WHEN ARI MET ALY Read online

  Jake’s brow furrowed, interrupting my narrative. I gave him a quizzical look. “I’m confused,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  “You said he dumped you. Why would you stick around that long?” I felt my shoulders slump. “Sorry,” he added quickly. The waitress reappeared and set our food down in front of us; I watched the steam curl off my pasta.

  “No, it’s…a really good question.” He seemed to know I didn’t immediately have an answer, because he started to eat, and I was surprised to feel a sense of relief as I did the same. Up until that point, it hadn’t really occurred to me just how much I was telling him. The interlude gave me time to collect my thoughts and figure out if there was anything I specifically didn’t want to mention. It also gave me an opportunity to actually analyze my relationship with Blaise in a way I hadn’t done since I was taking thirty minute showers in the middle of the night right after we had parted ways.

  This date was starting to feel suspiciously like therapy. Maybe Jake had started to think he’d gotten more than he bargained for. Once our plates were set aside, I looked at him again. “I don’t mean to be like, piling all of this on you,” I said, keeping my voice light. “We can talk about something else.”

  He held up a hand. “Hey, I asked. But it’s fine if you’re not comfortable. I realize it’s kind of a weird first-date conversation.”

  I laughed wryly. “I just finished telling about how weird my last first date was, so…” That made him smile, and then we were suddenly back in the comfortable swing of things. When the waitress came by to pick up the remains of the meal and drop off the check, she asked if we wanted anything else. I shook my head.

  He glanced at me. “You want to get out of here?”

  “Sure.” I reached for my purse, but he’d already grabbed the bill. “You don’t have to do that,” I said.

  “No, but I’m going to.” I rolled my eyes, mostly for show. You know what else you don’t have to do? Keep being so perfect. Leaving the tip under his glass on the table, he led me up to the counter to pay, and I watched the cashier give him a once-over. Then I followed him out to the parking lot.

  The evening had settled into a warm, dry night. A breeze skimmed across the asphalt. All at once, it struck me as silly that we had brought two cars, and then I remembered it was my idea and I cursed myself for it. I wasn’t ready to relinquish Jake’s company just yet.”Where’d you park?” he asked, and I pointed. “You mind driving a little more? We could go down to the water.”

  “Okay. I’ll follow you out.” He headed off to the left, and I made my way toward my car, right as another one pulled into the space beside it. I was drawing close to the driver’s side when the driver got out.

  My heart skipped. There was no mistaking that tanned, meticulously handsome face. I hadn’t seen Blaise even once in the months since we broke up, but of course I’d run into him on the one night I had a date. Foolishly, I’d hoped he didn’t notice me, but he did. A wide, easy smile crossed his lips, showing his teeth. “Hey,” he said. “Haven’t seen you in a while.” As if he didn’t know why.

  “Yeah,” I said awkwardly. “Uh, how are you?” The last thing I needed was to be striking up a conversation with my ex while Jake was on the other side of the lot, but it was clear that Blaise expected some sort of interaction.

  “I’ve been around,” he said, still smiling. I nodded, praying that would be the end of it. Then he continued. “What are you doing here?”

  I should be asking you the same goddamn question, I thought. Even though our seaside town was relatively small, it was also extremely touristy. There were a million other places he could have gone. A wave of irrational irritation swelled in my chest, and I decided to smack him with the truth. “Um, I’m actually on a date.”

  “Oh.” Something flickered in his light blue eyes. “Is that who you were leaving with? He let you walk to your car alone?” The façade of protectiveness made me laugh internally. Like he would have done any better.

  “We drove separately.” I could see Blaise doing something he rarely ever did, calculating the implications of my reply, and I was impatient to be rid of him. “Listen,” I said, “I gotta go. It was nice to see you.” He nodded, casual as ever, but as he walked toward the diner entrance, I saw him scanning the other cars. Shaking my head, I scurried over to mine and slipped behind the wheel, looking for Jake as I pulled out. He was waiting near the driveway; I gave him a thumbs-up. I didn’t let myself check the rearview mirror until after I’d slid into traffic, when I knew I wouldn’t be able to see Blaise even if I tried.

