3. Grady

"Just you this morning, or…"

I glanced up from the menu—not that I needed it, I almost always got the same thing—at the striking blond poised at the end of the booth, notepad in his hand. I wished I felt the way he looked, well-rested and energetic. His blue eyes were clear and bright upon me, a slash of sunlight painting white-blond highlights over the crown of his head. Cameron, I remembered, before confirming by darting a look at his name tag. I'd had him as a server a couple of other times and liked him. He was quick with a smile that read as genuine rather than forced. And he gave great service.

I set down my menu. "I've got a friend joining me. If you want to save yourself some legwork, you might as well put a whole pot of coffee on the table." Remembering said friend had called me dour recently, I offered Cameron what I hoped was a friendly smile.

His easy laughter was as inviting as the humor in his eyes. "Duly noted. Want anything while you wait?"

"Just the coffee is good."

John slid onto the bench across from me shortly after Cameron walked away. "Sorry I'm late. Unavoidable, as usual."

"Spoken like a true lawyer. At this point, your tardiness is expected," I chided him.

"Spoken like a true professor," he teased me in return and flipped over his coffee mug. Before he could ask, Cameron returned with a full pot and placed it on the table, along with a carafe of cream.

"Ahhhh, you're a real-life hero," John praised, putting his hands up in prayer pose.

"Shhh, I'm incognito," Cameron answered cheekily, pulling a pen from his apron pocket and then flipping open his notepad. "Ready to order, or you need a few more minutes?"

"We're ready." John answered for both of us, glanced at his menu, then pushed it aside and ordered eggs with a side of toast.

Cameron's gaze slid toward me with a prompting lift of his brow.

"Denver omelet, extra cheese?—"

"Hold the onions. Am I remembering that right?"

I arched a brow. "You're good."

"Most of the time." He cupped a hand to his mouth, faux whispering, "You've ordered the same thing the last two times I had you on breakfast shift. Fellow creatures of habit recognize each other." He winked, and John stared at him as he walked off before shaking his head.

"I swear the guys were not that good-looking when I was an undergrad here."

"Your nose was always buried in a book, I'm sure."

"Books and plenty of other things, but I'm telling you, the demographics have dramatically improved." John would know, I supposed. He'd gone to college at the U, then law school before recently accepting a job with one of the big firms in town. "Oh, to do it all over again." He sighed, then folded his hands on top of the table and fixed me with a relentless stare. "Well, are you going to make me drag it out of you as usual, or will you delight me by being forthcoming for once?"

I chuckled and sipped my coffee. "We have an established pattern. As Cameron over there says, ‘creatures of habit.' I wouldn't want to ruin it."

"You're maddening."

"But I capitulate easily."

"Tell me everything," he demanded.

I laughed again. John had been one of my first dates when I'd finally decided to get with the times and download dating apps a couple of years ago, but we'd quickly realized the only chemistry we had was of the platonic sort. He remained one of the few who could draw me out of the shell I'd been occupying for the last several years. What could I say, it was cozy inside my academic cocoon, and there was less drama. Usually. "It was awful. Beginning and end of story. Not even worth recounting. I'm done with apps. I'm done with dating, in general." I'd deleted them all as soon as I'd gotten home from the club. No more Campbells. Or Mikes who lied about being divorced. Or Georges who decided they were straight except while they were on the receiving end of blowjobs. Men who looked nothing like their photos and men who were stunningly attractive but should've worn a paper bag over their personality.

I'd had enough.

"But you will because I'm a shameless, nosy glutton who likes to rehash my youth vicariously through you." John waggled his brows.

"You're seven years younger than me." I chuckled.

"And look ten older than you. I'm practically wizened by gay standards." He waved a hand. "So what made it so awful? Pics didn't match the reality?"

I'd encountered that a number of times on prior dates, but I shook my head. "The pics and reality aligned. He was maybe a couple of inches off of what he said, but?—"

"Height or dick?"

I snorted.

"What? One might matter more than the other."

"Height, John. I didn't get anywhere close to seeing his dick, and I didn't want to." Even recalling the first part of the night with Campbell made me wince. "We met at Gables, and yes, he was a very attractive man."

"Promising start." John flashed me a salacious smile.

"I should have turned around and walked right out after that. Then it would have been a good date. But instead, we sat, and he proceeded to get absolutely blitzed on sangria. Again, not necessarily a deal breaker. I understand nerves. But he was just rude. Holier-than-thou with the server. Snippy, short, arrogant."

"This sounds kinda familiar. Did you go on a date with yourself?"

