Perfect for You (Short Story) (Fire and Icing) (2 page)

Dawn lifted her gaze to the ceiling where red fans twirled, their blades toiling to keep the room cool despite the ninety-degree June heat outside. “I honestly have no idea,” she finally said. “Two years ago? Maybe three?”

Trent nodded. “It’s been at least three for me. I’ve been so busy building my business, getting married, getting divorced, and trying to squeeze in the gym a few times week, there’s been no time for fun.”

“That might as well be my life slogan,” Dawn said, lifting her coffee cup to clink it against his. “I mean, I have a great time going out and doing things with my kids, but I’ve had one adult vacation in the past six years, and it was pretty lame. I spent the entire time watching my girlfriends hook up and drinking whiskey with a woman whose son went to the same art camp as mine.”

“How many kids do you have?” Trent asked, eyes lighting up. “I have a little girl, she’s—”

Honk! Honk! Honk!
The horn blared, cutting Trent off before he could finish, leaving Dawn with an odd, deflated feeling. For the first time all night she wasn’t ready to move tables. She wanted to stay and find out how old Trent’s little girl was, and what else they might have in common.

No, you do not! Trent may have changed a little, but he’s still Trent, the most irritating meathead ever, and you have absolutely no urge to date him. Now stand up, and move it along, sister.

“Well, I’d better go,” Dawn said, forcing herself to rise from her chair.

“Wait.” Trent stood and reached across the table, capturing her fingers with one of his giant hands, sending a zippy feeling shooting through her body before he let go. “I know this may sound crazy, but do you want to get out of here? With me?”

Dawn’s eyebrows shot up. “You mean…now?”

Trent nodded. “We could ditch the rest of the speed dating, go find a bar, make time for some fun…keep talking.”

Dawn hesitated, so shocked she couldn’t think what to say.

“Don’t say no,” he said after a moment. “Or you’ll confirm that I’m a social leper and I’ll have to take my Daddy purse, go home, and never stick my head out my front door ever again.”

Dawn smiled. “Your Daddy purse?”

Trent motioned to the bag slung over his chair. “It’s a messenger bag I wear when I ride my bike; my daughter calls it my Daddy purse.”

“That’s pretty cute,” Dawn said.

“She also calls my protein bars my caveman biscuits.”

“Well, that does it,” Dawn said, grabbing her purse, pulse racing as she realized she was about to play hooky for the first time since high school. “I have to hear more about this kid. Let’s get while the getting’s good.”

Trent grinned, leading the way around their table, slipping between two planters full of fake ferns and around the miniature fire truck that helped separate the quick service area from the restaurant, heading across the red tile toward the door.

Behind them, Dawn heard someone call out, asking where they were going, but before she could turn around Trent took her hand. She looked up, meeting his eyes—eyes filled with intelligence and trouble and the same anticipation she felt—and decided she didn’t feel like looking back.

She felt like looking forward, to a night with a handsome friend and wherever an evening of making time for fun might lead.

Chapter Two

Trent had a secret—a deep, dark, slightly stalker-ish secret he had never told a soul, not even his ex-wife.

And he’d told Holly almost everything, right up until the day she said she was leaving him for a man who made more money than a washed up college football player with a bad knee and a bicycle shop that was barely breaking even. Trent had promised her his five-year plan was solid and Cy-cology would be well in the black within six months, but Holly hadn’t been interested. In her heart, she’d already left him and was well on her way to Happily Ever After: Take Two with Harry Jones, investment banker.

Three years had passed since Holly’s departure, and now Cy-cology was one of the top bicycle-enthusiast destinations in Atlanta. Trent had tripled his annual salary—and the amount of child support he paid Holly—and was grateful for the things he’d kept to himself. Every secret he’d shared with a woman who didn’t love him the way he’d loved her felt like something he’d thrown into a ditch beside the road to get coated with grime and dust.

He was grateful he’d never told Holly about the girl who had made him rethink what he wanted in a partner, the woman who set him down the path to finding tattoos and piercings way more sexy than bleached-blond highlights or fake nails.

