“Are you surewe buried it this deep?” Fred asked after they’d been taking turns to dig and scrape at the sand for the last twenty minutes. On a positive note, the exercise was keeping her warm.
“Yeah, we were worried about dogs and golfers accidentally digging it up.”
She nodded, remembering. “So, you know aboutWarren,” she said, taking the spade from Ryan and beginning to dig again. “What about you? Are you seeing anyone?”
“Not for a while now.”
“Why not?” She wondered if this was wise. Getting personal hadn’t worked out so well for them thus far.
“I haven’t had much luck with dating since my last relationship ended. It’s tough out there,” said Ryan, scooping damp sand up the bank and pressing it down firmly so that it didn’t slip back into their hole.
“Tell me about it! I’ve been on some horrendous dates since Tim and I split up. There have been times I’ve wondered if I was being punked for a TV show.”
“Have they been worse than when your date takes out her chewing gum before the first course, sticks it to her dessert spoon and then proceeds to pop it back in between each course?”
“What did she do with it when it came time for dessert?”
“She stuck it to the saltshaker.”
“No!” Fred laughed. “Oh my god, that did not happen.”
“I swear on my rare shiny Pokémon card.”
She sniggered, remembering his deep and unyielding passion for collecting Pokémon cards, back in the day. “Okay, I can beat that.”
“There’s no way,” Ryan said, stooping and shoring up the cold sand around the hole with his gloved hands.
“You want to bet? So, my date tells me his best friend is his mum, because she’s kind and makes the best roast potatoes, and I’m thinking okay, he loves his mum, there’s nothing wrong with that.”
“I one hundred percent agree; you know I am a huge mama’s boy,” said Ryan.
“Exactly. So, I say, ‘That’s so sweet,’ and he goes on to tell me that she is everything a woman should be. Meek, subservient to men and knowing her place within the hierarchy of the family and society.”
“Whoa, was he serious? He wasn’t being weirdly ironic. Or like controversial, for a laugh?”
“I wish. He was hiding a whole misogynist ideology behind that six-pack.”
“He had a six-pack?”
She nodded.
“Dammit, now I hate him even more.” He straightened up, and Fred gratefully handed over the spade for him to have his turn. “All right,” he went on, pushing the spade into the sand with his boot. “How about this? Last year, I met a woman online who told me she was searching for someone who looked like Ted Bundy. Apparently, one of my photos had made her think I had ‘Bundy potential.’ ”
She laughed. “What did you do?”
“I found out which picture it was, deleted it, blocked her and grew a beard.”
“Tim told me he fell for Veronica because she reminded him of what I used to be like before I let myself go.” She was using her hands to scoop at the sand in between Ryan’s shoveling.
“What?” The word exploded out of him in a humorless laugh. “Fred, that’s awful. What an absolute cock-weasel. What did you say?”
She sat back on her knees while he went back in with the spade. “I was too shocked to say anything really. He didn’t even say it in a confrontational way, it was simply a passing comment, as if his words weren’t the equivalent of whizzing my self-esteem up in a blender.” Why was she telling him all this?
“Jeez!” he said as he chucked another spadeful of sand onto the growing mound behind them. “And I thought my last breakup was bad.”
“Want to tell me about it? My bruised ego would love some company.” The mound began to slip, and Fred reached around and patted it all over to make it stick.
Ryan screwed his eyes up, like he was expecting a ball to fly at his face. “She broke up with me by writing on the back of the restaurant bill when I’d gone to use the gents; the bill that I’d just paid. When I got back to the table, she was gone.”
