AllFreeNovel
Share Us
My date knocked on the door exactly four minutes after eight o’clock. Not too early – he didn’t want to look desperate. And not late enough to be a jerk.
I opened the door to greet him. He was a relatively good looking man with light brown hair and matching eyes. Dressed up in a casual suit, he stood there with a single yellow rose in his hands.
I took a breath and put on the best smile I could muster under the awkward circumstances. “I’m Aya, but I’m sure you already figured that out. I’m guessing you’re Eddie.”
“Yeah, Angel told me about you. I’ve been looking forward to this date all week.” He held out the rose. “For you. I hope you don’t have allergies.”
I took the flower with a smile and dropped it on the counter behind me. Nothing said friendship zone more than a yellow flower, but I didn’t mention it. The idea was nice, and it wasn’t often that men bought me flowers. I couldn’t complain.
“Should we go?” Draping my purse over my shoulder, I shut the apartment door behind me.
Steven and Johnny were snuggled up in front of the TV. It was Walking Dead night on AMC. I didn’t want to linger and give them the chance to drop in with some embarrassing questions.
“I picked a restaurant that I like on the other side of town. We can take my Ford.” Eddie smiled shyly at me, revealing his overlapping front teeth.
He escorted me out of the apartment and onto the street. The sky had already turned a deep shade of midnight blue. A few stars dared to twinkle against the streetlights of the city, dotting the sky in random patterns.
I breathed in the cool night air, filling my lungs to capacity with the sweet scent of a fall evening. Soon enough, the city would be inhabited by winter’s chilling breezes and perfect crystalline snowflakes.
The trees on the sides of the streets would be decked out with white lights, and the store fronts decorated in reds and greens. It was my favorite season in Arcana. Supernatural or not, everyone would be in a Christmas mood.
Eddie’s ride was a white Ford Focus parked on the street outside my apartment. He opened the door for me before hopping in the driver’s side, turning down the orchestra music when it began blaring through the speakers. We rode in silence for a good ten minutes, before I couldn’t stand it any longer.
“So, Eddie, what’s a nice guy like you doing in a city like this?” I asked, attempting to break the ice. “Did you move here for a job?”
“I’m an accountant at Sextant Cooperation, but no, I didn’t move here for a job.” He pulled at his collar, swallowing loud enough for me to hear. “Actually, my ex-girlfriend got me to move here. I wanted to stay in Massachusetts, but she got a job here doing interior design work.”
The ex-zone was not where I wanted to go, so I steered the conversation another way. “Oh, do you like working at Sextant? I’ve heard they have great benefits.”
So far, on our short date, we’d discussed jobs, ex-girlfriends, and now benefits. Not exactly stimulating conversation. I tried to think of something interesting to say, fast.
“They’re okay.” Eddie parked his Focus outside The Tiny Pub, a restaurant known for its pasta dishes and assortment of beers.
I hadn’t eaten there, but it seemed like a good choice. A large wooden leprechaun in green overalls was stationed outside the door. The silence threatened to come back, so I rushed to find something to say.
“Did you know that during the Troubles conflict in Ireland, over 3,600 people were killed and more than 50,000 injured?” I clenched my jaw closed. Of all the things to talk about, I chose a thirty-year war on the other side of the world? The leprechaun must’ve thrown me off.
“Um… no, I didn’t. That’s interesting,” he mumbled.
Eddie held open the door for me. We slipped inside and were shown to a cozy little booth in the back. A tea candle inside a red jar did nothing to light up the dark wooden nook of our table. I sat down and resisted twiddling my thumbs in the long stretch of awkward quiet.
“Did you study history in college?” Eddie bit his bottom lip and looked up at me. “Or, do you just like Irish history?”
“Yeah, actually, I studied history and minored in anthropology. I’m the curator at the supernatural museum downtown.” I could feel myself lighting up. There was nothing more interesting than the objects in my museum. Now we were really cooking.
“My girlfriend was Irish.” Eddie folded his hands on the table and stared at them. “She always wanted to travel to Ireland, but we couldn’t afford it.”
“That’s no fun.”
I looked around for the waiter. We weren’t even twenty minutes into this date and already his ex-girlfriend had made two appearances. I wasn’t getting a good feeling about this.
“Yeah, I think it’s one of the reasons we broke up.” He began to shred the napkin wrapped around his fork. “Sarah always wanted me to take a job at a bigger company. Make more money. But, I like the guys at Sextant and it takes a long time to really fit into a place.”
Was it too early to ask for the check? I grabbed the glass of ice water the hostess had left for me and gulped half of it down.
“And it’s not like she made much money as an interior designer. Anything she brought home went to expensive clothes and shoes. Who needs a five hundred dollar pair of flip-flops, anyway?”
Eddie locked eyes with me over my emptying glass of water. I choked on an ice cube and sputtered a reply which seemed to satisfy him, because he continued.
