she’s just getting coffee with a hot dad for work and you go apeshit, Kate’ll hate me. And I like Kate.”

Ty gritted his teeth. Georgie couldn’t know that the idea of Kate having coffee with someone’s hot dad was more abrasive than if she was having coffee with 2005-era Leonardo DiCaprio, but it was still irritating. “I won’t go apeshit. I’m leaving work. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Verysoon. Like, message me in thirty minutes or I’m calling the cops.”

Ty pulled on his coat. “Fine. Bye.”

The second Georgie hung up, he opened the Airbnb app. He was going to make this right, remind Kate who she belonged to. Drive all thoughts of this asshole out of her head. Convince her to marry him if he could. And he knew exactly how to do it. Only what he had planned couldn’t happened at their apartment. It needed to be somewhere new and strange. Unknown.

Chapter 6

Kate wasn’t sure how she’d wound up in a café with her childhood crush. The morning had taken on the hallucinatory shimmer of a dream. Rapunzel’s crush was Deidre Peterson—the worst person to graduate Colac Secondary since the guy who ran over an echidna on purpose. But when confronted with her, she hadn’t run away in a haze of bullying flashbacks, she’dtold Deidre Peterson off. Straight up confronted her, the way she had in a thousand revenge daydreams. Right in front of her dad, Kane Peterson.

While Kate had thought of Deidre semi-regularly—usually when someone in retail was mean to her—she barely thought of Mr. Peterson. He wasn’t a real person. He was a fairy-tale character from a badly written book calledMy Dumbass Teenage Life.Only he wasn’t. He’d driven Deidre up from the coast, and now he was sitting across from her in a faded blue t-shirt, ordering a coffee and a crème éclair from their waitress.

He must have felt her staring because he smiled at her. “What would you like?”

Déjà vu goose bumps crept down her spine. She might have been back in his van in 2005. They could have been going through the drive-through, ordering McDonald’s pancakes before school because Mr. Peterson knew she hadn’t had breakfast.

“I don’t know if I should get anything. Rapunzel and Deidre are expecting us back, aren’t they?”

“Ah, they’re fine,” Mr. Peterson said comfortably. “Did you want anéclairtoo? Oh, you don’t like them, do you?” He dismissed the politely hovering waitress as Kate gaped at him.

“How do you know…?”

“You brought me leftover éclairs for ages, remember? From your job?”

“I...” Kate licked her lips. They were so raw they felt like they’d been rubbed with chilli. The truth was, until Mr. Peterson explained, shedidn’tremember. Between her untreated ADHD, pot smoking, family crap and helpless infatuation, the bulk of her teenage memories were covered in Vaseline, less believable than the movies she’d loved—The Virgin Suicides, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kill Bill, Marie Antoinette, Goodfellas, The Lord of The Rings...

“Having a cotton moment?” Mr. Peterson grinned, and then his hand was on hers.

A jolt went through her like she’d touched a car battery. “I…yes.”

She’d forgotten he called her space outs ‘cotton moments.’ Forgot he knew she spaced out.

He knows so much about me. Everything.

“You do remember,” he urged. “You worked at Doughnut King for years. That’s where you got the éclairs.”

“Oh!” A barrage of memories returned to her; the scratchy pink polo shirt, the perpetually greasy windows, pushing room-temperature éclairs into paper bags. She paid for them, but she told Mr. Peterson they were free because giving them to him made him smile like she’d invented the moon. She licked her lips again, trying to let the Technicolor thoughts settle. They were too bright, and the man in them wasn’t the guy sitting across from her. The man in her memories was bigger than a mountain, sweeter than talking woodland animals, handsome as a fairy-tale prince. He was her first crush and her first friend and entirely made from fantasy. She smiled at the flesh and blood Mr. Peterson, a nice-looking older man with thinning hair, and, for the first time since he’d gotten out of his van, she felt comfortable.

“That’s better,” Mr. Peterson said, giving her hand a pat. “You still cotton out, huh?”

“Not often.” Kate glanced out of the café window. She felt paranoid. Watched, almost. As though anyone cared where she was or why. She returned her gaze to Mr. Peterson and forced herself to smile. “What about you, Mr. Peterson, how’re things in the Otways?”

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