I winced, but I still waved.
He waved back, and I could tell I’d amused him. He looked down at his phone.
My phone pinged a second later.Ask your question.
Is your name really Grym Reaper?
Yes.
If I asked you out, what would you say?That was the question I’d wanted to ask him when I texted him. I also wanted to know how we’d met and why I’d forgotten the finer details. Why did it come back to me in flashes?
How’s Friday at seven? I know an Italian place.
I sucked in a breath. Holy shit.Does that mean I’m dating Death?Shit. Was that rude? It was rude to make fun of his name, right?Forget I said that.
LOL. Does death scare you?Was that a serious question? Probably not, considering he LOLed right before.
If by death you mean you, then no. I’d almost died last night, but I came out better than I had been before. Death had done my body good, not that I wanted to do it again.One more question?
He answered with a smiling face emoji.
Can I call you sometime? Before Friday, I mean.
Sure. As long as I can call you after your shift ends.
I get off late, after midnight.
I’ll talk to you then.I’d expected him to say it was too late and that he’d talk to me tomorrow or something.
Grymley Reaper was an endless surprise. It probably said a lot about my self-esteem that I questioned his sincerity, but I was willing to take the chance. He might be full of shit, and maybe he just wanted to fuck. A guy like Grymley didn’t go on dates with the pizza delivery guy. Did they?
Chapter Nine
Elliot
Ispent the rest of my shift smiling and checking my phone like someone obsessed with phones and smiling. A hot guy liked me. That was a miracle, or there was something at play in the universe. My money—though I didn’t have any—was on the universe.
Grymley had stood at the door, staring at me as if I were his long-lost boyfriend. He’d been friendly and a little flirty in the looks he gave me. I wouldn’t have lost my mind over someone who wore a sun visor with a slice of pizza on it and a red polo shirt with stains on the front. I was in my work uniform. I promise. But my shirt was part of the restaurant’s uniform, and that place was drenched in grease. I drowned every shift. No exaggeration. Okay, maybe I was exaggerating a little, but grease dripped down the walls in the kitchens where the fryers were. Mandy tried to keep the place as clean as possible. We had a closing routine, but nothing seemed to get the grease off the wall back there. The best we could do was keep it to a minimum.
Do you prefer to be called Grymley or Grym?
He responded right away, which was another great thing about him.You can call me whatever you like.
My face heated even though Grym wasn’t there to see. My smile was permanently fixed. If I responded to him by sayingI’ll call you sexy, would that be too much? It would, right?
If it’s okay, I’ll call you Grym.I should have said something flirty back. Something less than what was running through my head, but I was too giddy to come up with anything else.
I set my phone down on the crate. It was late. After midnight. Grym had answered me right away, which meant either he was a night person without a day job or he didn’t need much sleep and had one.
But I didn’t want to ask after having just met him. Some questions were intrusive. We had been texting for hours now on top of a fifteen-minute phone call. That counted as a whole date, right?
Joel sat on the crate beside me, smoking lazily, as if he had nowhere else to be. He offered me a cigarette, but I shook my head. I needed to drive home. I wasn’t making the same mistake twice. “So, who are you texting? Whoever it is, it puts a look on your face.”
Yeah, I figured I wore my giddiness like a mask. I just couldn’t help it. “My first delivery of the night was to this hot guy. I asked him out, and he said yes. We’ve been texting. Don’t tell Mandy. She’d lecture me for having my phone during restaurant time.”
“What’d he order?” Of all the things to ask, that was what struck Joel. “You can tell a lot about a person from their order.” He was constantly imparting words of wisdom, or at least he thought they were. He was right about sixty percent of the time, so who was I to judge?
“Um, I think pepperoni, sausage, onion, and banana peppers with the marinara dipping sauce.” Did I still have his ticket inmy pocket? Maybe. Had I looked at it a thousand times like an obsessed weirdo? I wasn’t admitting anything to anyone.
