“Oh, hey Eleanor,” Diana said as she picked up her phone. She was grateful for the distraction. She wassupposedto be working, but instead she’d been staring listlessly at her inventory software for… she checked the clock. Ten minutes. She’d been staring at nothing for the better part of ten minutes.
“What’s up?” she asked friend.
“Morning!” Eleanor chirped back. “Hope I’m not interrupting anything. I just wanted to see how your date went the other day.”
“Ugh,” Diana said, which really did more or less sum it up.
That date was the source of her persistent funk. She wasn’t even really sure why. The guy had been… fine. Okay, yes, the blueberry pie thing had been a misstep, but other than that, he had been… fine.
Underwhelming. But fine.
Fine, fine, fine.
It didn’t even sound convincing in her head anymore.
“That bad, huh?” Eleanor’s tone was sympathetic.
“Oh, gosh, it wassobad,” Diana said on a sigh, no longer able to even put up a good front. “So, I get there, and he had ordered for me.”
“Oh, that’s bad form,” Eleanor said. Something about her voice made it very easy for Diana to picture Eleanor shaking her head. “Like, I get ordering for a longtime friend, or someone you’ve been married to for years. If you know what they’re going to get, I mean. But a first date? No. Ick.”
“Ick!” Diana agreed. “And then, to pile on, he blew his nose right at the table. Not once. Over and over again.”
“Nooooo,” Eleanor moaned.
“Yes.” Diana scrunched up her face. “If I’m going to commend this guy for one thing, it’s that he has an iron stomach, because then he spent practically half the date talking about fish guts.”
“How does that even come up?”
Diana massaged the place between her eyebrows. She’d been doing that a lot the past few days. Maybe it was built up from all the times she’d resisted doing it during the date.
“I guess he’s a fisherman,” she said. “And they make good… chum? For the fish? I don’t know, I had to stop listening, otherwise I was going to throw up the few bites of blueberry pie I’d choked down.”
Eleanor gasped. “Blueberry? You hate blueberry!”
“I wish you had been there to order for me,” Diana said with a laugh. She was already feeling better about this. It was just one more piece of proof that friends were the best antidote to pretty much anything that ever went wrong.
“Did it go on forever?” Eleanor asked.
That made Diana think of the only part of the whole wretched experience that had made her smile.
“It would have,” she admitted, “except then I ran into Anthony and his daughter, Eloise, and we got to chat books.”
Eleanor gasped again, but this time it was in mock affront. “Are you in a secret book club with the handsome accountant?”
Diana decided to avoid the comment about Anthony’s looks, mostly because she also needed to avoid thinking about how true it was.
“No, I’m in a secret book club with Eloise. I lent herLittle Women. She’s loving it, obviously.”
“Obviously. Is she done yet?”
“Not yet. I was very careful about spoilers. But anyway, getting to chat with them was nice, and then my date was so annoyed that I’d stepped away that he cut the date short. I think he thought I would be mad about it? Suffice to say, I was not.”
“Woof,” Eleanor said in commiseration. “You’ve had a real run of duds lately, honey. I’m sorry. I promise it will feel funny one day.”
“Today isn’t quite that day.” Diana made a face. “But I am going to remain hopeful that I’ll get there soon. Anyway, distract me. How are thing with you? Your happy relationship is sadly bereft of interesting gossip, so tell me about the bookstore.”
This time, Eleanor was the one who grumbled. “Oh, man, don’t even ask. My happy relationship is the one thing keeping me sane at the moment. Garrett keeps reminding me that it’s highly unlikely that I hallucinated my bookshelf, that it really is coming, all that good stuff.”
