Ask me. Ask me. Ask—
“You?” He relents after a second of extremely awkward silence with a lot of uncomfortable eye contact.
My smile stays firmly on my lips. He must think I’m asociopath. “You’ve already met almost all my friends at the engagement party and the Christmas thing,” I focus on any possible changes in him. Not hard to do when the restaurant is so quiet. It’s like they’ll fine people for going a decibel above whispering.
Elliot just nods, completely unfazed. I wasn’t expecting fear or rising pulse or anything serious like that. But not even an eye twitch about the potential of being caught in a lie? I need to up my game.
“That might have been the first thing they hosted together, Matt and Oliver,” I continue.
Elliot snorts. “And they were the only people who didn’t know they were already together.”
“Sucks it got interrupted though,” I try.
“It did?” He frowns. “I guess I’d already left by then.”
“Bu—”
The waitress arrives at the worst possible time, carrying our food. But even the delicious-smelling plates fail to distract me, not when Elliot is deflecting. Heleft? No, he did not. That was anobviouslie.
But was it a slip or just a flippant comment? Has to be a slip. Even if it has been a while, you don’t forget a room full of people disappearing in the middle of a party without explanation after a big ruckus.
Even Elliot’s life can’t bethatinteresting.
I watch him cut his steak with precision and delicacy, his face calm and controlled. The pout is not as prominent. He enjoys eating then, or maybe he likes steak. I don’t think the list of things that can get that pout off his face is long. But I’d like to discover them all.
Afterall, I need to keep him relaxed.
“You said you left before the party got interrupted that day?” I nudge him.
He looks up from his plate, eyes squinting. “The Christmas party? Yeah, I left early when you guys went to Oliver’s to help him,” he says, confused.
Gotcha.“Yeah. To help him,” I stress.
“He went for utensils, right? He said he dropped the entire set. He was so embarrassed,” Elliot snorts a laugh.
Fuck. “Yeah, the utensils,” I mutter.
Okay, so that didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. Because unless I’m ready to accuse him of something right now, I can’t very well continue to interrogate him on the topic. What if it turned out he really doesn’t know about us? I mean, humans ignore things that are right in front of them all the time. They can have all the clues and all the suspicions, but they never see through their preconceived notions.
But Elliot clearly slipped. He has to know his story makes little sense. So, this isn’t ignorance. If I had any doubts before, I have none now. Elliot is lying.
And I’ll get him to admit it. All I need is more time.
I think about how I’m going to convince him to keep seeing me as I devour my chicken. I barely taste anything, already knowing Serena would be so disappointed if I didn’t give her the exact taste palette description of everything I tried today.
The problem is that the date is not going well. The conversation has been so painfully awkward that it makes porn dialogue seem well-written. Not that I’m hoping this will turn into that.
That would be absurd. And wrong. What would it even look like? I wipe off that pout on Elliot’s face with my mouth. Elliot begging for me to touch him, his long fingers tracing patterns on my neck, my chest—
I clear my throat again. It’s a small mercy I’m nowhere close to being done with my food, because there’s no way I can stand up and walk out of this restaurant without being banned for life.
Conversation. Interesting, fun conversation. That’s what I need. Or there won’t be another date.
“Did you catch a movie or a show recently?”Great job, Nick.Now he’d think I readDating for Dummiesbefore I came here.
Elliot looks up at me. The pout is still absent. I make it my mission to keep it off his face for the entire date, mostly toavoid the images it’ll inevitably bring to my head. “I don’t watch a lot of television. Or at all, really,” he says with a tone that almost makes me apologize for ever paying for a streaming service.
Idon’tapologize. I’m strong,damnit.
