Samirah gave an awkward-sounding throat clear. “I’ll just go to the car and wait,” she said, walking away and leaving Zack and me all alone.
Zack turned to me. “What say we go for a drink to celebrate this tonight?”
Oh shit!I’d never done anything like this before, in person anyway. If an online date didn’t work out, you never spoke to the person again, or had to see them again. You just swiped and blocked them. But now the person was standing in front of me, asking me out on another date.
He took a step closer and I shuffled back a little.
“Uh . . . thing is, Zack,” I started. Oh crap, this was hard! Especially because he was looking at me like that, and he did have dimples! Mark didn’t have dimples, but he was Mark and right now, all I wanted was Mark.
“Thing is?” he asked, looking at me as if he knew what was happening.
“Thing is . . . Mark and me,” I said.
“Oh. I didn’t know you two were?”
“We weren’t. Not until, uh . . .”
“After our date?”
I cringed. That sounded so bad. I shrugged. “I, we, yes. After the date we just realized that we had feelings and we—”
“Feelings?”
I nodded. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know it would be like that, or I would never have gone out with you.”
I looked at Zack. I was waiting for him to say something. Something horrible. But I didn’t mind what he said right now, as long as he ended this awkward moment.
But then Zack smiled. I blinked a few times.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It is?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s not great. Take a girl out on a date only for the other guy to slide in.”
“He didn’t slide,” I quickly corrected.
He smiled. “Oh, he slid. Trust me. Mark is a slider.” But he said it in a playful tone and I smiled back.
“You’re not mad?” I asked.
“It was one date.” He walked up to me and laid a hand on my shoulder. “It’s cool. I kind of thought something was happening between you guys, or was going to happen, so I guess I walked into it knowingly.”
“What? How?”
He laughed. “The guy practically challenged me to a duel when I came to ask you out,” he said.
“He did?” I said, thinking back to the video store.
He looked down at the ewe again; the lamb was trying to stand up on its feet.
“It’s cool. We’re even. I can’t be too angry with the woman who helped save my prize ewe and deliver her lamb.”
“I suppose you can’t,” I said.
CHAPTER 66
I climbed back in the car, Samirah was busy disinfecting her hands and passed me a wipe. We sat in silence for a while, wiping our hands together.
