"Your profile said you're a lawyer. What do you practice?" I try again and give him a smile.
"Law." He snaps the cocktail book shut as the waiter stops by the table for his drink order, and I quickly attempt to school my face in response to his abrupt tone. "Jack and Coke."
When the waiter leaves, Charles stares around the bar, looking everywhere but at me. After a silence that is perhaps less than a minute, but feels like sitting through the extended-version ofTitanic, I clear my throat and take another sip of my drink.
When the waiter returns, Charles finally looks at me but still doesn't say a word.
Well, this is as awkward as I feared. Lovely.
"Charles, I can have my drink at the bar, if you've changed your mind?" When he doesn't respond, I start to scoot out of the booth, but he sighs loudly.
"You were thinner in your pictures." Charles levels me with an accusatory glare and my mouth falls open in shock.
"Um," I squeak, trying to find my voice. "Actually, I'm the same weight I was in the pictures," I say truthfully. I'm not going to admit this to Charles, but I have gained weight thisyear, and it was something that made me a little self-conscious about dipping my toe back into the dating pool. I spent years starving myself in an attempt to gain the attention of a husband who never loved me. The second my divorce was finalized, I let myself eat. I'm finally at a healthy weight for the first time in my life, and I'm beginning to appreciate my curves. However, I'm not going to say any of this to the dull-as-dishwater creep sitting across from me.
"Yeah, right." Charles rolls his eyes. "Look, we can go to your place and fuck, but I don't want you to know where I live."
"Excuse me?" I rear back. "You want to have sex with me, but I'm too fat for a date?"
Charles huffs out with contempt. "You trick me with pictures that don't even look like you and then you act like some cock-tease? Do you do all this just to get free drinks?"
"I paid for my own drink. And I took the pictures on my profile the same morning I posted it. Can you say the same?" I huff, staring pointedly at the balding spot at the crown of his head that was missing in his photos. Not that I care, because I'm not a shallow dickhead, but turnabout is fair play.
His face turns red and his lip curls with fury, but we're interrupted before he can respond.
"Charles McNally."
An icy shiver snakes through my body at the sound of the familiar voice, cold and cruel. My heart beats faster as panic sets in. I swallow hard, turning to find my ex-husband, Donovan, sweaty and red-faced as always, ambling up to our booth.
Well, fuck.
"Donovan Elmhurst." Charles' face lights up and the sniveling man makes a fool of himself holding out his hand, which Donovan ignores entirely. It's a power move that I'm all too familiar with, having watched him give the same treatment tocountless men over the years as I stood with a fake smile on my face, pretending he wasn't an abomination of a human being.
"Enjoying my leftovers, Chuck?"
"What?" Charles' face crumples in confusion and he shakes his head rapidly, his eyes darting from me to Donovan as he tries to process the comment.
"You're his ex?" Charles hisses when he finally puts two and two together. He narrows his eyes at me in furious accusation before turning to Donovan. "She didn't tell me."
"Am I supposed to add it to my dating profile?" I ask, my anger building as these two worthless assholes act like I wandered in off the street to run a grift on them.
Charles lifts his lip in disgust at me. "I should have known you were a gold digger."
My cheeks heat, even though he couldn't be further off base with his accusation.
"Relax. I couldn’t care less, Chucky-boy. Hope you have more fun between those legs than I did."
His flippant, crude comment has a ball of fury bubbling up in my belly. Deja vu pummels into me so hard I'm nauseated from the spin down memory lane, but I can't move a muscle. It's like I'm paralyzed.
Donovan treated me like this for our entire marriage. Like I was dirt beneath his shoe. Barely acknowledging me as a human being, pretending I didn't exist, flaunting his affairs publicly, and the worst of it, forcing me to walk on eggshells in my own home. After a lot of therapy, I finally put myself out there, only to land right back in front of the nightmare from my past.
You're free, I remind myself, and those two words wrap around me like a warm blanket on a cold night.
I am free. And I don't have to sit here and take this.
Summoning every ounce of composure I can muster, I grab my coat and slide out of the booth. I shove past the group of peopleblocking me as Charles hurls another snide insult after me in a bid to get on Donovan's good side. Joke's on him. Donovan doesn't have a good side.
As I near the door, the sweet promise of salvation is so close, but a man steps out in front of me and I find myself face to face with a six-foot-four wall of muscle.
