I gritted my teeth. “He’s doing this on purpose.”
“Shit, Troy. How could we have let this happen a second time?”
We tossed our cigars.
“You go that direction.” I pointed behind me. “I’ll take that end.”
As I went in search of my grandfather, I somehow ended up caught in a game of ring-around-the-rosy, with a group of girls dancing in a circle around me. I managed to escape and proceeded to run across the park.
After about five minutes passed, I took out my phone and texted Aspyn.
Troy: Any luck?
Aspyn: Nope.
A few minutes later, though, she texted.
Aspyn: Found him!
Thank God.
Troy: Where is he?
Aspyn: He’s chatting up this lady on a bench.
Troy: Where?
Aspyn: We’re behind the public restroom building.
Troy: For fuck’s sake. Thank you.
My original plan was to ream Nonno out—until I noticed him smiling and talking to the woman, who was laughing at everything he said. Not wanting to embarrass him, I decided to wait until we left the park to scold him. Technically, it wasn’t only his fault. We’d let this happen—again. But I also knew my grandfather, and he was playing games, getting a kick out of Aspyn and me having to stop our bickering long enough to unify in search of a missing old man.
Aspyn stood off to the side, watching my grandfather talk to his new friend. Her eyes locked with mine, and we shared a smile. Neither one of us had the heart to be mad at him.
After we returned Nonno to Horizons that afternoon, I saw Aspyn in the parking lot.
Jogging toward her car, I shouted, “Wait up.”
“What’s up?” she asked.
“You left so fast. I just wanted to say goodbye.”
Her mouth curved downward as she hung her head.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
“I’m mad at myself,” she admitted. “I almost feel like reporting myself to management. I deserve to be fired.”
“Whoa.” I stopped walking for a moment. “No, you don’t. He’s pulling this shit on purpose, so how could it be your fault?”
“Well, I let myself be distracted by your…cigar.”
We stopped in front of her car.
“Aspyn, don’t be so hard on yourself. You deserve a break.”
She crossed her arms. “How do you know what I deserve?”
“It’s obvious. You work hard at your job. Nonno told me all of the staff loves you. Then, on top of everything, you take care of your niece. That’s not an easy life. Unlike mine—I have no responsibilities. So what if you got a little distracted? I say, it’s about damn time.”
She looked out toward the highway in the distance, then turned back to me. “You don’t need to feel bad for me. My life isn’t miserable, if that’s what you’re insinuating.”
Damn. I really couldn’t win with her. She twisted every compliment I tried to give.
“I wasn’t insinuating that your life is miserable, Aspyn. Just acknowledging that you have a lot on your plate and you shouldn’t feel guilty for anything that happened today.” I sighed. “What do you do for fun?”
She bit her bottom lip, seeming to struggle to come up with an answer. “I…”
“That wasn’t a trick question, you know.”
“I just…have to think about it.”
“You have to think about it, or you can’t remember the last time you let loose?” I shook my head. “Fuck, you’re really wound up tight, aren’t you?”
“Keep your impressions of me to yourself. You don’t need to be concerned with how much fun I have.”
“All work and no play is no way to live.”
She blew out a frustrated breath. “Okay, then I have a proposition for you. Why don’t you come over tonight and help Kiki with her homework while I go out on the town?”
“I would totally do that, if you’d let me.”
The funny thing, I was dead serious.
She shook her head. “I was just making a point. I would never let you do that.”
“If you trusted me, you would.”
“That’s right. I don’t trust you.”
Ouch. I nodded. “It’s okay. I’d probably end up dead by water gun before I made it out of there.” “I don’t trust you.” Jeez. Tell me how you really feel, Aspyn. I’d made light of things, but what she said bummed me out.
She cracked a smile. “That’s probably true about the water gun.”
That comment felt like a small victory.
“Well, see you later,” she said.
I hadn’t been ready to end this conversation, but she was clearly eager to be rid of me. Yet again.
“Have a good night,” I said. “See you next Tuesday.”
She was about to open her car door but paused. “Was that a hidden cunt joke?”
“What?”
“C-U-N-T? See you next Tuesday?”
“For the love of God, Aspyn. Give me one shred of credit.”
She laughed as she got in her car.
I stood there and watched as she drove off.
Damn, she was a hard nut to crack.
• • •
That night, I felt restless. My days here in Meadowbrook were nothing like my life in Seattle. Back there, I had a large social network, meeting friends a few times a week for drinks after work. I also went on at least one date a week. But I hadn’t gone out with a woman here since arriving a month ago. Aside from visits to Nonno, I worked all day, then did pretty much nothing unless Eric was around. But he had a girlfriend who took up a good chunk of his time, so he wasn’t always available when I felt like hanging out.
Stuck in my dad’s house and bored, I decided to reactivate the dating app I’d used out in Seattle. I just reconfigured the preferred settings to New Jersey. Over the next half hour, I swiped left to reject almost every profile shown to me. I was a picky sonofabitch—I had no problem admitting that. If she didn’t completely rock my world in the looks department and have an interesting write-up on top of that, it was an automatic no. But the pattern of rejections tonight came to an abrupt end when I stopped on one particular profile. It took several seconds before I even believed what I was seeing. Staring back at me, smiling, was none other than Aspyn Dumont.
Well, what do you know? She’s not a complete hermit after all.
This was an Easter egg of epic proportions.
I gleefully perused her photos, feeling like I was getting away with murder. In one, she wore heavy makeup and a fancy dress, a far cry from Goofy scrubs. In another image, she wore a black halter top and looked to be out at a bar, based on the hanging drink glasses in the background. My eyes fixated on her cleavage, which I knew she wouldn’t be caught dead willingly showing me. God, she had amazing tits. Perhaps I should tell her that and wait to get my ass handed to me. Look at that smile. No resting bitch face to be found in any of these photos.
When I looked down at the description in her profile, though, I cringed. It was filled with dating app clichés and might as well have been automatically generated by a robot.