“I think you should go,” she says, flashing the screen at my face so it will unlock.
“Kate! We are having a girl’s night. I can have dinner with my boss another night.”
“Do you really think this is a business dinner, Amanda? God, you really don’t get out, do you?”
Panic flutters into my chest like a swarm of birds fleeing from danger. “Of course it’s just a business dinner. He’s my boss.”
“Who texts you on the weekend with no context asking you to go out with him! That’s classic workplace love in the works, Mandy. Oh, but that’s right…you’re casually dating or talking to that Silver Fox from Vegas.”
“Right…” I nod.
“Whatever happened with that anyways? Did you end up going out?”
“I’ve…seen him. Yes.”
I’m not lying. But I’m not fully telling the truth either. And as someone who always tells the truth, I can feel the omission burning a hole in my stomach like Indian food I should’ve never eaten.
“And? You didn’t tell me? How did it go? It must not have been that great. Was it more of a smoke and mirrors thing? It’s okay if he really was a ‘for one night only’ sort of experience. At least he was hot, and you got laid.”
“He’s my boss!” I blurt out.
Kate stops, blinking at me. “Who’s your boss?”
“The guy from Vegas. It turns out, he’s my boss…”
“Cal is…Oh. My. God. Cal? As in Callum? As in Hardin?! Amanda! Oh, my God!”
I can’t tell if she is mad or excited or disappointed or something else. All I know is the progressive pitch of her voice is going to make the neighbors shih tzus bark.
“I know, it’s wild.” I cover my face with my hands before it turns red. Though Kate knows me well enough to know that my cheeks are the color of shame.
“Wild? Amanda! What are the odds?”
“Oh, trust me,” I half laugh. “We have talked plenty about odds and luck and everything else. At first, I thought it was just a bad dream. But unless I’m still asleep, it turns out this is just my life.”
Kate shakes her head with a tight smile, wrapping her brain around everything I just told her. I brace myself, expecting the obvious criticism, complete with a plot twist at the end where she makes my problems all about her. How I didn’t tell her. How it must make her look.
But she doesn’t go off on me like she normally would. Instead, she grabs my phone again, pulling up the text stream.
“Kate! What are you–”
“I would love to have dinner!”
Kate types out the text and hits send.
“Kate. What are you doing? Kate…” I growl the last word because her fingers are busy typing again.
“And make the reservation for four.”
Kate laughs and tosses the phone back at me.
“What are you doing?!”
“Making it a double date.”
“A double date? Why?”
Her smile fades and her blonde eyebrows point in all seriousness. “Because I want to meet this man.”
