Page 23 of The Rules of Dating

“Okay!”

Saylor ran back toward her bedroom, and I realized what I’d done.

“Hey, kiddo, don’t take everything out of your dresser to find one sweatshirt. Just pick something on top.”

Billie laughed. “You know your daughter.”

“Last week I told her to grab a pair of shorts. I was finishing up a project for work on my laptop. When I went into her room, it looked like a bomb had exploded in a kid’s clothing store.”

“That’s what my apartment looks like most of the time.”

I chuckled. “Women.”

“So where are you two off to? Saylor said a bridge?”

“Oh yeah. We’re going to check out the Ward’s Island Bridge. It’s a tradition my dad started when I was born. He’s an architect, too, and he loved to show me different structures around the city. Every year on my birthday, he took me to a different bridge. We actually haven’t missed one yet, and I’m twenty-nine.”

“Really?”

I nodded.

“How long until you run out of bridges? What are there, like thirty in the city?”

“Close.” I smiled. “There are two thousand and twenty-seven of them in the five boroughs.”

Billie’s face wrinkled up. “You’re kidding, right?”

I laughed. “Nope.”

“Oh my God. You must think I’m an idiot.”

“Not at all. Honestly, most people would guess the same. Everyone knows the main ones—Brooklyn, Verrazano, GW, Queensboro…”

“Where’s the one you’re going to see tonight?”

“It’s up on a Hundred and Third. It’s a footbridge that crosses over the Harlem River to get to Ward’s Island. Why don’t you come?”

Billie hesitated. “It’s your tradition with your daughter. I don’t want to intrude on your time together.”

“Trust me, Saylor would be thrilled. It’s always just us two.”

“I don’t know...” She still wasn’t sold.

“Do I need to have my daughter ask you so you’ll say yes? You act like I’m asking you to go to the gas chamber.”

Billie laughed. “I do not.”

“Prove me wrong, then, and come. I’m not asking you on a date this time. We can be friends, can’t we?”

She bit her lip. “Fine. Yes, we can be friends.”

“Great.” I winked. “But just to clarify, I sometimes look at my friends’ asses.”

CHAPTER 6

Billie

It was my favorite part of the day—the quiet time in the morning at the shop before any of my staff arrived. I’d come in early to organize some of my equipment and straighten up the place. The only problem was now I had way too much time to think without people here. And all I could seem to think about lately was Colby Lennon.