AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That isn’t a ploy to get you to give me money or something. I’m just realizing…” She took a big breath. “I get myself in muddles sometimes,” she whispered.
Okay, it seemed we hadn’t had a breakthrough last night.
She’d had a revelation.
She peered back out the window. “I lied to him, you see.”
Now I was confused.
“To Daniel?”
She shook her head at the glass. “To Ian. I told him I was thirty-one. I thought, if he knew how young I was, he wouldn’t ask me out. When I met him, he was so…Ian, I had to have him. So I pretended to be someone else.” Her voice got quieter. “I pretended to be like you.”
Oh my.
Well, from the way things currently stood, at least that explained why Ian dated her, something I’d wondered about but hadn’t yet asked.
“We ran into Daniel on our second date. It was a fluke. But Ian asked him and his party to join us. There were five of them. They were rowdy. They took over. Daniel was flirty. I thought it was weird, him flirting with his brother’s date. But me being me,” she said self-deprecatingly, “first, I was angry that Ian asked them to join us and then didn’t seem too broken up they were horning in on our time. So then I thought it would show Ian what a hot ticket I was, and I leaned into Daniel’s flirting. I got cocky. I also got drunk. Which led to me, for the first time with Ian, actually being me. It also led to me letting it slip how old I really was to Daniel, and Ian heard.”
And that explained how Daniel thought he’d stolen Portia from Ian.
She rested her head against the glass and kept speaking.
“Ian is a gentleman. When he took me home, he didn’t call me on my lie. He kissed my forehead and said in a really nice way that I only see as nice now, we weren’t going to work. At the time, I didn’t understand what was happening. I’m not used to, when it’s over, guys just ghosting me. It’s more usual, me ghosting guys. And it made me mad. I’d worked hard on him.”
Hmm.
I didn’t know what “working hard” on a man entailed, but then, I wasn’t Portia.
“Like, the next day, Daniel called me,” she shared. “I don’t know how he got my number, but when we were talking the night before, we found we have mutual friends. It wouldn’t be hard. He asked me out. I was mad at Ian, so I said yes.”
“So now, how do you truly feel about Daniel?” I asked.
Both her shoulders went up, but she didn’t take her attention from the window when she answered, “I don’t know. I sure am mad at him about Brittany. So I must feel something.”
“Do you still feel something for Ian?”
That was when she looked at me. “Who wouldn’t?”
Who wouldn’t, indeed.
She waved a hand dismissively. “I’m over it. Last night, I got over it. The whole Brittany thing and how completely dumb Daniel was about it. How I saw Ian was with you, protective and angry on your behalf. You know, I never liked Frankie. He was so up himself. Sure, his pastries are great, but he’s not the Michelangelo of custard and cream and dough.”
That made me grin at her.
“You need a decent man in your life. Someone better than Frankie.” Her tone changed. “Someone better than Dad.”
“You know Dad loved you,” I said softly.
“I know,” she replied. “But he was also a big, stupid jerk. I know it’s wrong, but I really wish what’s happening to Lou happened while he was alive. He needed to be shook. He needed to see what he had right in front of his face, and that there were ways he could lose it that all his money and the rest of the money in the whole world couldn’t buy it back for him.”
It was wrong, but I understood what she was saying.
Thus, I agreed, “Yes.”
She flipped out a hand, an indication of her coming subject change. “I’ve been going over it in my head. I’m not good with numbers, but I still have some money. Enough to squeak by for a couple of months. I’ll find a job. I’ll be okay. It’s all getting so boring anyway, the clothes and fancy dinners and stuff. It might be good to cook at home. I want to learn how to make Indian food.”
I decided it best to ignore her sense of entitlement in saying clothes and fancy dinners were boring and replied, “That sounds good. But I wanted to talk to you about maybe not finding something because you have to, and instead, finding what’s right for you.”
