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She takes a moment—surprised, I think, but I can’t tell whether that’s in a good way or a bad way.
I crack open the lid on my lunchbox, relief settling through my body that Alice hasn’t lied to me. She’s been truthful from the start and hasn’t manipulated me in the way I thought she might have.
I bask in the thought as I listen to her talking about the couple she was following around the showroom this morning, all the while watching the sunlight bounce off her face and marvelling at how I’ve never met anyone quite like her.
17
Alice
He’s single.
Owen Shea is single.
And apparently not gay.
This thought hasn’t settled properly, even though it’s been two days since I discovered that Paul is a dachshund and not the lucky boyfriend I’d invented in my head.
For an entire year, I’d mentally categorised Owen as unavailable. Taken. Entirely off limits. So discovering he’s actually a single, straight man feels like finding out a character in chapter ten has the wrong hair colour to what I imagined. My brain simply refuses to update the information.
Even now, driving to Meridian Square, I can’t quite rewrite the image I had of him.
On Thursday night, I FaceTimed Lori after work to bring her up to speed on Operation Wedding and to tell her what I’d learned about Owen, and I’m not sure if this knowledge has actually done more damage to her opinion of him.
“Who sleeps with their dog?” she’d asked.
“Loads of people sleep with their dogs,” I argued, desperately trying to think of some influential, famous person who was well-known for sharing their bed with their dog, but before I could think of anyone, Lori moved on.
“And what kind of dog are we talking about?”
“A sausage dog,” I told her.
“One of those small, long things with stumpy legs?” Lori scrunched up her eyes, and her mouth turned down.
“Stop body-shaming dogs,” I said. “That’s just mean.”
“It’s just not the kind of dog a man has lying around in his bed,” she sneered.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if he were sporting a Japanese Akita or a Husky, then we might be in business. There’s a guy near where we live who walks two of those Akitas in the park every morning. I make a point to be there on my daily run when he walks them because if the sight of him in his sleeveless top and Ray-Bans walking those two damn dogs ain’t enough to get me through the day, then I don’t know what is.”
I rolled my eyes as Lori began fanning herself with a magazine. What must Owen look like when he walks Paul? Owen is always so immaculately dressed that I struggled to imagine him with a large, drooly dog, one that pulled on the lead and slobbered everywhere.
“And why are his friends so insistent on him ‘getting out there’?” Lori had pushed, dropping the magazine.
“I’m more relieved to know he has some friends,” I’d shot back, which was the truth. Learning that Owen had an old friend was such a relief, more so because I could stop picturing him alone all the time. “And isn’t that what friends do—worry about each other?” I added.
“But why? Has he never had a relationship before? Is he a recovering addict? Are they his sponsors?”
To my relief, our conversation had gone no further, as Zichen arrived home from work. But Lori’s words have been snagging against my skull: Why are his friends worried about him and urging him to put himself out there? Has he always been alone? Has he ever had a girlfriend? And if he hasn’t, why does this bother me so much?
Updating Taylor on the single-and-straight status will have to wait until Monday, as she wasn’t at work on Saturday. Right now, I’m gearing myself up for the shopping trip with my absolutely available work colleague who’s agreed to fake-date me.
I’m also totally trying to ignore the niggling question of why he’s single. But I could ask myself the same thing, so instead, I file it away before I invent a thousand ridiculous reasons why he could be single—he’s a serial killer, a werewolf, or a part-time monk are the first things that flash in my mind.
Can you even be a part-time monk?
Something to google later.
