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“What did you say to her this time?” Zack asked, following his gaze across the crowded room.
He couldn’t even remember. Something about a deer not being her spirit animal. Certainly not anything to warrant her ditching the whole speed dating event.
“I seriously don’t know what her aversion to me is. I’ve been nice, cordial. I haven’t even hit on her.” Maybe that was the problem. Did she want him to hit on her? Did she think he wasn’t into her? Perfect example of why he didn’t try harder to make time to date. Who the hell could figure out how the female mind worked? He’d need a Ph.D., and he just didn’t have the mental energy for it.
Zack took his drink and made a beeline toward the women. Seth sighed. He didn’t have to go along, but he didn’t really have a reason not to. The truth was he’d enjoyed talking with Courtney. He’d even put a check by her name just in case the whole running out of the date hadn’t been a direct correlation to their five-minute conversation. He was a sucker for wishful thinking.
“So, really. What did you think about the speed-dating? Did you find anyone you’d even consider talking to?” Zack was asking Courtney as Seth approached.
Seth couldn’t see the brunette’s face from his position behind her. “The guy at table twelve was nice. I enjoyed talking to him, but we didn’t really hit it off.” She shrugged. “Other than that, the conversations were boring. Most of the guys were thirty-year-old bachelors probably still living in their mom’s basement, reminiscing about their glory days. Where did they even find so many overgrown man-children?”
Seth froze.Overgrown man-children?
“I threw my paper away. I didn’t want to waste the sponsors time with even having to look at it.”
Who the hell did this woman think she was? So maybe she hadn’t felt the same spark he had when he’d taken her hand, and maybe she hadn’t enjoyed the slight banter they’d shared, but did that give her the right to call him an overgrown man-child?
“Where do you get off?” he spat, marching toward her. “What makes you so perfect that you can call the rest of us overgrown man-children? I don’t see a ring on your unmarried finger. Maybe if all the women weman-childrenencountered weren’t uppity biddies with a herd of cats, we’d be more inclined to move out of our mom’s basements and grow up.”
Courtney had turned in her seat to face him, but now she sat stunned. Beside her Ashley’s eyes were opened wide, mirroring the ‘o’ of surprise made by her mouth.
“Seth,” Zack hissed.
Seth already regretted the tirade. It was unlike him to get angry let alone give in to the emotion. He opened his mouth, not to apologize necessarily, but to somehow ease the situation.
Instead, his words were cut off by Courtney’s quiet voice saying, “Go to hell.” Calmly, perhaps too calmly, she placed her glass on the table and stood.
“Corey,” Ashley whispered.
The name brought back a cloudy memory of a conversation he and Ashley had had years ago.
Courtney stalked around her chair until she stood in front of him. She was shorter than him by only a few inches and when she tilted her head back, her gray eyes bore into his—red rimmed and tear filled. “You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about my life or what I’m like. So, you can take your assumptions and shove them right up your ass.” Without another word, she shouldered past him and, with her head held high, sashayed out of the club and out of sight.
Seth stood watching until she disappeared.
“You asshole,” Ashley murmured behind him, finally pulling his attention away from the doorway.
He pointed to his chest. “Me? I’m the asshole? You heard what she said. She thinks she’s too good for us, but she’s single just like everyone here.”
Briefly Ashley closed her eyes before opening them and giving him a slow shake of her head. “She’s not single.” Ashley paused, then shook her head. “I mean she is, but not like us. She was married. She’s a widow.”
A widow?
Shit.
Seth thought back on everything he’d said to her. Their talk about his job being dangerous and her freaking out when he said you could die walking down the street.
“What happened?”
Ashley glanced at her hands, before shrugging. “Her husband was out jogging and just collapsed. He was barely thirty. It wasn’t a heart attack exactly, but his heart caused it. I don’t know.”
Seth nodded. “How long ago?”
“Two years or so, but she’s been pretty isolated since.”
“Fuck,” Zach muttered next to him.
Seth shoved his drink into his friend’s hand. “Take this. I owe her an apology.”
