This is the most dressed up I’ve ever seen her. Which is good, because she’s stunning, but also very, very bad.
Because she’s not supposed to be going out.
Not tonight.
Hannah
My nerves flutter as I smooth my skirt and perch on the edge of my sofa. Mr. Wiggles, my cat, weaves around my ankles, mewling softly, his tail curling ticklishly around my calf.
He hates everyone but me. Always has.
I picked him up at the pound as a tiny, potbellied kitten with runny eyes and a cough that rattled his whole body. They warned me he probably wouldn’t make it. Said I should prepare myself. I ignored them and took him home anyway.
For weeks, I barely slept. I set alarms through the night, fed him formula with an eyedropper every hour, warmed him against my chest when he shook. I cried more than once, convinced I was going to wake up and find him gone.
But he survived.
Now he’s an eighteen-pound tomcat who keeps getting bigger despite the vet’s stern lectures and the diet food I pour into his bowl every day. He purrs like a chainsaw, the sound vibrating straight through my bones, protective, possessive, endlessly judgmental of everyone who isn’t me.
Normally, I’d scoop him up. Tuck him into my lap. Bury my face in his soft belly and accept the cat hair as a fact of life.
But not tonight.
Tonight, for the first time in two years, I have a Valentine’s Day date, and my chest feels light and buzzy with anticipation.
I met Marco on a dating app.
Metmight not be the right word. I haven’t actually seen him in person yet, but we’ve been texting for the past couple of weeks and the photo he sent shows a very attractive man.
Dark hair. Dark eyes. Tan skin. White teeth.
Bethany at work had warned me not to get my hopes up when I told her about him. She said he was probably a sixty-year-old man in a sweat-stained tank top who hadn’t left his house in years.
I think she’s wrong.
I talked to Marco over the phone once, last week, when he asked me out. His voice sounded young. Confident. Masculine. There was a faint Brooklyn accent that matched exactly what he’d told me, that his family had lived in New York for generations, his great-great-grandparents immigrating from Italy at the turn of the century.
Everything lines up.
I glance at my phone on the coffee table. Still quiet. Marco’s supposed to call when he gets here. We’re going to a fancy Asian fusion restaurant in Midtown tonight. A candle-light dinner, he’d said. I hope he brings flowers. Peonies are my favorite.
Another five minutes pass by. Then ten.
It’s fine, I tell myself. He’s probably just running late.
I pet Mr. Wiggles absently as he headbutts my knee, already imagining the exciting story I’ll tell Bethany tomorrow. How she’ll roll her eyes. How she’ll have to admit she was wrong.
The clock ticks on.
Damian
The next hour is the most painful of my life as I watch, holding my breath, as Hannah waits for a date I know isn’t going to arrive.
Repeatedly, I pick up the burner phone I use to monitor her calls and texts. The one I cloned so it mirrors her screen exactly. There are no new messages from Marco, the guy she’s supposed to be meeting tonight.
He’s standing her up.
I know because I cloned his phone too.