I thwapped him from across the table. "I'm none of those things, and especially not short, snippy, and arrogant. Mostly not short." I narrowed my eyes at him. "And I've never in my life acted holier-than-thou with hospitality workers. I once was one, for fuck's sake, and I still assert we'd all be better off if everyone was required to work in service and hospitality. Besides, you called me dour last week. That's still not short, snippy, or arrogant."

John sipped his coffee drolly. "It's worse. But still worse than that is that you're trying to distract me. Back to Campbell and his sangria."

"It continued to go downhill. They put blue cheese on the salad, not on the side. His steak was cooked wrong, the third sangria tasted a bit ‘off,' though he was happy to continue drinking it and then request that it be comped. His knife had a spot on it…" I sighed. "On the way out, he asked the hostess if there was a customer satisfaction survey he could fill out."

"Eww." John tilted his head thoughtfully. "Wouldn't it be nice if we could rate our dates on apps? Upvote or downvote them?"

"I'd have given him negative points. I definitely should've ended it there."

"You didn't?" John put a hand to his forehead and laughed.

"Maybe I'm a glutton for punishment. Did I mention he was attractive?" I groaned at my own folly. "I should have, but he said he'd been dying to go to Lush, and I suppose my lizard brain was still thinking there was a way to salvage the date somehow."

"You mean fuck him."

That was John, right to the point. "Possibly." I shrugged. Being sick of the sight of my own hand had prompted the date in the first place. "Then I went to grab drinks at the club—water for him. Turned back around to find him with his tongue down some other guy's throat."

"Maybe he mistook the guy for you. You said he was drunk." John cackled. The man loved to play devil's advocate. Typical lawyer. "So did you go up to him and ask to make it a party of three?" He batted his lashes.

I threw a straw wrapper at him. "That's not my style, you heathen." My baseline had always been vanilla, mostly because I'd been too busy with my career and too married to a fellow vanilla lover to consider other options. Exploring my bisexuality post-divorce had occupied me well enough without bringing threesomes, orgies, or kink into the mix. Though apparently, that no longer precluded glory holes.

"Did you toss your drink on him?"

"No." I laughed. "I didn't care enough to bother with that drama. I just handed him his water and told him I was heading home."

"You delivered his drink to him? Sucker."

"Trust me, he needed the hydration, especially the way the two of them were going at it." I topped off my coffee from the pot on the table. The drive back home felt like it'd taken an eternity, and I was feeling the lost sleep this morning. "He thanked me by accusing me of being uptight and judgy."

"He definitely wanted to fuck you." John smirked.

"God no. He'd probably have asked me for a customer satisfaction survey afterward, too. ‘Stubble was too prickly.'"

"Could not find my prostate."

"Oh fuck off, I can find a prostate. He did not at all strike me as a prostate guy in the first place. The only thing I wanted to find at that point was an exit."

"Ah well, better luck next time."

"No, I don't think there's a next time." I wrinkled my nose at the thought. "I'm hanging it up for a while. The semester is starting anyway, and I'll have less time for frivolous things like…"

"Pursuing love and companionship."

"That sounds like a paradox." I waved a hand. "I've been ‘dating' for months. I'm starting to think maybe I just don't want to deal with all that. I want simple, easy."

"Then stop going on dates and just hook up."

"Maybe." I shrugged. "This next semester will keep me busy enough, between classes and my book."

It was on the tip of the tongue to tell him about my encounter in the bathroom. I wasn't sure why I held back, considering John was my closest friend. But for some reason, the tryst was something I wanted to keep close to the vest, just for me. Just the thought sent a thrill up my spine that radiated through my groin at the recollection of the stranger's warm mouth on my cock. I'd still not been able to pinpoint exactly what had motivated me to take up his offer, though it'd kept me up half the night. The experience left me staggered and weak in the knees, the knowledge that I'd let an anonymous stranger suck me off in a bathroom stall a combination of vulnerability and…empowerment.

Except I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it since. His mouth, the relentless suction of his lips, his hands, wondering what he looked like. I couldn't create a picture in my head. For a guy who'd spent most of his adult life studying patterns and predictability, the mystery of it all intrigued me.

What I wanted was more of that. More mystery, more excitement, more thrill. Perhaps John was right that I should be seeking hookups rather than trying to date, but the mere idea of putting in even the bare minimum of effort required to make that happen made me tired.

"Here you are, gentlemen." Cameron slid our plates in front of us.

"I'm only a gentleman on Tuesdays and Thursdays," John said before pointing the end of his fork at me. "And he's never been a gentleman a day in his life."

"Put my food on his tab," I replied drily, and Cameron laughed before bustling away to his next table. "You're such a fucking flirt," I accused, picking up my fork.

