Blake, 36, is sitting at the first table, facing the door with his hands folded like he’s here with Ruth from HR to fire me.
“Blake?” I outstretch a hand.
“Nora?” He doesn’t get up.
“Yep.”
“You look different than your picture,” he replies.
“Haircut,” I say, taking my seat, hand unshaken.
“You didn’t say how tall you were in your profile,” he says. This from a man who listed himself as six feet and an inch but can’t be taller than five nine unless he’s wearing stilts under this table.
So at least dating in Sunshine Falls is exactly the same as in New York.
“Didn’t occur to me it would matter.”
“How tall are you?” Blake asks.
“Um,” I stall, hoping this will give him time to rethink his first-date strategy. No such luck. “Five eleven.”
“Are you a model?” He says this hopefully, like the right answer could excuse a multitude of height-related sins.
There is, of course, the misconception that straight men universally love tall, thin women. Being such a woman, I can debunk this.
Many men are too insecure to date a tall woman. Many of those who aren’t are assholes looking for a trophy. It has less to do with attraction than status. Which is only effective if the tall person is a model. If you’re dating someone taller than you and she’s a model, then you must be hot and interesting. If you’re dating someone taller than you and she’s a literary agent, cue the jokes about her wearing your balls on a silver necklace.
On the bright side, at least Blake, 36, isn’t asking about—
“What size are your shoes?” His face is pinched as if in pain. Same, Blake. Same.
“What are you drinking?” I say. “Alcohol? Alcohol sounds good.”
The waitress approaches, and before she can get a word out, I say, “Two very large gin martinis, please.” She must see the familiar signs of first-date misery on me, because she skips her welcome speech, nods, and virtually sprints to put in our order.
“I don’t drink,” Blake says.
“No worries,” I say, “I’ll drink yours.”
Back by the pool tables, Libby grins and flashes two thumbs up.
13
YOU WOULD THINK he’d be in a hurry to call this thing what it is: dead in the water.
But Blake is not a casual MOM user. He’s on the prowl for a wife, and despite my hulking stature, giantess feet, and indulgence in gin, he’s not willing to let me go until he’s individually clarified that I don’t know how to make any of his favorite foods.
“I really don’t cook,” I say, when we’ve made it through Super Bowl finger foods and moved on to various fried fish.
“Not even tilapia?” he says.
I shake my head.
“Salmon?” he asks.
“No.”
“Catfish?”
“Like the TV show?” I say.
He briefly pauses the inquest when the front doors swing open and Charlie Lastra steps inside. I fight an urge to sink in my chair and hide behind the menu, but it wouldn’t matter. The second a person walks through those doors they come face-to-face with our table, and Charlie’s eyes snap right to me, his expression somersaulting through surprise to something like distaste and then wicked glee.
It really is like watching a storm building in a time-lapse video, culminating in that flash-crack of lightning.
He nods at me before beelining toward the bar, and Blake resumes his fish list. Just like that, I lose another fifteen minutes of my life.
Blake was handsome in his photographs, but I truly find this man heinous.
I pat the table and stand. “You need anything from the bar?”
“I don’t drink,” he reminds me, sounding awfully impatient for a man who’s heard the sentence I don’t cook seventeen times in the last thirty minutes without it making any lasting impression.
I can’t actually order another drink. A third cocktail and I’d probably make Blake stand back-to-back with me while our waitress measured us. Or maybe I’d actually knock him out and steal his wallet.
Either way, I’m on a mission to find Libby rather than booze, but this place is jammed. I wedge myself against the bar and pull out my phone to find not one but two missed calls from Dusty, along with a text message apologizing for calling so late. I fire off a reply asking if she’s all right and whether I can call her back in twenty minutes, then type out a message to Libby: WHERE ARE YOU? As I hit send, I push onto my tiptoes to scan the crowd.
“If you’re looking for your dignity,” someone says through the roar of conversation (and the girls screaming “Like a Virgin” at the back of the room), “you won’t find it here.”
Charlie sits around the corner of the bar with a glistening bottle of Coors.
“What’s so undignified about karaoke night?” I ask. “I mean, you’re here.”
Someone steps between us to order. Charlie leans behind her to continue the conversation, and I do too. “Yes, but I’m not here with Blake Carlisle.”
I glance over my shoulder. Blake is staring longingly at a brunette who looks about four foot six.
“Grow up together?” I guess.
“Very few people who are born here ever escape,” he says sagely.
“Does the Sunshine Falls Tourism Bureau know about you?” I ask.
The woman standing between us clearly has no plans to leave, but we just keep talking around her, leaning in front of and then behind her depending on her posture.
“No, but I’m sure they’ll want an endorsement from you once you’ve done your walk of shame from Blake’s house. I’ve got it on good authority he has a carpeted bathroom.”
“Joke’s on you, because I haven’t slept over at a man’s apartment in like ten years.”
Charlie’s eyes glint, another lightning strike across the dark clouds of his face. “I am desperate for more information.”
“I have an intense nighttime skin care routine. I don’t like to miss it, and it doesn’t all fit in a handbag.” My mom used to say, You can’t control the passage of time, but you can soften its blow to your face.
His head cocks to one side as he considers my half-truth of an answer. “So how’d you end up here with Blake? Throw a dart at a phone book?”