12. Adrian

Chapter 12

Adrian

T he woman across the table from me smelled so heavily of sickly-sweet cotton candy that I couldn't help but wonder if she'd rolled around in a bathtub full of it before lathering herself in a similarly scented perfume.

"It's a shame they don't allow kids in here," she complained, stabbing the ice in her vodka soda with the end of her straw. For the life of me, I couldn't even remember her name. "You would love Veronica."

I nearly shook my head in confusion as I tried to wrap my mind around what she had said. She had a kid? That isn't something I requested. "Uh, who?"

The bright blue of her obviously colored contacts met my gaze as a grin spread across her brown-painted lips. I wasn't typically one to judge, but she wasn't someone I would usually gravitate toward—the overdone makeup, the bleached blonde hair, the filler, the intense cleavage of her worked-on breasts…it was someone's type, but it wasn't mine. "Veronica. Hold on, I'll show you."

She plucked her phone from her overly large handbag that she'd insisted needed to sit on top of the table. The clack of her nails against the screen was either so loud I could hear it over the music, or the sound just simply grated on me. A couple of seconds later as the waiter rounded the corner with our desserts, she spun the phone around toward me.

"Isn't she just adorable?"

A blur of white against a black background had me backing up an inch to see the screen better without my reading glasses, and oh, no , who the fuck had Ava set me up with? "Is that a…pomeranian?"

"Yes! Good eye," she giggled. "Purebred, too. I'm sure she'll get along with yours just fine."

What the hell was happening? "Mine…?"

"Oh. Ava said you had a kid, too." Her brows met in the middle as she dropped her phone back into her purse.

"Uh…yeah, I do have a kid," I said. The waiter deposited a slice of chocolate cake and a small bowl of strawberries in the center of the table, and it took almost everything in me not to ask him to take it back and put it in a to-go container so I could get the hell out of here. "A child. Human child."

"Oh." Her head cocked to one side, and I couldn't help but suddenly realize how absurdly dog-like the movement was. "I'm confused?—"

"Did you tell Ava you had a kid?"

She nodded as she stabbed the cake with her fork, shoveling a bite of it between her brown lips. Why are they brown? "Mhm."

"But you don't have a kid."

"I do. I have Veronica."

I thanked my lucky stars that I hadn't grabbed for my fork yet. It would have bent in half with how much I was clenching my fists. "That…is not the same thing."

She waved at me with her fork. "My friends and I call our dogs our kids. It's not weird."

"It's weird to not clarify when you're talking to a matchmaking service," I insisted. "Do you even like kids? Human ones?"

She shrugged. "I mean, I guess. They're fine."

It took everything in me not to slam my head onto the table.

————

Me: Was that on purpose?

I pulled my jacket closer around me as I stepped out of the lobby of the building, my jaw aching from how tight I was clenching it. Either Ava wasn't nearly as good at her job as her father made her out to be, or she was fucking with me. Ding. Ding.

Ava: What? What do you mean?

Ava: Is this about Vanessa?

Ah, that was her name.

Me: Yes.

Ava: She seemed really nice, and she was open to your idea of a relationship. She even has a kid. I don't understand.

I stared at the phone in disbelief. Had she not fully checked anything?

Ava: Adrian?

I clicked her name at the top of the text messages and hit the call button, bringing the already freezing metal and glass of the phone up to my ear. Two rings later, her voice filled my ear, and as much as it fueled me with a new sense of anger, more than anything it calmed me down.

"What happened?" she asked. In the background, a whooshing sound like wind or rain filled the gaps between her words.

"She…" I glanced over my shoulder as I crossed an intersection, double-checking that she wasn't heading in the same direction as me. "She doesn't have a kid, Ava. She has a pomeranian. "

Silence met my words, and I lifted the phone to check that the call hadn't dropped. But then there was a squeak of something wet against the tile and the whooshing stopped. Is she in the shower?

I didn't want to admit to myself how relieved I was that my jacket covered my crotch. The idea of her standing there, naked, dripping wet, on the other end of the phone made it hard to think.

"But…she said she had a kid. Four years old, I think she said, named Veronica. I thought it was cute she was sticking with the V names."

"She has a pomeranian named Veronica," I said, sidestepping a man on a skateboard who absolutely should have been on the road and not the sidewalk. Ava's breathy, surprised laugh crept down the phone line, and for a moment, I didn't care that it was cold and wet out. Scaffolding lined the walkway, and I stepped into the gap, leaning against the wall between two shops under the street lamps. I wasn't going to give her a chance to reply. "Putting that to one side for a moment, can you explain to me why you bothered answering the phone when you're clearly in the shower?"

Another second of silence met me, and this time, it felt charged. "Because you called," she said.

Because you called. Jesus.

A man passed me as I started to speak, and I dropped my voice. "You must be cold," I teased. "Haven't heard you get out yet."

" Adrian ," she groaned, and although I knew damn well it was a complaint and nothing more, I couldn't help but wish it was something else. Our last interaction hadn't gone well, and even though this was stupid, and there was a part of me that was still annoyed about her choice for my date this evening, it was almost…refreshing to speak to her. Like it was righting the wrong from last week when we'd argued in my office.

"I'm sorry," I laughed. "I'll drop it. Just please put a fucking towel on so I can stop imagining you standing there naked."

Whatever she said was so garbled that I couldn't quite make it out, but a second later, there was a squeak of a shower door, and the light breaths she took made me assume she was doing what I'd asked. "Happy now?"

"Do you want me to be honest?"

"No."

"Then I'm thrilled that you're in a towel," I chuckled. " Anyway , I'm sorry to derail us. But for the record, moving forward, Ava, I'd prefer someone who doesn't refer to their dog as a child to that extent. And maybe someone who doesn't smell that strongly of cotton candy."

"God, she did smell really sweet. Noted."