"Terrible date," I answer.
She nods. "Been there."
"We'veallbeen there," another girl says, a blonde with a diamond stud nose ring. "What does he look like? That way we'll know to avoid him when we go inside."
I hear Dom in my head.She's annoying. She has the worst laugh...yammers on and on.
"Actually," I say, an idea forming. "He hates being told happy birthday. How about?—"
The brunette is already nodding. "Oh yes. I'm all over that. We are going to embarrass the shit out of this guy."
I picture Dom confused, struggling to understand why this group of women is telling him something he hates to hear. It makes me feel incrementally better. Sticking around to see it would be entertaining, but that's not happening. I'll have to ask Halston for a play-by-play another time.
I show them Dom's photo from his company website. "Thank you for doing this," I say, feeling genuinely grateful for the show of female solidarity.
The brunette blows me a kiss as her friends hustle her inside.
I hurry to my car and hurl myself in, throwing on the air-conditioning. It blasts my face as embarrassment swirls through me. Was I totally and completely misreading his signals this whole time? I must have been.
I put my hand on his forearm. Leaned in closer. Laughed, and smiled, andI was having a good time.
I've never felt like such an idiot.
But it doesn't end there, does it? This isn't a random person I will never have to see again. As long as I'm friends with Paisley,seeing Dom will be a possibility. He will never stop being Klein's cousin.
This was a bad idea. What was I thinking? Men are toads. This has been proven to me time and time again. Klein is a unicorn. My big brother is a good person, too, but even he has one failed engagement under his belt. Don't get me started on my dad.
Angry tears heat the backs of my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. Instead, I pull my phone from my purse and block Dom.
I didn't think a date could get worse than the klepto, but here we are.
Chapter
Four
Paisley: How was it meeting Dom?
Cecily: Fine.
Klein: What did you think of Cecily? She's cool, right?
Dominic: Yeah, she's cool.
CHAPTER 5
Dominic
EIGHT MONTHS LATER
Beinga literary agent has changed me.
Where I used to merely enjoy stories, now I live them. I see them in my head, and create them for the strangers I interact with.
The harried barista at the coffee shop on the corner closest to my apartment? She's a young mother.Of twins!And she's raising the toddlers by herself,because her husband abandoned her.Wait, no. That's too predictable. And it leaves the door open for him to return in the third act, and nobody wants that jerk.He died! Hit by a bus, the poor fellow.
On and on I do this. A hefty portion of my job is reading manuscripts, and some days, separating fact from fiction is too demanding. Reality might be tangible, but fiction is a shapeshifter. After a while, when you live story and breathe words as I do, the boundary line becomes permeable.
This (not at all) lauded talent has allowed me to compartmentalize my disaster of a date eight months ago with Cecily Hampton AKA the Wicked Witch of the West. Literally. She lives in Scottsdale, Arizona. The West's Most Western Town.I don't know who appointed it the title, but signs around the downtown area declare it as such.
