Dolly All the Time(29)

Me: Stalker

Me: Yes

Stewart: You’re prompt at replying to texts

Me: Don’t tell me that’s my compliment. No woman wants to be ravaged by a man who calls her prompt

Ravaged. Why did I say ravaged? That is such an actively sexual verb. I am hot with regret with one hand in the shrimp bin, waiting for a response.

Stewart: That’s too bad

My eyes go huge, and I look around the empty storeroom, wishing there was a witness to this. He just flirted. No doubt. I know this because I read the text in his voice, and I feel the heat of it all over my body.

Before I can come up with something to say, he calls me.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “Now that I’m looking at that text, I think it might be inappropriate. I was joking around, which isn’t something I normally do. I got that wrong.”

“I’m the one who said ‘ravaged.’ Who says ‘ravaged’?”

“Right?” He laughs, relieved. “This one’s on you.”

“I’ll take full responsibility,” I say, wiping my brow with a gloved hand. “I’m in the back room, deveining a mountain of shrimp, and it always makes me think of being ravaged.”

“You just did it again,” he says.

My face goes hot. What is wrong with me?

“How’s the fish business today?” he asks.

“Fishy, I guess. Sold lots of wild salmon to people who were annoyed that the sea bass didn’t come in.”

“Tough,” he says.

“How was your day? Doing whatever it is that you do.”

“Not as fishy as usual,” he says. “Things are looking better for this project I’m trying to do in San Francisco.”

“Because of your new girlfriend? Who knew the business world was just like high school?”

He laughs. “No, we just had a good call. And my parents saw the photos from the Providence gala, and everyone seems to have bought into us as a couple.”

“Even with us not knowing our favorite biking park doesn’t allow bikes?” I ask. “That was a total screwup.”

“It was fine, but they’re asking me a ton of questions about you. I was thinking we should go over some things. Basic facts about each other and our relationship. I don’t even know if you have siblings.”

“I do,” I say.

“Okay, I’ll cross it off my list.”

“Do you really have a list?” I’m picturing him in his glasses, tapping away at his laptop.

“I was going to put one together. Can you come by this afternoon so we can talk some of this stuff through? I don’t even know where you went to college.”

“Community college,” I say. “Early childhood ed and a minor in business.”

“Got it,” he says. “So can you come? I can move my schedule around to accommodate you until six.”

“Before cocktails on the west veranda?” I ask.

“Before calls with the West Coast.”

“Well, I’m meeting the last of the contractors for estimates at four thirty, so I can’t come today.”

“How about tomorrow?” he asks.

“Tomorrow is Saturday.”

“Does that mean you’re busy?” he asks.

“Do you really want to sit in your office on a perfect summer Saturday?”

“Yes.”

“Busy says you never do anything fun.”

“Well, Busy’s right. She’s got the market cornered on fun, and I sit up here keeping all the plates spinning.”

“Up where? Are you in your grandfather’s office up top?” It’s absurd how much I know about a house I’ve never stepped foot in.

“My home away from home,” he says. There’s a resignation to his voice that makes me feel kind of hollow. It makes me think his parents might be right about his work ethic not being all that healthy. I wonder if I’d be like this without Gus, without that little spark of playfulness that comes with being around a kid all the time.

“Do you do anything at all besides work?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Well, I swim.”

I knew it. He didn’t get those shoulders for free.

“Every day?”

“Most days, a mile. In the ocean when I’m here. In Boston I belong to a club with one of those current systems.”

“Like you swim forever, indoors, and never get anywhere?” This is up there with the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.

“It’s very efficient,” says the Tin Man.

This is truly alarming. This man needs an intervention more than he needs a fake girlfriend. I wish I could give him just five percent of Naomi’s enthusiasm for the Whitfield lifestyle.

“Let’s have our meeting on your boat,” I say. If I can take a few selfies on a Whitfield yacht, the next decade of Naomi’s birthday gifts will be taken care of—a framed copy for her bedside table, a coffee mug. Maybe a wall calendar.

“No. Why?”

“For fun. For vitamin D. For people to see us traipsing through the yacht club. We can play twenty questions and have a couple of beers. It might really help for the next thing. What’s the next thing?”

“Maybe meeting my parents.”