“And added you and me to the Duo feature?—”
“Oh myGod?—”
“And we have already matched with a bunch of other friend pairs.”
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “Why are you doing this to me?”
“You’ll thank me later.” She grins, scoots her chair around to my side of the table close enough that our shoulders are touching, and shows me her screen.
I blink myself back into reality. “They’re not… bad-looking. Brothers?”
“Fraternal twins. I like the one with the longer hair except his nose is kind of crooked.”
I take another bite of food. I do love to catch up with Electra and my new job has made that hard. But I am also very, very hungry. “So you want the one with the shorter hair and the straighter nose?”
Her mouth twists as she thinks about that. “I wish I could just like morph the two into one. Wouldn’t that be great?”
“Yes. Do you think the app has a Genetic Mutation feature? Or maybe there’s a Build-A-Man app and you can just cherry pick all the best noses.”
Electra flips me off, not subtly, and swipes to the next two guys. I keep munching. “So these two are childhood best friends. It says they do literally everything together. Isn’t that cute?”
“Cute, maybe; creepy, more likely. Like,everythingeverything…?”
Electra looks mortified. “Oh my God, I doubt it!” Then her lips creep into a cautious smirk. “But maybe…”
“Next,” I say.
The last two look more or less normal. Attractive, even. At least, they would be if my heart wasn’t completely committed in another direction. Problematically, my bestie can’t know about that. For one, she’d blow my cover. And two, I’d never live it down if she knew to what level I am into my boss.
“If I connect with these two, will you go with me? Dinner, drinks, maybe more?” Electra winks and runs the tip of her tongue across her perfectly white teeth.
“Drinks, no dinner, and definitely not something more.”
“Drinks, at least one app, and you don’t act like a raging bitch the whole night.”
I think about that and concede. “Fine.”
I don’t want to. At all. But I’ve learned that Electra isn’t great at respecting the boundaries of my dating life. Those boundaries being that I am not interested in dating or being hooked up on dates in any way, shape, or form whatsoever. If I don’t consent, she will just sprout a man up in front of me like a Chia Pet and then I really have no choice.
So this is the only viable option. At least, this way I know what I am getting.
After my lunch date with Electra, I go home and slip into some comfier clothes. Then I grab a glass of wine (one wasn’t enoughfor the lunch I just endured) and cozy up on the couch with my laptop. I still haven’t had time to look into the photos I took of Ransom’s notebook the other day.
So with a nervous breath, I cue it up.
For a moment, I just admire his handwriting. I think I like it so much because everyone types everything these days. Ransome’s penmanship is masculine but legible. Most of it, unfortunately, leads me nowhere.
Names that seem to be untraceable.
Places that don’t show up even on Google Maps.
It’s almost like it’s all code for something. But I am not a member of this club, apparently.
I finish my wine and switch to red velvet ice cream, tying my hair back like a regular Betty Cooper as I dive deeper. Honestly, I enjoy this Scooby Doo stuff. I blame our lack of cable TV for that. When the only channels you have growing up are sports, news and Lifetime, you spend a lot of nights after your siblings go to bed watching true crime and cold case shows.
Ransome is a hard egg to crack. I finish my ice cream with virtually no answers about who he is in the afterhours, but it doesn’t bother me. If anything, it’s exciting.
One thing is for certain: there’s more to him. And I am determined to uncover just what’s under those dark eyes and stiff collars, bloodstains and all.
