I’m about to pull my hair out. “Yeah. Fun.”
The manual for the espresso machine is sitting in the drawer.
“You read Italian?” Olive’s eyes bug out.
I flip it around and open the English side.
“Ooh.”
I mash a hand over my eye. “Okay, you know what? You guys can leave. I’ll close up.”
“Are you sure? We can—”
“Just leave,” I snap at them.
“They’re just trying to help. They made a mistake,” some random douche-faced finance tech bro says from where he’s doctoring his drip coffee. Of course he sees pretty girls and automatically gives them grace.
Olive and Kathy, arm in arm, take Fidget out, all while finance bro flirts with them, trying to get their numbers. Giggling, they agree to meet him and his friends at a bar down the street.
This is a good thing. They both need rich husbands to take care of them.
I try to calm down while I wait for the machine to reset.
This is why I don’t date.
My life was perfect before my family showed up, bringing all their chaos and digging up all my insecurities that I’d carefully buried in the yard.
Okay, perfect is maybe an overstatement, but it wasfine.
I had my business.
I had my dog.
So what if the stalker was the most exciting thing to happen to me since I tripped and fell in front of everyone at my college graduation?
I had a nice house. Carolina and I had movie night twice a month.
I shouldn’t want more. I gave up on having the husband and the kids a while ago.
Why am I chasing after someone unattainable?
It’s pathetic. So pathetic.
I’m hot with embarrassment at how the dating event went down.
What was I thinking at the mixer—flirting, well, attempting to flirt with Fitz?
I don’t know how to flirt.
“And it’s a bad idea to try,” I remind myself, turning off the main lights so people will know we’re closed.
Of course he doesn’t want me touching his stuff. He probably doesn’t even really want me touching him.
God, I’m so embarrassed.
The espresso machine clanks to life.
Thank god I don’t have to replace it. The business can afford it—I’m not Kathy or Olive, so I don’t need a guy to save me—but it would be an incredible inconvenience.
