Boomerang (25 page)

Mia

Q: Do you ever feel awkward in social situations?

I
walk away from Ethan, one billion percent sure that this little social experiment of Adam Blackwood’s is going to turn me off both food and boys for life. A lead weight sits in my belly, and the air inside the restaurant seems suddenly hazy, thick with the cloying sweet-sharp scent of sizzling onions and peppers.

Ethan made me mean, and I
hate
to be mean.

Okay, he didn’t
make
me, not exactly. He just brings it out in me—chafes all the raw bits until I want to curl into a protective ball.

I slip back onto my stool next to my date Brian and give him a smile that feels fleeting and phony.

“Everything okay?” he asks. He’s got one of those square, boyish faces with ruddy cheeks and a fantastic nose that looks like it’s been broken a time or two. His eyes are an almost reddish brown—like cacao plants—and they drink you in, slow between blinks as though afraid to miss a single thing.

I like him.

The thought registers with a rocklike thud in my brain and promises to go absolutely nowhere. Poor Brian.

Reaching for a chip, I nod, swirl it around in a stone mortar full of chunky guac, and stuff it in my mouth with little thought to the effect that garlic and cilantro will have on my breath.

“Yeah, fine,” I finally say. “Just a co-worker. Had to, um, chat about some work stuff.”

“Seemed pretty intense,” Brian says, and gives me this watchful look—all curiosity, no judgment. It makes me want to tell him things. “It also looked like he wanted to rip my head off.” He picks up the pitcher of sangria and pours some into my half-filled glass, and then he tops off his own.

“Oh, that’s just his face.” Even the joke makes me feel dumb and disloyal. Because it’s not true. And because it’s such a beautiful face.

Jesus, I have to pull myself together. But I feel wired, unsettled. I remind myself of Baudelaire, mincing along the edge of a chair, twitching, a second from flight.

I breathe out, try to come back to the moment, try not to think about gorgeous, jerk-face Ethan.

“What made you sign up for Boomerang?” I ask Brian in the least subtle attempt to change the subject ever.

Out of the corner of my eye, I see a ripple of blue and look up as an absolutely stunning blond girl slinks by. She’s in a blue halter dress with a jeweled collar that circles a pale swan neck. Her gray Louboutin pumps cover the distance between the front door and Ethan’s table in about five steps.

And then it dawns on me. I’m looking at
her
. My precious ice queen.

Suck that, Vance, I think, dying to swivel on my stool so I can watch the whole awkward evening unfold. I feel guilty for the setup but less than I did before he acted like a jerk tonight.

Brian’s eyes flick over for a couple of beats but then dutifully return to me. I like that too. He doesn’t pretend not to notice a gorgeous human being. But he’s not all ogly and gross. Like Robby. And, I allow myself to admit, like Kyle. That
tool
.

“It seems safer, somehow.” It takes me a second to realize Brian’s answering my question.

“Safer, really?”

He dips his head to catch a glob of guacamole before it slides off his chip. “Well, to use a filmmakers’ analogy, maybe it’s like narrowing the aperture a bit.” He makes a frame of his hands and looks at me through it. “Like it’s less pressure to say, ‘I’m focused on this one night, this one date, rather than the first night of what we’re both hoping will be an entire lifetime.’ ”

It seems like a fair answer. A good one. But I can barely home in on it. I know there’s a juicy drama playing out behind me, and I’m dying to see for myself.

Brian asks, “What about you?” at the same time that I suggest, “Hey, want to move over to a booth?”

“Sorry.” He grins. “Sure.”

We tell the bartender. Brian grabs our glasses and pitcher, nodding at me to nab the chips and guacamole. I follow him as he weaves between booths and places us, miraculously, in the perfect spot.

Only my date slides into the booth facing Ethan and the Ice Queen, leaving me to either sit with my back turned to them or slide in next to him, which feels like a signal I don’t want to send.

I hover there dumbly for a second, the stone bowl of guacamole growing heavy in my hand.

If I sit next to Brian, I’m saying I want to get close, snuggle up to him.

But I’ll be able to see Ethan.

If I sit across from him, I won’t come across like some desperate goof with boundary issues, but I won’t be able to see the action. Which is kind of the whole point.

Suddenly, the idea of decades more of this dating crap makes me want to smother myself to death in the guacamole bowl.

I set down the bowl and chips and smile at him. Nodding in the vicinity of his lap, I ask, “Hey, mind if I . . .”

Lucky for my ego, he lights up immediately and makes room for me. “Sorry. Of course. I mean, I didn’t know if you think it’s awkward.”

Yeah. It’s definitely awkward. I mean, it’s not like I’m a trout with eyes on the side of my face. I don’t get why people do it. And now I’m one of those people.

I slide in, turning toward Ethan’s booth at the exact moment a server comes to stand directly in my eye line, blocking my view.

Come on!

“Dinner, kids?” the server asks. He’s got a white-blond televangelist’s pompadour and two stylized red “X’s” tattooed above his eyebrow, which I realize with some dismay, is actually the Dos Equis logo. I’m guessing he’s going to regret that in roughly . . . well, now.

“What do you think, Mia?” asks Brian. “Want to split something? Fajitas, maybe?”

“Sounds great.” I try to employ my x-ray vision to see through the waiter’s scrawny chest, but sadly don’t seem to have them charged up this evening.

