Page 13 of A Taste of Vanilla

“Spiraling is not a hobby.”

“I draw fantasy maps.”

“I know.”

“I ask important cultural questions about Suzy Homemaker.”

“She’s not real.”

“Neither was my fiancé, apparently.”

Oliver goes still. The joke had come out fast and sharp, but the pain under it was real.

His voice lowers as he says, “he was real. He was just worse than you thought.”

I nod, and the lights crackle overhead.

Maybe if I were sober, I would think this was a warning—a storm brewing. Maybe, if my heart weren’t cracked open and stuffed full of vodka and marinara, I could hear the universe clearing its throat.

But I’m not completely sober. Not drunk, but not sober. And I’m definitely not wise.

I’m a woman one week out from detonating her life, sitting in her best friend’s bar with smudged mascara, a good bra, and a dangerous need to be wanted by someone who did not know enough to pity me.

The bar door opens, warm air pouring in, and I turn.

The door doesn’t slam against the wall, and no dramatic gusts of wind sweep through the building. The lights don’t flicker, and the music doesn’t stop. No one in the room gasps. But I can feel the shift anyway.

I turn on my stool, drink halfway to my mouth even though the glass only contains water and disappointment.

A man stands just inside the bar. Huge. Not tall, though he is that too. Huge, broad shoulders under a dark Henley. Thick arms, solid chest, and large hands. His long black hair is pulled into a loose bun at the top of his head, and his facial hair is neat along his jaw like it had been carved there.

His gaze moves over everyone, lingering on me for just a second. But it’s enough.

Something in my stomach pulls.

He looks like a man who makes lists. Who wakes up tooearly and who sorts screws by size and never forgets to check the oil in his car. Like someone who has never talked themselves into a spontaneous road trip by his own emotional collapse.

He is, in other words, exactly the wrong kind of man to look at while drunk, heartbroken, and thinking too hard about being wanted.

Oliver reaches across the bar and takes my glass from my hand.

I blink. “Hey.”

“No,” he says firmly.

I look back at him. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I was going to say hello.”

“You were about to make a bad decision.”

“I’m allowed to say hello to people,” I scoff like he’s not absolutely correct.

“Not like that.”

“Like what?”