John shrugged. "Can't help it. He's gorgeous."

"Probably a student."

"So? Even better. Then he's off-limits to you."

"You're incorrigible."

"You're dour."

"I'm not dour, goddammit." I broke into a laugh. "I'm fucking busy. I just got done revising three chapters in the span of two days on top of reworking every syllabus for every class I teach." Somehow, the winter holiday break always had me scrambling to get back into the swing of academia more so than summer break, despite the fact that I mapped out my coursework in the summer.

"Dour," John insisted in a hiss. "How's the book going, by the way? Poised to be the next Malcolm Gladwell yet?"

"Please tell me I have better hair."

"You have way better hair," John said solemnly, a true friend if I ignored his smirk. "Unless we're comparing it to mine, of course."

"We're not." I flipped him off. "Book's good. Set to release this fall, if all goes as planned. My agent keeps floating some kind of publicity tour, but we'll see." How I could speak with such nonchalance about a project that had consumed me for years gave me pause, sometimes, but I chalked it up to superstition and not wanting to count my chickens before they hatched. It'd taken me a year to find an agent for the book in the first place. Another year for it to be accepted at a publishing house. Part of me was still waiting for the other shoe to drop, I supposed, while the rest of me was squealing internally like the kid from A Christmas Story finally getting his Red Ryder BB Gun.

"I better get the first signed copy."

"You will," I promised him for the twentieth time.

John filled me in on the cases he'd been working on, his various hookups, and we chattered like hens until Cameron paused by our table and dug through his apron, producing two tickets he set on the table. "No hurry on this. Just want you to have them when you're ready."

I pulled out my card and handed it to him. "I've got both."

"Aren't you feeling generous today." John grinned.

"I know you're struggling on that lawyer's salary. It's the least I can do." I offered him a wry twist of a smile.

Cameron chuckled and headed off with the card, and John pulled his jacket on. "Same bat channel and bat time next week?"

"Yeah, unless I get a wild hair and we try that new brunch place."

"Your homework this week, Prof, is to come to our next session with a story that has a more satisfying ending."

I chuckled. "I think you should do the homework and report back to me instead."

"My dog always eats it."

"You need to get a dog first before you can use that excuse."

John sighed dramatically. "I probably should at this point." He put his fist out and bumped mine. "I'm gonna go. I've got a stack of files on my desk, and apparently, the firm has decided not to recognize such things as weekends or free time anymore."

"See you next week. Don't work too hard."

"I'd like to work anything hard other than case files at this point," he tossed over his shoulder as he headed toward the door."

A moment later, Cameron returned with my credit card and a receipt that he set on the table before patting the pocket of his apron. "Hang on, forgot the pen."

"I think I've got one."

"Oh, here we go…" He pulled out a purple pen with a fluffy ball on the end and made a face. "Sorry, some kid left this earlier. Lemme just?—"

I reached out and plucked the pen from his hand with a smile. "This is fine. Does it make me looked distinguished?" The fluff ball bobbed in the air as I signed the receipt with a flourish.

"Very professorial." I glanced up sharply, and Cameron's brows shot up like he'd said something wrong. "You are a professor, right? At the U?"

"I am. Have I had you in a class before?" I thought I might have remembered him, if not for his attractiveness, then because of his perky demeanor. Those types tended to stand out for me among the sea of listless credit seekers in my larger classes. If he'd been in one of my smaller classes, I absolutely would've remembered him.

"No, but I'm taking Psychology of Decision Making this semester. Noticed your name on the receipt. I hope that's not weird to say."

"It happens more often than you think." A lot of students worked at restaurants in Silver Ridge, after all. I handed him back the pen and the receipt. "So I suppose I'll see you again soon?"

"I guess so." He shrugged nonchalantly, a puckish grin forming on his lips as he continued. "I've heard it's a pretty tough course. Sounds like I'll have to actually show up to class."

I tilted my head. "Is that the word on the street these days?"

"Yup." He flashed me a mischievous wink, then leaned in, putting his hand to one side of his mouth the way that had amused me earlier, his voice dropping once again to a conspiratorial whisper. "But I really dig the subject, so I would've shown up anyway."

He's trouble. I could practically hear John's voice, see his smug grin as I chuckled in response and met Cameron's sparkling gaze head-on. "Good, then I won't have to drop you from the class, which is what I do with anyone who doesn't show up the first day. Considering you've got your ear to the ground, I'm assuming you've also heard my classes are quite popular."

"I wouldn't miss it for the world." He gave me a little salute before turning away and leaving me sitting there with an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach. Had I been flirting with him?

Had he been flirting with me back?

I'd have to watch that, considering he was taking one of my classes.