Finally, we get through an excruciating process of choosing protein source, flour or corn tortillas, vegetables and other sides until I just want to scream at him to put some goddamn food on a plate and bring it to us already.

He moves away, and my attention zeroes in on Ethan and his date.

I expected to see the untouched drinks, to see Ethan’s frown, his posture of disaffection. And I do. He looks miserable. The girl looks miserable. But it’s the wrong kind of miserable. It’s—intimate somehow. They lean their heads toward one another. The girl’s long pale fingers rest there, close to him, suggesting she wants to touch him.

“Why are
you
on the Boomerang site?” Jason asks, and the question feels stale, like it’s part of a conversation I had sixty years ago. “What are you looking for?”

I tear my gaze away and murmur, “Good question.” But I don’t know what I want except to stop sitting here, burning with curiosity and miserable at seeing Ethan with another girl. Even a girl whose company he clearly does not enjoy. “I guess I just want to be . . . I don’t know. Authentic?”

Nervous about tipping into dangerous territory, I gulp the last of my drink. “I just want to be able to look at a person and say, ‘I want you.’ Or ‘I really like you so much.’ It’s like none of us—not me, not any of my friends, no one I know, will ever just put themselves out there and say, ‘I want to be with you.’ We’re all scared of giving up the power of being the person who cares less.”

“Well, that’s—” Brian begins, though what can he really say to that?

Ethan slides out of the booth and stands. He snaps open his wallet and throws several bills on the table. When he turns away, his eyes lock onto mine, and there’s something so sad and tortured in them that I actually gasp.

“What’s wrong?” Brian asks, alarmed.

“Nothing. Just . . . My, um, colleague seems upset.”

Ethan stalks past me, and I’m shocked to see the girl—the Ice Queen—rise and rush after him. Only, as she passes, I can see her face is blotchy and that tears glitter in her eyes.

“What the hell is going on?” I half hear myself say.

“Lovers’ quarrel?” Brian suggests.

But that’s impossible. They’ve never seen each other before.

Have they?

Chapter 32

Ethan

Q: Do you forgive and forget, or hold a grudge?

A
lison follows me outside.

“Ethan, what’s going on?”

The tone of her voice is so familiar, it sends chills down my spine. I should keep walking. I don’t owe her a fucking thing. But she’s so confused. Something’s not right about this. About her being here tonight.

I stop. “Did you plan this, Alison?”

“No. I thought you did.” She appears in front of me, but I keep my eyes on the passing cars. A parking valet across the street catches a set of keys in the air and jogs around the corner.

“I only got your name a few minutes ago,” she says. “I got a message with the details for the date. I thought someone was playing a joke on me at first when I saw your name. Then I started to hope you’d finally decided to talk to me.”

I look at her for the first time. She’s beautiful. It was the first thing I noticed about her years ago, and she hasn’t changed. She’s beautiful the way an icicle is. Cool and sharp. Not half as fragile as she appears to be.

I swallow and draw a breath and swallow again, trying to figure out what the hell to say.

“So you came here to meet someone else,” I say, and suddenly I’m fighting back images of Alison sitting on her bed in her bra, sheets tangled around her, eating takeout Chinese food with another guy. Since that night, she’s called and texted me a hundred times. I managed to avoid her. I thought it was over. Until now. “I can’t say that surprises me.”

Alison winces. “Ethan—” She pushes her long blonde hair behind her ear. “I don’t know how this happened. I promise you, it wasn’t something I did. But I’ve been wanting to see you so much. And if you’ll just give me a chance, and listen to me . . .”

She falls quiet, wrapping her arms around herself.

A remote part of my mind finds this interesting. Alison doesn’t get nervous or flustered. In situations where she
should
be nervous, she becomes ruthless. Lethal. She’s like a snake that way.

The valet pops up beside us, out of breath and smiling, his bowtie crooked. “Are you two waiting for your car?”

Alison looks at him. “No,” she says. One word but it packs a punch. There’s the girl I know.

The valet retreats so fast he practically sends up sparks on the pavement. Then we’re alone again.

“Are you dating, E?” she asks, throwing me off. “I guess you are, if you’re using Boomerang.”

I shake my head. “No. I work there. This is work for me. These dates.”

“Oh.” Alison actually looks relieved. Her arms loosen around her stomach. “Me too. I work for my dad now. I’m looking into Boomerang for him. He’s thinking about becoming an investor.”

Alison’s father is an investment banker and he’s loaded. Big-time loaded. He makes Adam look like a pauper.

I know I should be considering what she’s saying strategically. I could bring Adam some inside intelligence. But all I can think is that I told this girl that I
loved
her.

What a fucking idiot. I didn’t love her. I loved the fun we had together. I loved the vacations we took. I loved having a girl that every guy wanted on my arm. And at the year mark, if you don’t say those words, something’s not right. Which it wasn’t. But I said them anyway. Now I wish I could take them back. The fact that I gave them to her so carelessly pisses me off.

A breeze sweeps past us. Alison’s shoulders give a small shiver. It’s a cool night, but I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything right now except the desire to leave.

“Ethan . . . I haven’t seen anyone since you.”

“I don’t care what you do, Alison. I stopped caring when I found you in bed with Carl.”

“Craig.”

“Don’t care.”

“I messed up. I know I did. And I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”