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Chapter Seven
It was official. I sucked at dating. And I was never, ever doing it again. In fact, on the agenda for tomorrow was to go to Sam’s Club or Costco and stock up on batteries. Maybe I’d even buy a different vibrator for every day of the week to keep things fresh and interesting. It couldn’t be called slutty if you switched up your battery-operated boyfriends every night, right? Armed with that amusing thought, I let myself into my apartment and played over the disaster which had been the last hour of my evening.
Chad had been as attractive as I’d remembered from the mixer and smart, too. But per usual when I was intimidated or anxious, things started spewing out of my mouth at an alarmingly quick rate—sans the filter. Added to that was the fact he’d asked more questions about Haylee than about me. I couldn’t shake the impression he might have a little crush on my very happily married friend.
Since it wasn’t quite eight o’clock, I was happy Tristan wouldn’t yet be asleep and went straight up to Haylee’s apartment. I enjoyed putting him to bed, so at least in that respect I was grateful my evening was over early.
After picking up my sleepy boy, taking him downstairs, and putting him in his crib, I slipped off my skirt and donned my usual outfit of leggings and a sweatshirt. Thankfully, Haylee hadn’t peppered me with questions about my date. I’d promised we could chat about it tomorrow. Not that there was much to say.
Sighing, I took a swig out of my beer bottle. At least Chad had insisted on paying for coffee and had been nice enough to walk me to my car like a gentleman. But the ‘it was nice meeting you, take care’ made it pretty obvious he wasn’t planning to call any time soon. Just as well as I hadn’t exactly enjoyed myself. And this disaster was without alcohol to blame this time around.
Intending to replace the batteries in my vibrator when I went to the store, I jotted it down in all caps on a pad of paper on the kitchen counter. Getting those was the first order of business tomorrow. Actually, milk, cheerios and pancake mix was, but perhaps I could get them all during the same shopping trip.
When the knock came at the door, I was stunned to see that it was Mark when I looked out the peephole.
Opening the door, I found him standing there with his hands in his pockets, rocking back on his heels. “Hey, I saw your car. I thought you had a date tonight?”
“I did, but it ended early.”
His gaze landed on my bottle of beer, amusement evident in his expression. “I’m guessing by the drink of choice it didn’t go well?”
“You’d guess right. Dating or coffee or whatever it’s called these days blows. Um, did you want to come in? There’s more beer. But only if you drink it out of the bottle so as not to make me feel uncivilized if you were to pour it into a proper glass.”
“Sounds good to me.”
He walked in, and I tried in vain not to stare at his fine ass encased in blue jeans. Snapping my eyes up to his face when he turned, I swore he could read my thoughts and blushed accordingly.
After he got himself a bottle, we both took a seat on the sofa.
We were only friends, I reminded myself, simply buddies who hung out and were not in, and would not ever have, a physical relationship. Oh, no, I shouldn’t have thought about sex because now I noticed how good he smelled. And why was he looking at me funny?
“Hello. Earth to Juliette. You all right?”
“Um, yeah, sorry. I must’ve spaced.”
“I asked you if you wanted anything more to drink. You drained your beer. You want some water?”
Looking at the now empty bottle in question, I realized he was right. Thinking about sex evidently had me chugging my alcohol these days. “Some water would probably be good.”
He got up and pulled down a glass from my kitchen cabinet, clearly comfortable in my space with all the dishwashing he’d done over the last few weeks.
“Hey, is this a math book? Are you taking classes?”
My head whipped around to see him touching my books on the counter.
“Uh, it’s just online courses.” The last thing I’d wanted was for him—or anyone, for that matter—to find out.
He frowned as he walked over to hand me the glass of water. He then took a seat next to me. “What degree are you working toward?”
I shrugged. “It’s my first two classes, so nothing yet. But I was hoping someday it’ll be business administration. Um, do me a favor, though, and don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t tell anyone you’re taking classes? Why not?”
“Because with the way math is going, I’m not sure how long I’ll be doing it. Plus, it’s embarrassing.”
“Why would it be embarrassing?”
Because he’d gone to Yale, Brian and Josh had studied at Harvard, and Haylee had done undergrad at Stanford and was now studying law at Yale. Meanwhile, I was struggling with a math refresher course. But there was no way I wanted to voice my insecurity. It wouldn’t be something he’d understand. “It just is.”
