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“Stalling. Get to the good stuff.”
“Anyway, I realized the trouble and turned on notifications, and suddenly my phone sounds like a damned pinball machine.”
She giggles. “Because you’re hot, Rowan. What did you think would happen?”
“You think I’m hot?”
“Go on! You’re stalling again.”
I roll my eyes. “Right, so I pick one and we go out. In Carterville, where no one knows me.”
“Chicken.”
“Anyway, it went…fine? I guess.”
“But you said you hooked up. You meant sex, right?”
I laugh. “Well yeah—
“So, why would you say it only wentfine?”
“We went to a hotel after dinner, and things…transpired…”
“Nakedthings.”
I huff. “Yes, Autumn,nakedthings. But afterwards, hell, even during it just felt wrong. Wrong lips, wrong tits, wrong…everything. She was a perfectly nice person and dinner had gone great. Before Stacy, she was exactly the kind of woman I used to date. Perfect on paper. But…” I sigh, and my chest hurts. “Stacy raised my standards too high.”
She sighs, too. “I get that. She was one in a billion.”
I swallow against the lump in my throat. “So, after sex, I sat up and told her thank you for the night, but that everything had happened way too soon for me. She asked what I meant by that, so I told her about Stacy, and she was really sweet about it, said she understood. I left after that.”
Autumn is quiet for a beat. When she finally speaks, I hear the sadness in her voice, too. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Rowan. You got out there, and you tried. It just didn’t work for you. But that doesn’t mean you give up, right?”
“I haven’t given up. But dating is a lot.”
“Yeah, it is. I was never good at the dating thing.”
I laugh hard. “Oh, bullshit! You always had guys lining up for you.”
“That’s because I wasn’t good at it,” she says, laughing. “I needed a lot of practice.” Her laughter dies down. “And after all that practice, I thought that meant I knew Mark was the one. We all see how that turned out—
“Hey, that was not your fault. He cheated. You did nothing wrong.”
She sighs. “Sometimes I wonder. I thought we were so happy.”
“He’s a pig, and he should rot, and it should hurt.”
“You don’t have to get mean about it, Rowan. He was your friend—"
“I’m serious, Autumn. Besides, you and I were friends first. But even if we weren’t, I’d have booted him out of my circle for that. I don’t stand with cheaters.”
A strange popping sound catches my ear on her end of things. Then she asks, “How about Riesling addicts?”
I laugh. “Opening a bottle?”
“Yes, but I will not drink from the bottle like it’s a sippy cup. This time. I’m pouring one glass before I go to sleep. I think I’ve earned it for the night I’ve had.”
I nod. “Yeah, I’d say so. Just don’t overdo it, or Delia will be scraping your ass up in the office tomorrow.”
