A smile plays across my face, more for Nora and her forceful ways than for Nathaniel’s spend-conscious ex.
She smiles back at me conspiratorially, and I take a sip of the coffee. It tastes like battery acid.
I pour cream into it from the pot in the middle of the nook’s table, feeling Nora’s bemused gaze on me the whole time, and then sit down across from Nathaniel. “I’m so sorry this happened, Nathaniel. I should have told Nora I was sending you over.”
“Aw, that’s all right,” he says easily, as if it were a misunderstanding about the recycling schedule. “I don’t mind a little excitement, and Nora here’s offered to help me weed my garden to make up for?—”
“Pepper-spraying you in the face,” I finish, incredulous.
Nathaniel must like dangerous women as much as I do.
I glance at her, eyebrows raised.
Her cheeks flush. “I said I was sorry. Iamsorry. It was an honest misunderstanding. He climbed up there with those creepy goggles on, holding a baseball bat, and?—”
“You might want to hold off on writing that letter, Nathaniel,” I say. “It sounds like the goggles were a contributing factor.”
He touts his tongue. “But they do help you see in the dark. I saw the threat coming, clear as day. Your girl’s got some good reflexes.”
“I told you it’s a fake relationship, Nathaniel,” Nora says with a tired, halfhearted eye roll.
“You told him about our secret fake relationship?” I ask in disbelief.
“We were in the waiting room for two hours, and Nathaniel has this thing against cell phones.” Her lips scrunch to the side as if she can’t even imagine how anyone could dislike the devices that have robbed us all of our attention spans. “They didhave some magazines, but the pages were discolored. They probably had fifty different types of bacteria and a dozen viruses on them.”
“Viruses are more common than bacteria,” I mutter.
She rewards me with a sigh. “Anyway…it seemed like the least I could do was entertain him with my misery.”
Knowing Nathaniel, she was probably trying to put a halt to his endless stories.
She tilts her head, eyeing me. “I should have asked you before saying anything about our agreement. I know you probably haven’t told anyone.”
I think of the guys in the band and the not-so-little-and-old ladies, who sent me half a dozen texts yesterday, all of them about aftershave. Dottie and Ann disagreed about which scent would be the “most compelling” to Nora; I disagreed that I needed any.
Dottie told me she’d be delivering a bottle of her favored choice prior to the double date. I was confident nothing I could say or do would prevent it from showing up, so I stopped trying.
I gulp the terrible coffee and cringe. “Well…there may be a couple of other people who know.”
“You told the guys?” She picks a toasted bagel up off a plate on the counter and takes a bite. “That’s okay. My friends know too.”
“Uh…yeah. And Dottie and Ann and a couple of their friends. But they’ve promised not to say anything to our parents.”
She drops the rest of the bagel onto the floor, and Cookie lunges forward and races off with it. I put up a token protest and call out her name, but she doesn’t so much as pause in her flight down the hall.
“You didn’t even know Dottie,” Nora says haltingly. “You called her a little old lady.”
“Oh, that’s not something you should ever call a woman, son,” Nathaniel proclaims with a chuckle. “Even if she’s lying on her deathbed. Don’t call ’em ma’am either. I could have told you that.”
“Next time I meet an elderly woman, I’ll be sure to give you a call.”
“Please do. It’s been a long time since I’ve had a lady in my life.”
“You might want to wait until…” I gesture to his pink rash with the pale holes for eyes.
“Cormac.” Nora cups a hand around my shoulder. I turn in my chair and find her face close to mine. She keeps her hand curled around me, her fingers warm through my thin T-shirt.
I draw in a deep breath and get another hint of ginger. “I didn’t know Dottie, but she saw me…”