  Like I said before, Pelican is a tourist town, picturesque and close to the ocean. If I leave my apartment windows open at night, I can hear the waves rolling in. That was a huge part of the reason I came back after experiencing big city life around UCLA. I couldn’t imagine living away from the water. The beach at night always filled me with a sense of peace, and I could already feel it coming over me as I stepped out onto the gravel beside the sandy boardwalk. The air was sharp with salt.

  Jake leaned against the flank of his car, gazing out over the water below us. He smiled at me, his lion’s eyes reflecting the white shine of the moon. I slipped my sandals off at the edge of the walk, and as I picked them up, he reached for my free hand. His palm was rough against mine. “Those stairs look pretty rickety,” he said simply. “I’m just making sure you don’t fall.”

  “And they say chivalry is dead.” In fact, the stairs were in impeccable condition, and he didn’t let go after my feet were safely on the sand. We wandered idly along the shore in silence for a while. I was getting used to the feel of his hand.

  “Who was at the diner?” he asked. The tone of his voice made it nothing more than a curious inquiry, but I felt an inexplicable guilt.

  “Oh, God, you saw that?” I didn’t have to peek at him to know he was watching me, and that he was amused.

  “That wasn’t the guy you were talking about, was it?”

  I groaned. “It totally was.” Jake laughed, and I couldn’t keep myself from giggling too. “Can you believe I haven’t run into him since the summer?” I paused. “I guess I have to finish the rest of that story now, huh?”

  “No.” He said this, but I knew he wanted to hear it. And now that Blaise had inadvertently inserted himself into the fabric of the date, my reservations were pretty much canceled out. I tugged gently on his wrist, bringing him to a halt.

  “We should sit down for this.” Obligingly, he set himself down, and I sat beside him, close to his shoulder, his arm behind me. “Where did I leave off?”

  “I asked why you stayed with him.”

  My train of thought resumed, I nodded and began to talk.

  It’s not that I didn’t think about leaving Blaise when things started to go south. I thought about it a lot, actually. But you know that sense of familiarity that you get from being with the same person for a protracted length of time? That’s what really did me in. After spending so much of the past twelve months together, I had trouble imagining myself without him, and so did everyone around me, even Audrey. “He’s not good for you,” she said, “but you make a really sharp couple.”

  And I guess there’s no shame in admitting how much you come to depend on a significant other. Part of the magic of being in a relationship is that you get to share yourself with another person, right? And they become part of you, and it can be hard to extract yourself from that. I wasn’t any exception. I think I stayed with Blaise because it was easy, because I thought we were something I could depend on. Obviously, that’s not how things worked out. I was only prolonging the inevitable.

  He took me to a bar on our last date. I kind of knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t exactly sure what. He’d been distant a lot lately, so the silence in the car was nothing new. When we got our table, he ordered a drink right away, and then he sat there brooding for the next ten minutes. I was the one who had to start things off.

  “All right,” I said. “What�
�s this about?”

  “I’m just, you know…thinking about the future.” That was when the red flags went up in earnest. Blaise had never, ever spoken about the future before.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.” He took another long swig of his beer—it was already mostly gone. “I’m not sure this type of life is sustainable for me.”

  I sat back in my chair, confident that he was bullshitting me. “What the hell are you talking about? Give it to me straight.” He hesitated, staring down into the well of his empty glass. “I’m a big girl, Blaise. I can handle it.”

  He pressed his lips together. “Listen, babe, can it wait until after the food? I’m really hungry.” His response was less surprising than it was profoundly annoying.

  I looked away. “Okay, fine.” The next fifteen minutes were spent in silence. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him checking out the waitresses. It would have been immensely satisfying to call him out and trigger a cataclysmic fight right there in the middle of the bar, but I kept my mouth shut. I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure I was going to end up single.

