Half of them add the question, “And is he okay? I heard he almost passed out here this morning.”
“Hadn’t eaten,” is my cheeky answer. “You know men.”
I have zero doubt the meal patrol will have a sign-up to take him breakfasts and lunches in addition to his dinners before the night’s over. Or at least to have someone else helping Zen make sure he’s eating those meals here.
The things we gossips do to make sure newcomers feel welcome in a community.
And to psychologically and food-logically sway them to reconsider what they’re doing to the community.
The worst part of all of the questions about Grey though?
I don’t want them to like him.
Because he’s mine.
Dammit.
Even when I know he’s pissed at me, and rightfully so, I want him to be mine.
I want him to be the friend that Duke was in Hawaii.
It just felt so right. So easy. And even with our differences, I feel like I can trust him.
He’s trusted me with some hard things about himself. He thinks I’m worth it.
Or he did.
Until this morning.
“Are you participating, Sabrina?” Kayla asks.
The question takes me by surprise—she’s the first to ask all night—but worse?
Worse, it makes me want to turn around and see if he’s watching me.
He’s been pissed at me for four solid hours now.
And I’ve been successfully avoiding him for those four solid hours, despite spending half of them here at Bean & Nugget, getting the café set up for speed dating.
Jitter is like a paperweight, but for people. He was a Grey-weight today.
That helped keep Grey from hunting me down.
“I know you usually do,” Kayla adds in a whisper, “but I heard you have a boyfriend you’re not talking about, so I didn’t know…”
I have a what?
I absolutely do not have—oh my god.
I burst out laughing, then clamp a hand over my own mouth.
Grey gossiped about me.
She leans closer. “Who did you tell you had a boyfriend and why? You never have a boyfriend. Ever. But Yolanda swore Fiona claimed her source was impeccable, even if she couldn’t say who it was.”
Grey’s watching me.
I can see his reflection in the window, thanks to the darkness outside, and he is definitely watching me. A shiver slinks down my spine.
“People change,” I tell her. “But that particular relationship didn’t work out.”
“You had a boyfriend?”
“I was in a very short-term relationship.” With myself. I’d still be in it, but I’m taking a short break from myself while I deal with the fact that I don’t like that I’m attracted to a man whom I need to not be attracted to.
“Your favorite kind, right?”
She laughs.
I laugh.
It’s true.
“Next, please,” I say, waving her inside with a smile.
Which promptly dies a horrific death involving all the worst things you can think of when I see who’s standing in line behind her.
“We’re full, go fuck yourself,” I tell Chandler.
“Sabrina,” my grandfather chides.
He’s standing just behind Chandler, his stooped, white-haired form easily hidden by Chandler’s bulkier figure.
And it doesn’t surprise me in the least that Grandpa would’ve forgiven him, no matter how much I know it hurt him to see the café leave the family.
Grandpa forgives a lot.
He truly is the best man in the entire universe.
“Sorry, Grandpa.” I smile at him, but put that smile away when I turn back to Chandler. Just looking at him makes my blood pressure rise. “We would have a spot open for you, but it’s a rule that if you’ve tried to get married within the past month, you have to sit out speed dating.”
Grandpa eyes me, clearly knowing I’m making up that rule on the spot and clearly thinking I should practice forgiveness too.
I shrug at him. “One could say I’m trying to spare someone’s ego when no one here wants to talk to him, but fine. Hundred dollars for a ticket, please.”
Chandler chokes. “A hundred dollars?”
“Oh, you spent everything off the sale of the café already? Pity.”
“The sign says twenty-five.”
“It’s a hundred,” Devi says as she comes up beside me. “Twenty-five is the senior rate.”
“Better come with a blow job,” Chandler mutters.
“I hear there are machines for that,” I reply perkily.