“Right,” she says, her voice shaky. “Tell me what to do.”
“I’ll handle it,” I tell her. “Don’t post anything else, okay? I’ll call you back.”
We hang up, and I walk out to the dining room, where my date—the person whose name I’ve forgotten once again—sits at the table, steaming plates of food in front of him and in front of my vacant seat.
He smiles when I approach, but then his face drops.
“You okay?” he asks.
“I’m so sorry. I have a huge work emergency I have to take care of,” I say, holding up my phone as proof, except that the screen is blank, and it would be hard to explain.
He looks away and then back at me. “This isn’t one of those fake work emergencies to get out of a date, is it?” His lips are curved upward, but there’s something hollow underneath the smile.
“No,” I say, shaking my head emphatically. “I promise. I didn’t explain that my job in PR is mostly working with celebrities. It’s . . . an around-the-clock kind of thing, and one of them just did something stupid that I need to fix. I swear this isn’t an excuse.”
He nods, but I can tell he still doesn’t fully believe me.
“Can we do this again?” I ask. “Next week?”
This seems to assuage him, because he nods. “I can do next Tuesday.”
“Perfect,” I say, grabbing my purse and throwing some money on the table. “It’s a date.”
“What about your food?” he asks, holding out a hand toward the perfect-looking enchiladas. My stomach rumbles.
“Take it to go,” I tell him, and then wave goodbye.
Twenty-five minutes later, I’m standing outside the door of a newer-looking apartment building on the other side of town from mine.
“Hey, Arch,” Luke says when he opens the door and sees me standing there.
After I left the restaurant, I called him back and explained Bailey’s side, and we decided it would be best to meet up to figure out what to do next.
Since Sam is having her work friends over at our apartment and I really didn’t want to introduce him to all that, Luke invited me to his place.
I was too worried about the post to really think it through, but now that I’m here, I feel a little weird about it. I don’t know why; Luke’s been to my place a couple of times now. It’s not that strange that we would end up here at some point.
“Come in,” he says, opening the door wider for me.
“Thanks,” I say as I walk inside.
He’s wearing light jeans and a white T-shirt, and his feet are bare. I get a waft of his signature spicy scent as I walk by him and into his modern-looking space. It’s small and, like mine, sparsely decorated. Maybe that’s a sign someone is in our line of work: no time to decorate. Or maybe this is just Luke’s aesthetic.
“Nice place,” I say, looking around, taking it in.
There’s a galley kitchen to my right with an opening toward the living room with a brown leather sofa facing a large-screen TV. On the side table is a framed picture of him and two women—I’m guessing his mom and sister—and on the coffee table is a puzzle in progress. The frame put together, the other pieces scattered around.
“It’s . . . clean,” I say, thinking out loud.
He laughs. “Did you expect a disaster?”
“Kind of,” I say, chuckling. “I remember how you used to keepyour desk.”
“Ah.” He nods, understanding dawning. “I’m still terrible at keeping my desk clean. But at home, I like to keep things mostly tidy. Don’t look in my closet, though. You’ll be horrified.”
“Note taken,” I say. I have zero plans to look at Luke Wilder’s closet.
I won’t admit to him that the only reason mine is clean is because I made sure it was picked up before he came over that first time. Otherwise, he might also be horrified.
