“Sure.” He lifted one shoulder.
“Why?” More eye-narrowing on my part.
“Because I enjoy a challenge, plus I think it’ll make me work harder. The saw I want to buy costs a little over five thousand. I’m motivated.”
Okay, so he was probably shiftless, but if we lost, I’d save a thousand dollars. There was really no downside for me. “Fine. If you think it’ll help.”
“One more thing,” he added, a distinctive twinkle in his eye. “If we win, you owe me a favor.”
Wait. What? I scrunched up my nose and tilted my head to the side, thoroughly puzzled. “A favor? What could I possibly...Wait a minute! If you think for one minute that I’m going to come clean your apartment or walk your dog for a year, or—”
“No. No. No.” He laughed. “I was thinking more along the lines of you bailing me out of jail, or pretending to be my date to my sister’s wedding.”
I refused to smile because I was still suspicious. What was this vague ‘favor’ business? “Have you ever had to be bailed out of jail?” I asked.
“No. You?”
“No. Is your sister engaged?”
He sighed. “She’s completely single.”
“So, what sort of favor are you really thinking?” By this time, my Sprite was watered down and I wished I’d ordered wine. Or even better, a beer.
His smile reached his green eyes. “Just say yes, Meg. I promise I won’t make you clean my toilet or take care of my chinchilla while I’m out of town.”
“You have a chinchilla?”
His lips quirked. “No.”
So, Jeremy was kinda funny, but that didn’t make up for the joblessness and the gambling. “Why should I say yes?”
“I don’t know, for fun? Haven’t you ever done anything just for fun?”
I wanted to say, “Of course I have. Who hasn’t done something just for fun?” but a quick scan of my memory wasn’t unearthing much. I was tired and it had been a long day and I was under a lot of stress, too. My almost fiancé had recently tossed me over for a new Lizzy Bennet. How could I be expected to remember frivolous things like whatever I’d done ‘for fun’ in the past?
“I’m going to Bath for fun,” I finally offered.
Jeremy arched a brow. “I thought you were going for work and to beat your boyfriend in the competition.”
“Yes, but I’ll also be having fun.”
This time he tilted his head and contemplated me. “If you don’t mind me asking, if he chose another woman over you, why are you still with this guy?”
The breath caught in my throat. Did I mind him asking? And what exactly was the proper answer to that question? ‘Harrison dumped me for Lacey Lewis because our boss asked him to,’ sounded positively ridiculous...and far too complicated, actually. I opened my mouth to say something, but thankfully the waitress came back to ask if we wanted refills or to see a menu. I said no to both while Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest and watched me in that assessing yet friendly way of his.
“What?” I asked as the waitress tripped away to get the check.
“You were judging her, weren’t you?”
“No. I wasn’t. I have to get up early for class and need to leave.”
“I’m not talking about how you asked for the check. I’m talking about the way you looked at her.”
I squirmed in my seat a little. “I wasn’t rude.”
“I didn’t say you were. You’re just judgey.”
“We’ve been over this.” I wanted to roll my eyes.
“Tell me,” he said, leaning closer. “What do you think her story is?”
“The waitress?” I glanced toward where she had disappeared to prepare the check. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously.” Jeremy crossed his arms over his chest and settled back into the booth.
“Fine.” I shrugged and pursed my lips. “Let’s see…she’s wearing all black, skirt’s way too short, fishnets, too much eyeliner. A little Goth. She has a Janis Joplin tat on her wrist and is at least twenty-one, wearing pigtails.”
Jeremy nodded. “So, what do you think?”
I tapped my pen against my planner. “I say her parents are divorced, she’s really into astrology, and she’s studying either Psych or English, but she’s taking a break right now because she needs to find herself. Oh, and she’s really into poetry. Like really into it.”
“Wow.” He looked impressed. “You got all that from her clothes and a couple of tattoos?”
“Yes, but it’s a moot point because we’ll never—”
“Excuse me,” Jeremy said to the waitress, who had returned with the check.
I gave him a don’t-you-dare glare, which did nothing to dissuade him. The waitress was smacking gum, which made me think a Psych major was a safer bet.
“Would you answer a couple of questions for us?” he said.
“Um, like what?” Smack. Smack. Smack.
“We’re just taking a survey,” Jeremy replied. “For a Psych class.”
I rolled my eyes at that. He pulled out his wallet, extracted a twenty-dollar bill and tossed it on the table next to our check. “We’ll make it worth your while.”
“Go ahead, shoot,” the waitress said, resting her tray on her jutted-out hip and smacking her gum double-time.
Jeremy grinned. “Great. First, are you parents married or divorced?”
She leaned back and scratched her wrist and laughed. “Di-vorced,” she said. “Like totally divorced.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and gave Jeremy a semi-smug look. But I didn’t want to get too comfortable.
“What’s your astrological sign?” he asked next.
“Oh, I’m a super-Gemini,” she responded without blinking an eye. “My sun sign is Cancer, but my astrologist says my moon is total Gemini.”
“Great,” Jeremy replied, refusing to look at me. He was frowning a little. “Just one more, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t,” she replied.
“At the risk of this sounding like a really bad pick-up line, what’s your major?”
“Oh.” Smack. Smack. Smack. “I was totally into Psych for a while, but then things got weird with my mom and stepdad, and I had to go home for a while and well, right now I’m just kinda working and—you know—figuring things out.”
“Are you at all into poetry?” I asked, giving Jeremy the smuggiest of the smuggy-pants looks.
Her eyes went wide. “It’s, like, so, like, funny you should say that, because I totally just started reading this amazing stuff by Bukowski, and I’ve been writing a little on my own.”
“You don’t say?” I raised my eyebrows.
“Yeah, like that’s really weird. I’ve been thinking maybe I should study English instead of Psych.”
Satisfied, I tossed my own twenty-dollar bill on the table to pay the bill, and stood. “If you like poetry, you should try Shelley,” I said.
“Shelley who?” she asked, still smacking.
“Mary Shelley,” I replied.