At first, he’d been pretty sure he hated Dawn—she was so opinionated and merciless in her arguments, and never shy about telling him he was a backward-thinking doofus. But over time he’d begun to realize Dawn was simply a passionate person. Passionate about believing people deserved to be treated equally, regardless of sex or race. Passionate about women being able to walk the streets alone without having to be afraid. Passionate about treating the poor with kindness and not allowing politics to get in the way of making sure every kid got to eat three meals a day, regardless of how much money their parents made.

It wasn’t long before he began to see her points, and to agree with a lot of them. He found her passion sexy as hell and looked forward to debates with Dawn as the highlight of his day. There was an electricity that flowed between them when they argued. He felt it coursing through his veins like a burst of adrenaline after crushing the opposing team’s running back during a goal line stand, and there were times when he would have sworn Dawn felt it too, that her eyes flashed with something other than irritation.

He developed a pretty serious crush, but it never went further than that. Dawn came to college with a boyfriend and was married by the end of sophomore year. Trent lost touch with her during their junior year—different majors led them in different directions and Trent spent more and more time training—but he’d always remembered Dawn and wondered what might have happened if she hadn’t already been taken.

And now…here they were, holding hands as they hustled down the street away from the doughnut place. It was…surreal.

She was the last person he’d expected to see across the speed-dating table, but there had never been any doubt in his mind that it was Dawn. She looked exactly the same. Same dyed, blue-black hair that fell in a slick, shiny curtain to the center of her back, same piercing blue eyes that stood out against her pale skin. She had a few more tattoos than before—what looked like a mermaid on the underside of one arm and an octopus coiling around her bicep on the other—but she even wore the same purple jewel in the ring on her eyebrow.

Looking at her, he would have believed no time had passed at all—let alone eleven years—except for the tired note in her voice and the sense that her personality had…faded with time.

Either faded, or been trampled by marriage to a person who didn’t appreciate her.

Trent knew how it felt to work so hard to make a marriage work only to learn your best efforts and all your love weren’t enough. But in the past three years, he’d recovered his confidence. He knew he had a lot to offer and that someday he’d meet a woman who appreciated him. Even his recent string of bad luck with the opposite sex couldn’t shatter that belief, but Dawn…

He could tell she hadn’t recovered from whatever factors had combined to dim the light in her eyes, and it made him want to track Dave down and punch him in the gut. Hard.

“This look good?’ Dawn asked, pausing in front of a bar with an old-fashioned wooden sign hanging above the door declaring it to be the Pied Piper Pub and Grill.

“Perfect.” He held the door open for her, following her into the soft darkness.

Out on the street, the summer sun was still setting, but inside the pub, the shades were closed and the lamps hanging from the ceiling cast a warm glow above the tables on the right side of the room and the long, wooden bar on the other. It gave the space a cozy, close feeling, and the Irish fiddle music piping over the sound system wasn’t too loud. It would be a good place to catch up, and maybe…

Don’t go there. Take this one step at a time.

Trent took a breath. One step at a time was good advice. Dawn was obviously still getting used to the idea that he wasn’t a nineteen-year-old meathead who’d never been out of Trousdale County anymore, and he didn’t know if Dawn was still the same person he remembered.

“Tell me more about your daughter,” she said, after they’d ordered two beers and a basket of cheese fries to help balance the doughnut sweetness.

“She’s six,” Trent said. “Going on sixteen.”

Dawn smiled. “Did she just finish kindergarten?”

“First grade,” Trent said, moving the used coasters in front of him to the side, clearing a space for their drinks. “She was already reading and writing by the time she started kindergarten, so her teachers went ahead and moved her up to first grade. She’ll be in second next year.”

Dawn’s brows lifted. “Smart girl. Did your ex teach her to read?”

“I did,” Trent said, determined to prove to Dawn that he wasn’t a meathead anymore.

“My ex worked at a bank when Beatrice was born, and we didn’t have a whole lot of money for childcare,” he said. “So Bea would come hang out at the bike shop with me. She had tons of toys in the back room, but she’d still get bored and want me to read to her. A lot of times I was with a client and couldn’t get away, so I started teaching her to read on her own. She was getting by with a little help by three. By the time she was four, she didn’t need me anymore. She’s a really sharp kid.”

