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“I thought you didn’t have a phone on you? That’s why you couldn’t give me any light to find mine when I’d dropped it?”
Shit.
“I didn’t have it on my person because I’d forgotten it in the messenger bag on my bike when I went up to do my delivery.”
“Oh.”
My phone buzzed again.
“Don’t you have to answer it?”
“It can wait.”
“Are you the only messenger? Or is it a big company?”
“There are a few of us.” Pick up shovel, dig yourself deeper, Jay, you dick.
She squinted. “You’re being vague. Most men jump at the opportunity to talk about their success.”
“Maybe my company is extremely successful, and I don’t want to scare you away thinking I’m one of those rich men you seem to dislike so much.”
“I don’t dislike people because they have money. I dislike them because of what having the money does to them. It seems to cause a warp in priorities and make them think the world revolves around them.”
“So you wouldn’t necessarily eliminate an extremely wealthy man from your list of potential suitors just because of his wealth, then?”
“Potential suitors?” She chuckled. “Now you sound like the assholes I went to grad school with at Wharton.”
“You went to Wharton?”
“Yes. Don’t sound so shocked. Girls with brains use obscene four letter words and their bodies to win bets, too, you know. How about you? Did you go to college?”
I couldn’t very well tell her I’d gone to Harvard, so I added another lie to the growing pile. “I went to state school. It was what my parents could afford.” It wasn’t a total lie. My parents could afford state school—to buy one…the grounds, the professors, the entire university, for that matter.
We sat on the grass for another hour eating our lunch and shooting the shit. The woman intrigued me on so many levels, and I wanted to know more about what made her tick. “So what do you do in your spare time, aside from hustling men in bets on the Great Lawn?”
“Well, I work a lot. You already know I’m a writer for Finance Times, but I also freelance for a few other business magazines. So sometimes I’m traveling on weekends for assignments. When I am home, I’m usually out. I’m a foodie. I like to try different ethnic places to eat with my friend, Phoebe. We’ve been on a Vietnamese kick lately. The last place we went to, I have no idea what I ate because we were the only two who weren’t Asian in the place, and no one really spoke English. Other than that, I volunteer at Forever Grey on most Sunday mornings. It’s a nonprofit that rescues retired greyhounds that their racing-obsessed owners discard when they can’t run fast enough anymore. The dogs are beautiful and smart and need to be exercised, so I take two out for a run whenever I can.”
“That’s very nice of you.”
She shrugged. “It’s good therapy for the dogs and for me.”
“Do you have a dog yourself?”
“I’d like to, but my building doesn’t allow dogs over ten pounds. And I’m not really a small dog kind of person. Plus, with all my travel, it wouldn’t be fair to have an animal cooped up in my small place. Since I left the stock market, my lifestyle has taken a hit—starting with a reduction in my square footage. My old place had a closet bigger than where I live now. What about you? What do you do for fun?”
My life for the last six months pretty much consisted of working eighty hours a week, going to mundane social engagements that my work required, and occasionally fucking Caroline when she was in town. All of which, Jay, messenger boy extraordinaire, could not reveal to Bianca. And so—I dug even deeper.
“My business keeps me pretty busy. I have some employees but the company is only a few years old, and we’re still in the building stages. I try to hit the gym five days a week, and…” I needed to come up with something so it sounded like I had some interests. Unfortunately, when I reached into my bag full of decent lies for another, all I came up with was a handful of lint. So, I said the first thing that popped into my head. “I also whittle.”
“Whittle?”
“Yes, whittle. You know, the ancient form of woodcarving. I carve various things from wood.”
What the fuck? Hiking or distilling couldn’t have popped into my head first? I didn’t know the first thing about wood. Well, not that type of wood anyway.
Bianca looked amused. “That’s not something I hear too often—whittling. What kind of things do you make?”
“Ah. I can’t tell you that on the first date.” I winked. “Just know I’m good with my hands, and you have some impressive wood to look forward to seeing in the future when we go out again.”
