Art and Griffin are right.
I do want to keep Beau until I’m ready.
Fuck if that doesn’t make me a total asshole.
Even that thought can’t stop me from leaning out into the hall and calling after them. “I’ll wait up!”
18
Beau
I wish I could say Payne’s behavior was the worst part of the night, but that was only the tip of the iceberg.
And Lee doesn’t even realize it.
When we passed a homeless man on the way into the restaurant, Lee pulled me close and whispered that they should keep the footpath clear because it’s a “nice, family area.” He didn’t stop touching me until we took our seats, despite me moving away, and he keeps pointing out he’s paying. Like, a lot.
We’ll get the banquet platters. Don’t worry, Beau, I’m paying.
Why don’t you get a cocktail? It’s on me.
Make sure you leave room for popcorn. I’ll buy us the biggest one.
I can’t help comparing it to how Payne didn’t fight me on paying for the tour. How he doesn’t push me to take money, even after he offered me rent now that he’s working, and I told him I’d prefer for our agreement to stay the same.
It makes him look comfortable with me.
With Lee, there’s no connection, which is probably all on me, but I can’t stop picking at the little things he does.
He brought me to a Thai restaurant, which is fine, but then proceeded to order for the both of us, and the dishes he chose were the hottest ones on the menu. I don’t like spicy food. At all.
So while I pretend to like his selection so he’s not offended, in reality I push it around my plate and eat as much plain rice as I can stomach. He also never. Stops. Talking.
I’d noticed it at Marty’s, but I put his control of the conversation down to nerves and the fact I wasn’t saying much. But we’re on a date. Why am I here if he doesn’t actually want to get to know me?
I hate small talk and discussing things about myself, but I also know it’s an important part of the getting-to-know-you step that needs to be ticked off before we can move forward.
So far all I’ve worked out is that Lee talks with food in his cheek when he gets excited, cuts me off when I take too long to answer a question or get my words out right, and thinks people who eat blue cheese only do it to look superior.
I mean … I don’t get the appeal, but I’m not going to judge people for it.
“Where are our cocktails?” he grumbles. “You know, I’ve been noticing lately there are less and less servers in these places. The government keeps taxing the business owners and raising minimum wage, so they can’t employ enough people to do the jobs. Whereas if there were enough servers focused on good service, I’d tip more than generously.”
“Yeah, but not everyone does that.”
“Well, with service like this, what do you expect?”
The server shows up with our cocktails, saving me from a reply.
“Tell me about this book thing,” Lee says.
I blink, surprised he’s actually asked at all. The problem is “book thing” is a very broad topic, and I have no idea where to start. My feet bounce under the table. “W-what did you want to—”
“You’re an author, yeah? How did you get into it?”
That, I can work with. “I read a lot as a kid, then decided to try my own. I won a competition to meet with a literary agent, who gave me some awesome pointers on my book and asked me to resubmit if I made the changes he suggested. At the time I thought it was cool he was interested at all, so I did as he said, resubmitted and …” My book went to auction, had multiple bids, and sold for a lot more than I would have ever guessed. The translation rights came quickly, and then the movie was optioned, even though last I heard there was no movement there, which is typical.
“Wow, that’s really cool.” Lee takes a bite of sizzling beef. “So you’re a real author, then?”
I pause. “A real author?”
“You know, with a publisher. You’re not just out there, throwing whatever up online.”
“You mean self-publishing?”
He scoffs. “Can they even call it publishing? I swear, half of those books are barely legible.”
“Have you read any?”
“Nope. I don’t need to.” He gives me what I’m sure he thinks is a charming smile, but there’s a chunk of basil caught in his teeth. “But I’m sure you know this already.”
I don’t at all. I want to point out all the ways he’s wrong and that self-publishing has benefited authors and readers more than anything, but the confrontation gets caught in my throat. I’ve actually been looking at the mismatched snippets I’ve been writing and wondering whether to “throw” those up online. My publisher would never accept them. Even as part of a coherent story, they’re too niche.
“What do you write?” he asks.
“I thought I already said.” I did. I mentioned it at least once this week when he messaged to ask what I was doing. “Fantasy.”
“Ah, nice. Like Game of Thrones?”
I’m so sick of that comparison. So I decide to fuck with him. “More like Harry Potter. Or Twilight.”
“Ah.” Now he doesn’t look so impressed.
And I hope he never plans to read my books because I say, “Oh, yeah, it’s the full-on chosen one trope. Barry Trotter is obsessed with Eddy Carlisle, and they go to magic school together, and—oh, there’s dragons. And a giant centipede. And at one point, Eddy’s decapitated, and Barry has to do a spell to stick his head back on, but it always chooses the most random moments to pop back off and roll across the ground.”
The people at the table beside us are looking at me in horror, and Lee’s clearly confused, but I’m past caring.
“That sounds … interesting.”
“Sells like hotcakes.”
He clears his throat. “There’s a market for everything, isn’t there?”
“Including dinoporn.”
“Dino …” He scrambles for his drink. “Umm … that’s fascinating. Hey, did I tell you about that time at work Marty and I had that battle with the office across the street? Where we’d send the other—”
“The most disgusting lunch dishes you could find, and the ones who bowed out of eating it first had to pay for the others to go on a golf retreat?”
“A couple of times, huh?” He tilts a bashful expression my way.
Like, six, but who’s counting?
“So what’s the deal with Payne?” he asks. “I know you said you’ve never dated, but he was … I don’t want to say rude, but …”
But he was rude. Payne wasn’t happy to see Lee, and that should piss me off a lot more than it does. Payne doesn’t know Lee, so the only reason I can think of for him to not like Lee is me. It makes me hopeful that there’s something there even when it really shouldn’t. Because if he’s jealous, even the smallest, slightest bit jealous, that means I might actually have a chance. One day in the future when he’s moved on from his divorce, could something actually happen?