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“I am not,” I assured him. “I tried to talk to Cassidy this morning, but she left, and hasn’t responded to my messages. Something is not adding up, and it’s her. Practically everyone has said that she’s shady.”
“Well.” Mariska sighed. “I hope your cousin is wrong, because if Chase is the guy I saw on Facebook, then you’ve made a major upgrade from Gregory!”
I laughed and Jake made a sound. “Uh, how shallow!” he scoffed. “But go with your instincts on this one, Beth. And have fun with Brianna at the concert. Maybe when we visit you, I can meet this Brianna.”
“Uh, no, Jake. You’re not gonna mess up Beth’s new friendship.”
“I was just making a suggestion.”
“You can make your existence known with someone else,” I told him in warning. “The last thing Brianna needs is you sniffing around. ”
“Jeez!” He huffed. “You two paint a very unfavorable picture of me.”
“Hey, you do a good job of that all on your own,” Mariska remarked with mirth. “If you don’t like the way the picture looks, paint a new one.”
We heard Jake heave in a breath and chuckle. “Nah, no time in the near future,” he told her. “See if you can get Sage’s signature for me.”
“I’ll see what I can do, Jake.”
“Cool. I may drop by later,” he told Mariska.
“Okay. But be warned Pete’s got a friend coming over tonight and they may ask you to play with them.”
“Not a problem for me. At least Pete wouldn’t mind me meeting his friend,” he said innocently.
“It’s not the same and you know it,” I said.
“But now that Pete likes me, it won’t hurt me if his friend does too,” he laughed. “Oh, and, uh, ask Mariska to tell you about her date with Tom.”
“Bastard,” she called out.
Roaring, he hung up and I took the phone off of speaker and sat on the sofa.
“I forgot that you had a date with Tom yesterday.”
“Too bad I can’t forget,” Mariska quipped.
“Give me the juicy deets.”
“Such apt words!” Mariska remarked. “Everything began fine. Tom picked me up on time. My parents were very happy when they saw him. And you know how difficult they can be. We went to dinner and he ate with his mouth open the entire time.”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. I remember the sound too, ‘chomp, chomp, chomp,’ and I ignored it as best as I could. When we finished dinner and got to the movie part, I was relieved. I thought we could breeze through the night, and we did. Those two hours and forty minutes were the highlight of our date. We sat next to each other. He had his arm around me. But when he had taken me home, he asked me for a kiss, and I thought, ‘What the heck, I haven’t been kissed in months.’ I just hoped he still didn’t have a ton of food particles in his mouth. And when we kissed, he slobbered all over me. He bit my tongue, and I swear, Beth, he wanted to suck my chin!”
I stifled my laughter. “I thought Tom would’ve had some finesse. And some dinner etiquette.”
“Yeah, it was a real juicy kiss. Tom noticed that I didn’t relish the kiss like he did. He’d asked me to show him how I like to be kissed. So I’d shown him. I mean, when do guys show a willingness to improve their kissing?”
“Did he learn?”
“Unfortunately, no. I wish that Tom and I’d kept it completely platonic. I just don’t see him the same. We have the same hours at Luigi’s. And he’s so sweet.”
“Did you tell him that there won’t be any second dates?”
“Oh, yes!” She sighed. “On a brighter note, someone wants to say hello.”
“Hello,” Pete greeted me excitedly.
