I shove away from the table, not caring that it draws the attention of the entire diner. I need to get out of here before I have an ugly breakdown.
“Ainsley…” I hear his voice; the deep baritone I usually love grates on my already frayed nerves.
“Nope. It was lovely knowing you,Dean.”
I speedwalk out of the diner and straight to my car. I will the tears to not fall. I’m not even sure why I’m so worked up over this. Does it suck that my boss lied to me and then made me have a sort of a small crush on him? Absolutely, but I shouldn’t be crying over this.
I pull out my phone and dial Larkin.
“Hey, sis! How are things?” Her cheerful voice makes the tears fall.
I pull out of the parking lot and head back to my tiny, little house, in need of some privacy and ice cream.
“Do I have a sign on my forehead that saysSuper gullable, please fuck with?” I sniffle out.
“Umm, no? What happened?” Her tone changes to concern in the blink of an eye.
I take adeep breath and hope that I can put all that I’m feeling into words. If anyone can help me talk through all of this, though, it’s my social-worker sister.
“Do you remember the Huttons?” I ask, figuring it’s the best place to start.
“Umm, I think so. There’s like three or four of them, right? I remember Ledger, and wasn’t Marina in your class?”
“Yep. Well, Ledger is my boss.”
“Well, that’s interesting. I don’t know why I didn’t put two and two together on that one.”
“It gets worse.” I cringe as I pull into my driveway.
“Worse? Is he a shitty boss? I can drive down there and show him the Mathews women are not to be messed with.”
God, I love her.She doesn’t even know anything yet, but she’d drive here in a heartbeat if I needed her to.
“No. He’s a great boss. Still conscientious of hours and how much I work, and is giving me more responsibility. I love it. Or I did.”
“Okay… I don’t get it.”
I’m getting frustrated with myself for not being able to articulate things, so I just blurt it out.
“Dean is Ledger. Ledger is Dean!”
“What the fuck?” she yells.
I hear Theo yell in the background, “Language!”
Her voice gets further away, but I can still hear her. “If you tell me language right now, so help me, you will be sleeping on the couch tonight. This calls for language, good sir!”
The laugh that bursts out of me shocks me, but their relationship has always been goals for me. They are always like this; they argue, and then they love extra hard. They never take things too seriously, andthey are both funny as hell. It helps me calm down enough that I feel like I can really explain the situation to my sister.
“Okay, so Ledger is Dean, Dean is Ledger,” Larkin says at full volume again.
“Yep. So, let me explain everything that happened because it’s just … insane. Rina showed up at my door and invited me to lunch. We had a great time; she forced her friendship on me, and it was … nice. She’s really funny and blunt as hell. You’d love her. So, she texted me later, asking if I would do her a huge favor. She needed someone to fill in for a blind date because who she had lined up canceled and she felt bad. I didn’t really have anything going on, so I said yes. Well, turns out she played me and Ledger, and set us up. Ledger was as shocked as I was, but he came clean. I was so upset, Lark, I just blanked and walked out. I don’t even remember half of what I told him.”
“I can understand that. Let me rewind a bit. Dean is—was—who you were crushing on, but Ledger wasn’t so bad either. If they are the same person, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, right?”
“I mean, maybe, but I’m not even thinking about that right now.”
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
