Alone.
Grey looked back at him. She swallowed. She was supposed to say something. She stuck out her hand.
“Hi, I’m Grey.”
Ethan smiled that half smile again and took it. Grey’s brain short-circuited. The jump fromEthan Atkins is in front of metoEthan Atkins is touching mewas too much for her to process in such a short time.
“Really? You look pretty blond from here,” he said drily.
Grey blinked up at him dumbly. Was that a joke about her name? The sensation of his hand around hers was frying her synapses.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“Sorry. I don’t know why I said that.” He pulled his hand back abruptly and stuck it into his pocket, clearing his throat and looking away. “Stupid,” he muttered to himself under his breath. To her, he said, “It’s…it’s good. It’s a good name.”
“Um. Thanks.”
A realization dawned on her:he was nervous, too.Grey felt like laughing. Her annoyance at his lateness started to ebb.
Ethan ran his hands through his hair. “I’m Ethan.”
“Yeah, I know,” she said, not knowing how else to respond. She crossed her arms and looked down at her boots, suddenly unable to bear looking at him. Just then, Audrey and an assistant burst through the door, carrying a tray with their plates and assorted mealtime accoutrements. They busied themselves settingup the food, which surprisingly still looked appetizing despite sitting around for the better part of an hour, and had hustled back out the door before Grey knew it.
The two of them eased into chairs opposite each other. Neither met the other one’s eyes. Grey picked up her fork, feeling like it was the first time she had ever operated one, and appraised her salad. Across from her, Ethan lifted the top bun off his veggie burger, doing his own inspection.
The silence stretched between them. Grey poured her cup of green goddess dressing over her salad and focused all her attention on coating each individual topping equally. He may have been rich and famous and, okay, still super fucking handsome, but he had kept her waiting for forty-five minutes. She wasn’t going to do what she always did, chatter to fill the silence, to ease the awkwardness.
After what felt like an eternity, he cleared his throat. She looked up at him, waiting.
“What did you get?”
Grey looked down at her salad. “ ‘I’m Trying My Best.’ ”
Ethan’s brow furrowed. “What?”
“ ‘I’m Trying My Best,’ ” she repeated. He looked at her like she was speaking in code. “You know. Thankfulness Cafe? It’s their whole thing. All their dishes have names like that. Like ‘I’m a Gift to the World,’ or ‘I’m Perfect the Way I Am,” or ‘I’m Praying the Earth Opens Up and Swallows Me Because Placing This Order Is So Humiliating.’ ”
Ethan laughed, a real laugh, and Grey’s nerves eased a little. “I see. I usually just tell Lucas to get me the veggie burger; I didn’t realize I was making him debase himself like that.”
“Isn’t that what assistants are for? To shield you from the petty embarrassments of everyday life?”
Her tone was light, but something dark flickered across Ethan’s face.
“I guess so.”
He picked up a sweet potato fry, examined it, then put it back down. Grey fidgeted. She took a bite of her salad. In the silence, it felt like the crunch was loud enough to make the room shake. The butter lettuce alone registered 6.1 on the Richter scale.
Ethan sighed. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered.
“Excuse me?”
“Sorry. No offense. It’s not…it’s not you. This whole idea. It’s weird, right?”
Grey chased a pickled carrot across her plate. “Kinda. I mean, I guess it happens all the time. I just…I’ve never…” She trailed off awkwardly. Ethan pursed his lips.
“I don’t get it, honestly. How will parading around with some young blonde make people root for me? Isn’t that the kind of thing everyone hates? Shouldn’t I be ‘dating’ someone my own age?” He made lazy finger quotation marks around the word “dating.”