“Sounds like it,” Dawn said, lips curving. “And sounds like she’s got a devoted daddy.”

Trent shrugged. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Dawn’s smile crimped at the edges. “I can tell you mean that. My ex…” She shook her head. “You know what? I don’t want to talk about my ex.”

“Me either,” Trent said. “But I will say I always thought you were way too good for Dave.”

Her brows lifted. “Really?”

“Really. Way too smart and pretty and full of energy to be lugging that pot-head around for the rest of your life. I bet he only slowed you down.”

Dawn shot him a strange look, but the bartender took that moment to deliver their beers and basket of fries. By the time he’d asked them if they needed anything else and delivered the napkins and forks Dawn asked for, the look had vanished and Trent didn’t feel comfortable bringing it up. Instead, he tried to guide the conversation back to more neutral topics.

“So, what do you do?” he asked. “Did you end up being a social worker like you planned?”

Dawn shook her head. “No. I got pregnant junior year and decided to transition to an Art degree. I had always loved art and I could do most of my courses online and turn the projects in at the end of the semester. It let me be home with Marshall while I finished undergrad and got my masters. Now I teach art at Arwen College.”

“I had no idea you started your family so young,” Trent said. “So Marshall is…”

“Nine,” Dawn said. “And Emmie is seven. I bet she and Beatrice would get along great. Emmie just finished first grade, too, and loves to read and play pretend and write comic books about princess dragons.”

“Not princesses
and
dragons, but princess dragons,” Trent clarified, smiling when Dawn nodded. “Sounds like that would be right up Bea’s alley. She won’t touch a princess dress with a ten-foot pole, but loves dragons.”

They talked about kids a little longer before talk turned to Trent’s bike shop and the various bike races he helped organize around Atlanta. They ordered another round and played a game of pool and Trent found himself laughing more than he had in months at the faces Dawn made as she took aim.

“Stop it!” she finally said, laughter in her voice. “You’re deliberately trying to sabotage me.”

“I am not,” he said, still laughing. “You just look cute with your nose wrinkled and your lip curled. Kind of like an angry badger.”

Dawn rolled her eyes before blowing her bangs out of her face with a huff. “Angry badger. Great. That was exactly the look I was going for.”

“Then you nailed it, baby,” Trent said, grinning. “Now hurry up and take that shot so I can finish beating you.”

Dawn’s eyes narrowed. “You always were a cocky bastard.”

“Was not,” he said, leaning his hip against the pool table, close enough to Dawn that he could smell the incense and cinnamon smell clinging to her long, black lace sundress. “I was shy in college.”

Dawn snorted. “And I was the queen of France.”

“Learning new things about you every minute,” he teased. “This is the best date ever.”

Dawn’s breath rushed out and a frown tugged at the skin between her eyes. After a moment, she straightened, abandoning her effort to take aim on the five ball. “So this is a date?”

“It feels like a date, doesn’t it?” Trent asked, hoping she’d say yes and, more importantly, agree to do it again sometime soon.

Dawn’s bare shoulder lifted. “I don’t know. I haven’t been on a date in so long I think I’ve forgotten what they feel like. I’m not nearly as nervous as I usually am on a date.”

Trent took a step closer and closed his hand around her pool cue above hers. “Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? It’s no fun being nervous.”

“No, it isn’t,” Dawn said, but she didn’t sound convinced, and her gaze remained on the pool table. “I just…I don’t know…this is kind of weird, right? We used to hate each other.”

“I have a confession to make,” Trent said, waiting until she glanced up at him before he continued. “I kind of had a crush on you back in school.”

Dawn’s eyes went wide. “You’re kidding me.”

Trent shook his head. “I only kept arguing with you sophomore year to get your attention.” He shrugged. “I would have asked you out if you hadn’t already had a boyfriend. That’s how I knew Dave’s name. I did some checking around the end of freshman year. I was hoping you two weren’t serious, but…”

He let his words trail off, watching Dawn’s expression for a sign of how she felt about his confession. For a long moment, she didn’t say a word, but then her forehead smoothed and her lips curved.