AllFreeNovel
Share Us
All the color drained out his face. “Tonight?”
Chapter Four
It took a bit of finagling to pull it off.
Jonathan couldn’t just call Jinny to ask her out, because he didn’t have her number. As far as Jinny knew, he didn’t even know her name, much less her phone number. So he had to ask her out in person. Which meant they had to arrange an “accidental” meeting.
You would think a screenwriter would be able to come up with a simple meet-cute, but he was worse than useless in this department.
“Why don’t you just give me her number so I can call her?” he said, shrugging. “I don’t see why it has to be so complicated.”
“Because this can’t look like a set-up,” Esther reminded him. “How is she supposed to think you got her number, if not from me?”
He shrugged again.
Useless. Fortunately, Esther was a master strategist. She’d been kicking her older brother’s ass at Risk since she was seven years old. She had this.
MY PLACE STAT, she texted Jinny. I’m ordering from the Hawaiian place.
Jinny loved the Hawaiian place, and they didn’t deliver to Mar Vista.
On my way, Jinny texted back almost immediately. Order me the kalua pork ramen.
Once she was sure Jonathan knew what he was supposed to do, Esther shooed him out of her apartment so she could finally take off her damn tights. She changed out of the loose floral dress she’d worn to work and into a pair of sweatpants and her favorite University of Washington T-shirt. Shaking her long, wavy hair out of its neat work bun, she sank down on the couch and twisted it into a looser, messier bun.
Her big, black-and-white tuxedo cat, Sally Ride, jumped into her lap to demand head scratches. Esther obliged her, stroking the purring cat while she waited for Jinny to arrive.
Five minutes later, there was a knock on the door, and Sally hightailed it to the bedroom.
“Take my phone,” Jinny said, thrusting it at Esther as she walked past her into the apartment.
“Okay.” Esther stared at the phone as she closed the door. “Why?”
The phone vibrated in her hand with a new text message from Stuart: Let me come over tonight baby. I miss my ickle lover bunny.
Gross.
“That’s why,” Jinny said, helping herself to a beer from the fridge. “Don’t let me answer it.”
Esther set the phone facedown on the table by the door. “He wants a booty call tonight? It’s a weeknight.”
“People have sex on weeknights, you know.” Jinny twisted the cap off her beer and took a swig.
“Sounds exhausting. I barely have enough energy to feed myself when I get home from work.”
Jinny flopped onto Esther’s red Ikea sofa with her beer. Esther’s entire apartment had been furnished at Ikea. She’d basically just copied one of the model living rooms from the showroom.
“This is torture,” Jinny groaned. “I’m trying to resist him, but every time he texts, it reminds me how much I miss him. He’s slowly wearing me down.”
Sometimes Esther couldn’t understand Jinny at all. Sure, Stuart was hot, and maybe he was as good in bed as Jinny claimed. But no matter how good he might be, or how much she might think she loved him, Esther couldn’t imagine ever forgiving a man who’d cheated on her.
“You could block him,” she suggested, sitting at the other end of the couch and pulling her legs up under her.
Jinny took another swig of beer. “I thought about it. But I can’t stand the thought of cutting him off like that. Knowing he’s still texting, but not knowing what he’s saying.” Her eyes drifted to the phone on the table, like she wanted to go over there and look at it.
Jesus, she was really far gone. Thank god Esther had run into Jonathan tonight. Not a minute too soon.
Sally reemerged from the bedroom and came over to the couch to sniff Esther’s toes. Esther reached down to scratch the top of her head. “You know what he’s saying though. You don’t need to read his texts to know what he wants.”
