By the time I got home and Lily still hadn’t messaged me to confirm that my date was off, I felt bad. I really didn’t want to go, but I wasn’t about to leave him hanging either. I forced myself to get dressed and head to the bar.
Worst-case scenario, I’d text Lenny and tell her to call me in an hour if things went bad.
Best-case scenario, he’d stand me up.
* * *
I’d beenat the bar for only a few minutes when I accepted the fact that the teacher had either gotten my sister’s message and been too much of a butthole to write her back or he had died. It had to be one or the other. At least that’s what I was going to tell myself.
But on the very small chance that he hadn’t gotten her email and was only running late…
I was waiting. It was the nice thing to do.
About five minutes into sitting there, checking my phone about every minute to see if Lily had messaged me, I was kicking myself in the ass for not just staying home in the first place and running the risk that the teacher would be the one sitting around instead. But I had ordered a glass of Sprite and took in each person who walked into the bar, hoping one of them looked like the picture my sister had shown me of the guy.
After fifteen minutes, I would have taken anyone attempting to look around, so at least there had been some hope that someone was looking for me. But the only looking-around going on was people coming in groups looking for a table. I had taken up a two-seater in the middle of the room.
There wasn’t anyone though. Just me, sitting alone, watching other people. The story of my life.
I checked my phone one more time and didn’t even bother sighing when nothing had changed on the screen. One of the waitresses walked by me with a tray of potato wedges covered in melted cheese and what I was pretty sure was broken up bits of bacon. My stomach grumbled. I should have gotten at least a snack before I’d come.
Ten more minutes. Ten more minutes and I’d leave and not feel guilty because I had come. That was it. I wasn’t going to stay a minute longer; I was starving. If I wanted potato wedges, I could settle for a stop at the Jack in the Box on the way home.
Across from me were a group of men standing right by a dart board, already halfway trashed if how bad their aim was meant anything. One of them threw a dart that hit about three feet to the right, bouncing off the sheetrock covered wall that already had a bunch of holes on it from other drunk guys in the past trying to play the same game. The men in the crowd started laughing, but the same man went again and did just as bad.
I glanced at my phone.
Three minutes down, seven to go.
“All alone?”
I must have been that distracted that it took me a second to process who was standing there in front of me, holding something dark and amber in a glass. It was the big hand with fingers covered in tattoos that I caught onto first. Then it was the long sleeve ending right at the man’s wrist that I took in next.
There was only one person I knew who would wear a long-sleeved shirt in the summer. And when that wrist connected to a big, muscular arm, and then a wide chest, a thick neck, and finally a face I had seen countless times…
I’m sure my eyes were bugging out of my skull.
“Rip?” I might have gasped like I didn’t know his name.
Those teal-colored eyes didn’t shine, and his mouth didn’t form the shape of a smile. He went right on looking at me as he stood there, tall as ever, broad as ever, and just too handsome as I sat there, getting stood up. “You here alone?” my boss asked.
Was… was I here alone?
I had lost my mind. Crap. I must have been that surprised I couldn’t think straight. “Hi. Yeah.” I smiled, confused as to why he was here. “I was supposed to have a date, but I don’t think he’s showing up,” I babbled.
He scratched at the side of his nose with the thumb of his free hand. Then he pulled the only other chair at the table out and wedged that huge body into it. His forearms went to the top, and those eyes came back to me.
Did he have a funny look on his face or was I imagining it?
“What are you doing here?” I asked, looking around—I wasn’t sure for what, a beautiful woman with giant knockers coming toward us or something.
But no one was even paying the smallest bit of attention toward our table.
Rip had his focus on the group of men throwing darts as he replied, casually, “Getting a drink before I head home.”
Well, that made sense.
Grabbing the tip of the straw in my drink, I fidgeted with it as I kept an eye on the man on the other side of the table. “Do you live close to here?”
