“That connection’s always been there. It’s why we keep getting back together. We should make it permanent this time. I’m ready to settle down.”
How convenient for him that he’s unconcerned what I’m ready for. “You’re forgetting what I told you when we last broke up, Bobby.”
He gives my hands an encouraging squeeze. “I know the importance you put on romantic love, but there are other kinds of love that are just as important. The love between two best friends, for instance. The love that comes from knowing you can always rely on someone. The solid, enduring kind of love built on a shared past and similar dreams of the future. Not every relationship needs passion to make it work. In fact, many married couples are happily sexless.”
I pause to give him some serious stink eye. “Have you discovered I’ve inherited a large amount of money I don’t know about?”
Failing to move me with his highbrow arguments, he goes low.
“You’re not getting any younger, either. Tick-tock.”
“Holy… why do you assume I won’t clobber you with one of my shoes for saying something so offensive?”
He shakes his head. “You’re too sensible for that.”
“Bobby?”
“Yes?”
“I dare you to call me sensible again.”
I get the feeling he wants to drop his head into his hands and groan.
Then I get another feeling, an intense and crackly one that reminds me of the time I stuck a paperclip into an electrical outlet when I was a kid to see what would happen.
When I turn my head toward the source, the electrical crackle detonates over every inch of my skin.
In the foyer, next to the restaurant’s mascot of a toothy paper-mache burro wearing a sombrero, Mason stands staring at me.
18
Mason
As if from far away, I hear Dick say, “Aw, shit. That’s Maddie over there. I’m sorry, champ. Let’s go to a different restaurant.”
My brain agrees, but every other part of my body is in revolt.
My feet won’t turn me around.
My mouth refuses to give an affirmative answer.
My stomach has dropped to somewhere around my ankles, and my dick…
Let’s just say my dick thinks he’s a gladiator and has drawn his sword.
Seeing Maddie sitting at that table across the restaurant holding hands with Robert the robot and gazing deep into his eyes has made nerves I didn’t even know I had bristle like porcupine quills.
Any second now, I’m gonna start pawing the ground and snorting.
Dick’s voice comes from that distant place again. But now, instead of apologetic, it’s soothing. “Easy, Mace. Take a deep breath.”
“I’m fine.”
Funny, but it sounded like I said, “She’s mine.”
I need to start scheduling my therapy sessions for more than once a week.
Maddie turns her head. We lock eyes across the restaurant. I’m instantly juiced by a thousand volts of energy.
I’m electric. I’m on fire. I’m Frankenstein’s monster with lightning scorching through his reanimated veins.
Without looking away from Maddie, I say to Dick, “We’re staying. Get us a table. I gotta hit the head.”
I turn and walk to the restroom before he can answer. Once inside, I take out my cell and send Maddie a text. Meet me in the men’s room.
I have to pace to manage the adrenaline lashing through me until she answers back a few minutes later.
Did you mean to send this to Bettina?
I send her the emoji that looks like an angry face with the top of its head exploding.
She texts back: You blew me off last night. Now suddenly we’re meeting in the toilet?
She texted me three times yesterday, starting from a few hours after I left her house. The first one was an apology for ruining my Sunday. The second one was a request that I call her so she could apologize over the phone. The third one, a few hours later, was only Hello?
A while after that is when she called. In her voicemail, she used words like “ashamed” “mortified” and “inexcusable.” It sounded more like a confession of murder than an apology for throwing up in the sink.
It took every ounce of willpower I had not to call her back, but I stayed firm.
I was proud of my self-control.
Now here I am, less than a full day later, sending her panicked texts from a restaurant john sixty seconds after I see her face.
Pathetic.
I text her a lie in a last-ditch effort to get her in here so we can talk. My phone was off. Didn’t know you were trying to reach me until now.
Then I stand there staring at the phone in my hand, cursing silently at it when it fails to produce a response.
“I was under the impression we’d agreed about the honesty thing, Sparky.”
I jerk my head up and see Maddie standing inside the men’s room door, her arms folded over her chest. I was so preoccupied with the stupid phone, I didn’t hear her come in.
“We did.”
“For the record, texts count in that agreement.”
“What makes you think I wasn’t being honest about my phone?”
She eyes me. “Were you?”
Fuck. “No.”
She exhales a slow breath and unfolds her arms. “I don’t blame you for avoiding me. Yesterday was a hot mess, and that’s my fault. But I would’ve preferred getting fired via text than in a men’s room.”
She glances at the wall behind me. Her eyes widen. “A men’s room with a disturbing painting hanging over the urinals of Jesus and Elvis Presley sharing a platter of nachos at a bullfight. Dear God.”
Dick already told me in the car coming here that he hadn’t made the call yet to tell her we were going with a different service, so I know her comment about getting fired is based on guilt, not fact.
Which makes me feel like an asshole.
“I wasn’t gonna fire you.”
She turns her attention away from the painting and examines my face. Then she folds her arms across her chest again, tilts her head down, and looks at me over the top rim of her glasses.
I’m in for it.
Before she can rag on me for being the degenerate liar I am, I turn the tables.
“But I am curious about your lunch date. Looks pretty hot and heavy, considering you said you weren’t in love with him. Is that standard procedure, fibbing to your clients about your love life?”
My attempt to distract her works, because she groans. “What you saw out there isn’t my love life. That’s the Titanic right after they discovered they ran out of lifeboats.”
From her obvious misery, I realize I misinterpreted what I saw. She wasn’t gazing deeply into the robot’s eyes… he was gazing deeply into hers.
Instantly, my hackles go up. All my protective instincts slam into overdrive.
I step closer to her. “What’s going on? Is he bothering you? Do you need me to go out there and set him straight?”
Startled, she glances up at me. “Oh, look, we’re growling again. Have you thought of taking one of those DNA tests to see if there’s a bear somewhere in your family tree?”
“I’m serious, Maddie. If that guy’s bothering you, I’ll break his teeth.”