After the waitress left, I asked Sadie, “Are you a regular here?”
She sighed. “This is where we were going to have our first date. Where you stood me up. Except not really.”
The waitress set down our drinks. Sadie sucked down half of hers. I wanted to know what she was thinking. She had been warm and flirty the previous day in the kitchen at the estate. But now she seemed more interested in her drink than in me. I gently moved it aside so I could see her face.
“You touch my drink again, I’m going to stab you,” she grumbled. I tried not to smile. “Stop laughing at me. I suck at this.”
“At what?”
“Dating. I was a sheltered Southern belle, then I went to an all-women’s school and worked at restaurants at majority-women retreats over the summer. This is the third date I’ve been on.”
“In Harrogate?”
“Like in life.” She sucked down the rest of the cocktail and started on the next. “I’m sure your social calendar is crawling with women.”
I leaned back. “For your information, my dates tend to be terrible too.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Don’t mention the cult. For the love of god, don’t mention the cult.
“The women start off being super flirty and friendly. Then, as the date goes on, it quickly turns into them asking prying questions about my job, my family, and my money. I guess they think that since I’m a scientist, I’m socially awkward, so they don’t have to try as hard to hide their real motives.”
“Well, you know my real motives,” Sadie said with a huff of a laugh.
The waitress set down two seafood platters in front of us. They were huge, with crab cakes, calamari, lobster rolls, crab legs, popcorn shrimp, and tiny golden hush puppies with picked vegetables for garnish along with several sauces. Sadie squeezed a lemon all over her platter and speared several pieces of fried squid, popping them into her mouth.
“So good.”
“You ate all of this by yourself?” I asked.
Sadie stopped mid-chew. “See, this is why I don’t date, because guys are judgmental and ruin what should be a nice meal—”
I waved my hands, trying to calm her down. “I’m not judging. This is great. I can’t stand being with women who pick at a salad then complain they’re full.”
She watched me suspiciously as I took a bite of the crab cake. “No complaints that this is not healthy food?” she asked.
“Now I feel like you’re the one being judgmental.”
“Yes, yes I am. You eat seaweed, and you were going to steam vegetables and boil chicken for lunch yesterday.”
“Nothing wrong with vegetables.”
“No, but you shouldn’t steam the souls out of them. You need to broil them at high heat. Get some char on there.”
“You’re very serious about your food, I see.”
“Very serious,” she said, gesturing at me with a crab leg. “Food is life and culture. In fact, that’s going to be the theme of the big fundraising gala. We’ll cook historic food from local restaurants that is special to the region. People can dress up in clothing from the late eighteenth century, when Harrogate was founded.”
“You mean in costumes with the corsets and the low-cut blouses?”
“I don’t know why you’re so excited!” Sadie teased. “Those dresses have so many buttons you’d get exhausted after the woman was half undressed.”
“Or I could just hitch everything up. I hear all the undergarments are just tied on.”
“So you’ve thought about this.”
“I’m a scientist. I like to explore things from all angles.”
