Maggie’s ears perked up. She rarely joined guilds, though, because they were often too competitive. Or sexist. Or they would seem nice, until someone started spouting off white supremacist rhetoric, which had happened enough that she’d stopped looking.
“That sounds great, actually. Thanks for thinking of me,” she finally said. She wondered if Kit would consider that socializing. Yes, it was online, but if all the members were local, surely that counted? Sophistry, maybe, but she’d take it.
“I’ll pass your email along.” Klara nodded, as if that settled things, then fell quiet again.
By this point, if Maggie was forced to be any more social, she’d probably be crushed under the weight of her own awkwardness. She got up, throwing out her paper plate, and then came back and cleared her throat. “I’m going to get going, thank you for having me,” she said, all in a rush.
Deb made a little noise of protest. “So soon? Some of us were talking about going out to dinner!”
“All the single ladies,” Patience half sang, with a grin.
“Not me,” Klara countered, and Patience rolled her eyes.
“I’ll go with,” Cordy said, with a chuckle. “Show you girls a thing or two!”
Maggie could honestly say she’d rather perform an appendectomy on herself than go out on a girls’ night. “I really can’t,” she said.
“Well, you’re coming to my football party next weekend,” Deb said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll see . . .”
“No! You’re going, and I’m not taking no for an answer,” Deb said, with an almost maniacally cheerful grin. “Kit doesn’t want you to be lonely, right? I’ll have Harrison talk to him and have him pester you if you don’t!”
Maggie swallowed hard. “I’ll see you there, then,” she said begrudgingly. At least that gave her a week to find a good excuse to get out of it.
CHAPTER 5
THE MORE YOU KNOW
“As cool as it is to have breakfast with you,” Aiden’s old high school friend Riley said with a grin, “I get the feeling you’re not here just to eat waffles. What’s up?”
Aiden smiled despite feeling weary. Riley had been one of his closer friends, back when they were at Fool’s Falls High. Riley, Aiden, and Aiden’s best friend, Malcolm, had all been on the offensive line of the football team, which necessitated them spending a lot of time together. Back then, they’d gone on group dates and to keggers and big blowout bonfire parties in the woods down by the quarry. But where Malcolm had been his brother from another mother—the guy who’d shared his secret fascination with “those D&D books,” the guy he’d turned to when college had gone horribly wrong, the guy he’d eventually opened a hospice business with—Riley was the golden-boy quarterback who had never left the Falls. He wasn’t a gamer, he wasn’t into geek culture, and if Aiden was honest, he was still basically the guy that Aiden remembered, only with alimony payments and some lower backaches. He’d gotten a job with a big local pump and well company straight out of high school when it became obvious that he was good but not good enough to get a football scholarship or move on to the NFL, and he had worked his way up to well drill operator. By all accounts he seemed happy to stay right where he was, here in the Falls. Since Aiden had moved back, the two of them had breakfast or lunch together at least twice a month. They were friends, or at least friendly-ish.
Malcolm, on the other hand, had moved to Seattle after graduation and was still running the hospice business he and Aiden had started. Aiden tried to text his best friend often, and they still played their online video games together, but ever since Malcolm had gotten married and had his kids, his free time had whittled away to nearly nothing.
Which was part of the reason why Aiden was sitting here, now, hanging out with Riley—hoping for some guidance.
It was Sunday, and he’d just gone to services at his mother’s church. Now, they were at the Copper Kettle Diner, an institution in Fool’s Falls. Almost exclusively decorated with antlers, the restaurant also featured really good food, including biscuits with elk sausage and gravy that were incredible. The after-church coffee klatch that his mother indulged in with women from her weekly Bible study was a similar institution, and Aiden had been taking his mother since the car had “broken down.” She was in her element at a long table on the other side of the restaurant, talking and laughing and gossiping with the contingent of ladies of various ages. He usually had a coffee and read something or played a video game until she was ready to go home.
After he and Riley had put in their breakfast orders, he sighed. “I need to find a date.”
Riley’s eyes widened over the rim of his mug, which he then put down with a clatter. He visibly swallowed, then grinned broadly. “Hot damn! Finally!”
Aiden blinked. That was more enthusiastic than he had been anticipating.
“I have been waiting for you to get yourself out there,” Riley continued. “You’ve been here, what, two years? Three?”
“Something like that.” Aiden took a sip of his own coffee.
“In that whole time,” Riley continued, “I haven’t seen you out with anybody. Not once.”
Aiden frowned. “Um . . . my dad was dying? And . . . I was taking care of him?”
Riley looked abashed. “Fair. But he’s been dead for a year, right? Besides taking care of your mom, what the heck have you been doing?”
“I do things!” Aiden protested. “I’ve been taking some community college classes. Stuff I’d wanted to try but never had time to. Took an English class and an art class, and I’m thinking of gardening next . . .” Granted, they weren’t anything challenging—nothing that was leading to a degree—yet they helped him get out of his own head. The situation with his mother was getting him down, especially since he couldn’t quite feel settled in Fool’s Falls. He’d hoped that the college might help him find people to connect with, which had worked. Kind of.
“Did you meet anybody there?”
“Yeah. I set up my online gaming guild with a bunch of people I met in Contemporary Fiction.”
Riley rolled his eyes at that. Aiden knew that as far as Riley was concerned, “online gaming” was right up there with “forty-year-old virgins” and “living in your mother’s basement.”
“No, I mean did you meet any women,” Riley emphasized. “Did you hook up with anyone?”
Aiden shook his head.
Riley’s expression was one of patient irritation. “What you need is a dating profile,” he said. “Couple of them! Man, if they’d had these back in our day, I would’ve gotten laid like carpet tile, you know?”
Aiden grimaced. “That isn’t the . . .”
“I mean, I was making out pretty damned well,” Riley continued with a laugh. “But now? Holy shit. Tinder! If you want to hook up, it’s right there, like . . . like ordering a pizza!”
Even at fifty, Riley was striking. Much like Aiden, Riley still had a full head of hair, although his was dark brown, going gray at the temples. His pretty-boy looks had aged well, too, sort of Brad Pitt as a brunet. Since his divorce fifteen years ago, he’d cut a swath through the local women, and most of the women in the surrounding county. Possibly some nearby counties, as well. His expertise with all things dating was the reason Aiden was asking for his help, after all.