One thing I did know was that she, much like me, had vowed to never marry, something she’d told me on the night that would live on in infamy. She hadn’t volunteered her rationale, but we’d been kindred spirits ever since, despite my ever-growing curiosity.
“Any luck working things out with the Douchecanoe?” she asked.
Havisham called most people by their last name. I suspected she’d spent some time in the military, but mainly she wasn’t that keen on her first name, Aurelia. She called my former partner “the Douchecanoe” because she said he was both harmful to women and exceedingly unnecessary.
“Not exactly.”
“Oh?”
“He owns the house. He owns the PI business. All I have are my car, my student loans, and my freelance connections.”
Another woman might lecture me on the stupidity of being in such a position, but Havisham merely pressed her lips together tightly. She knew. We all knew. It was always easier to blame women for the precautions they didn’t take than it was to blame men for the harm they caused.
“Well, that’s enough of him, then. May his pillow never have a cool side, and may his bare feet find any Legos that happen to be on the ground.”
I snorted. “You are a paragon of kindness.”
“I only wish for him what he so richly deserves.”
With that she sauntered to the far side of the bar to tend to a new patron. I turned my attentions back to my online course on legal research. Thanks to my prior training as a private investigator, I knew more than the basics of research—just not the specifics oflegalresearch. As for writing? I hadn’t done formal writing since college, but I had written tons of reports for our—scratch that, Ken’s—PI business, and I’d also kept a self-indulgent blog once upon a time.
Legal research reminded me of the proofs we used to do in geometry class: Identify the jurisdiction, write down the facts, and figure out the legal issue—then make your case, step-by-step, using statutes and case law. I was parsing the details of my sample case in an effort to define the legal issue when a guy reeking of cologne slid into the seat beside me and glanced over his left shoulder to the hallway that led to the bathroom.
I took a sip of Malbec, but his aroma—like a cheap car air freshener but somehow bergamot?—interfered with the taste of my wine.
“Bruh! I can’t come over now!”
Of course he was also on his phone. As if his cologne weren’t loud enough.
“Make it quick. I’m at Finnegan’s with this girl ... she says she’s a virgin ... naw, man. I think she’s telling me the truth, and get this: She’s foreign.”
I cringed, but he laughed.
“Bro. If I can hit this, then I get bingo. Are you not listening? She’s both ‘virgin’and‘from another country.’”
Gross.
“Okay, okay. Fine.” He looked over his shoulder again. “She should be back from the bathroom in five minutes—you know how women are. Give me fifteen to get her back to the apartment and another twenty to get her naked ... then it’s ten minutes over to your place, let’s see ... I should be there before the seventh-inning stretch.”
Disgusting.
“So help me, if you tell Chelsea about this and she breaks off our engagement, I will kill you with my bare hands.”
And he’s got a fiancée? With those soft hands? And even softer morals?
I was standing before I knew it, taking my drink with me because my mama, whatever her faults, hadn’t semi-raised a fool. No drink was safe around that guy, but Havisham would keep an eye on my laptop. Casting a glance over my shoulder, I could see he hadn’t even noticedI was gone. Probably hadn’t registered my presence at all since I was almost twenty years older than he was and decidedlynota virgin.
I squeezed down the narrow hallway to the bathroom and tried the door.
Locked.
Tapping my foot, I craned my neck to check on Soft Hands just in time to see him end his call. He looked at me. I resisted the urge to glance away—that’s what a guilty person would do. Sure enough, he was looking for his date, so he turned around and motioned for the check.
The handle jiggled, and I wasted no time pushing the woman back into the bathroom before he could turn around and see us.
“Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Did you come in with a blond college boy wearing a camo ball cap?”
