“Who is she?”
“No one!”
“There has to be someone.”
He was starting to get irritated. This was a shitty date. Shitty day, shitty date. He felt like he was being grilled on a witness stand by the prosecutor. “There is no one. I’m not dating anyone.”
“But it’s someone you used to date, right? Maybe someone you thought you were over but who has suddenly popped back into your life?”
No. Maybe. He didn’t think so. “This is totally not first-date get-to-know-you chatter.”
“You’re right.” She took her drink right out of the bartender’s hand and took a healthy sip. “I’m just going to be straight up with you here. I asked you to meet me for a drink before I realized that you and Kendall have a history. She says it’s cool with her, but I can’t fathom dating my best friend’s ex, no matter how long ago it was.”
“Well, I can respect that.” And maybe he could leave now and go sulk in private. “I probably should have declined your invite, but it was over a long time ago with Kendall and me.”
“When did you two date?”
“About ten years ago. I was nineteen.” And stupid. Evan shifted on the bar stool, a headache starting behind his eyes. God, he didn’t want to talk about any of this.
“Was it serious?”
He could have lied. Could have blown off the question. But he was tired of pretending like it was no big deal. It wasn’t anymore, but it had been at the time. She had broken his goddamn nineteen-year-old heart. “It was to me. It was very serious.” He stopped just short of admitting he had loved her. “I can’t speak for her feelings though.”
“How long did you date?”
“About three months. It wasn’t that long, but we spent a lot of time together. Damn near every day.”
“What was your favorite thing about her?”
Evan was just buzzed enough to actually contemplate the question. He let his mind drift back a decade to when he and Kendall had been sharing most of their time and affection with each other. What had it been about her?
“It was her smile. When she smiled, it went all the way to her eyes, and I felt so proud that I’d made her happy.” Evan caught himself. “Man, how stupid does that sound? I think I need to chill on the rum.”
“You don’t need to chill on the rum. What you need to chill on is this idea that you have to be a big man driver who can’t show any emotion other than cockiness.”
He shrugged. It was what it was. It wasn’t a career for crybabies. And he wasn’t sure cockiness actually qualified as an emotion.
“So why did you and Kendall break up?”
“Beats me. One day she just stopped returning my calls. One minute we were hot and heavy, the next she totally shut me out. I never understood what happened.”
“Really?” Tuesday looked at him thoughtfully. “Did you have a fight or something?”
“Nope. We’d spent the night together and I snuck out of her room like I did a lot of nights because she was still living at home. We were supposed to go to the movies the next day. But she wasn’t at home when I went to pick her up and she wouldn’t answer my calls. I must have called her like a hundred times that week. Nothing.”
Evan wasn’t exactly sure why he was spilling his guts to Tuesday, considering he’d spent ten years trying to pretend he hadn’t been humiliated quite so thoroughly. Maybe it was needing someone to know that he’d been wronged. Maybe it was needing Tuesday to go home and report to Kendall that he had no clue what he’d done wrong. Maybe it was needing to just say that he hadn’t done anything wrong at all, and that it wasn’t cool for Kendall to have dumped him without a word.
“Really? That’s interesting.” Tuesday frowned at her lemon drop. “Maybe it was just a miscommunication or something. Do you think you would have stayed with her if that hadn’t happened?”
“Well, I can’t guarantee it would have been forever, but that was my plan.” Evan tossed back the rest of his drink, the ice clinking against his teeth violently enough to jar him into realizing he just might be drunker than he’d thought. “I was set to ask her to marry me.”
Tuesday choked on her drink. “Holy crap, are you kidding me?”
“No.” He sort of wished he were.
“And you’ve never gotten married?”
“Nope.”
“Huh. That really is very interesting.”
He wasn’t sure it was as interesting as it was just sucky.
“Can I step down off the witness stand now?” he asked. “I think I need to go home and pass out.”
He wanted to sleep for the next twelve hours and forget this day ever happened.
“Sure, but I reserve the right to call you back to the stand for further questioning.” She grinned at him. “And don’t leave the country.”
“I can’t afford it,” he told her, taking a moment to indulge in self-pity.
“Oh, my God,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Give me a ginormous break. There is no way you’re hurting for cash unless you’ve spent your substantial earnings on hookers and blow.”
No. He hadn’t really spent much of his money, to be honest. He’d been saving it for a dream house. A big, empty dream house that he would have to live in alone. Solo. By himself.
Definitely less disgusting than sex for hire, but decidedly more lonely.
“Can I get another drink?” he asked the bartender.
Tuesday excused herself to go to the restroom, but Evan barely heard her over the deafening volume of his own pity party.
CHAPTER THREE
KENDALL was trying to watch TV, but all she kept doing was glancing at the clock to see if it was possible that Tuesday would be done with her date with Evan yet. Given that it was only seven-thirty, it didn’t seem likely. She grabbed a black toile pillow off her couch and hugged it. Her mother always said she didn’t understand how a woman who could break down an engine could also have a thing for French toile, but Kendall didn’t see why it had to be one or the other.
Couldn’t she dig racing and gilded sconces all at the same time?
Not in her family. It was one or the other. You were either a domestic goddess or a grease monkey, and never the two shall meet or cross gender lines.
Normally HGTV held her riveted, but tonight she could barely focus on the screen in front of her. 7:32. Good Lord.