  The silence persisted until we were done eating, at which point Blaise signaled for a cup of coffee instead of the check. He sat there nursing it while I looked on, waiting. “Look,” he said finally. “We’re going to have to call this thing off.” That’s how he said it, like he was canceling a party, or bailing on a game.

  “What thing?” I asked. “Do you mean our entire relationship? That thing?” The shock of his words hadn’t kicked in yet, so all I felt was this dull, resentful anger. And maybe that’s telling of the state we were in, that I was annoyed before I was hurt. Even more revealing was Blaise’s reaction.

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s exactly what I mean, babe.” There was a pause. “I’m glad you understand.”

  I pushed my chair back from the table. “That’s it, then? That’s all I get.” Part of me would have preferred a screaming match, an out and out destruction of shared property, anything but the quiet whimper with which Blaise and I ultimately went out. But he gave me only a puzzled, slightly regretful glance.

  “What do you mean?” The obtuseness in his voice infuriated me.

  I shook my head. “Never mind. I want to go home, okay?” To his credit, Blaise obliged me without a word. In fact, he didn’t say anything else that night, not even after I got out of the car. I was standing on my doorstep when he drove away, and that was it.

  I paused, thinking. “Actually, yeah. That really was it. Tonight’s the first time I’ve spoken to him since then.”

  “Go figure.” Jake answered. “It’s funny how that works.” He paused. “Did you tell him you were on a date?”

  “You know, I wasn’t going to, but then I did.”

  Jake smirked. “Was he jealous?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you want him to be?”

  “It’s not really my place to say yet, is it?”

  I noted his use of the word yet with a secret smile. “So are you going to reward me with the story of your ex now?” I asked. I already knew I was going to despise her with every fiber of my being, but I also knew he owed me a certain level of exposition, given the amount of time I had spent talking about myself that night. I waited, listening to the hypnotic crush of the waves.

  But Jake threw me a curveball. He hesitated for a few seconds, and then he said, “I’ll tell you next time, okay? That’s…second-date material.”

  “What?” I looked at him. “But I don’t have to wait until the second date, huh?”

  He laughed a little. “No, no, I mean this particular scenario. It’s…well, you’ll understand.”

  Honestly, that should have been the first red flag for me, but I liked Jake too much to think about it. And anyway, I was no stranger to relationship baggage. Besides, he was so sweet and charming, how bad could any of his exes be, right?

  Wrong. In fact, I’ve never been so wrong before in my life.

  CHAPTER 4

  “What do you mean, he didn’t kiss you?” Audrey demanded in my ear. “And why the hell did you tell him about Blaise? He was right, Ari. That is not first-date material. You’re lucky he didn’t just run after that.”

  I rolled my eyes so hard I thought they’d fall out of my head. She could be so overbearing. “I told you, Jake saw me in the parking lot with him. What was I supposed to say? ‘Oh, that’s just my stalker. Don’t mind him.’”

  “Do you have to be honest all the time?” Audrey wanted to know. “It would’ve been just a little white lie. There’s nothing wrong with those.”

  She wasn’t really helping, but I think she knew that. Plus, she did have a point, as much as it pained me to admit it. I hadn’t needed to fill Jake in on all the sordid details. But I had, and it was too late. Still, the thought that I might’ve ruined my chances made my stomach turn. “Ugh,” I said. “Would he have kissed me if I just shut up? Do you think so?”

  “Maybe.” Audrey’s frown was almost audible. “Whose idea was it to drive separately?”

  “Mine,” I said sheepishly. She exhaled, and I got on the defensive. “I had to make sure he wasn’t an axe-murderer! Ted Bundy was really handsome, you know.”

  “Oh my God, Ari. Did you at least get confirmation on a second date?” It’s hilarious how we talk about courtship as if it were a business. Did you get confirmation? Are you waiting on a response? Like finding the right person wasn’t complicated enough already.

  “Yes,” I said, relieved that I had the right answer for once. “He’s calling me this weekend.” This seemed to appease her, and she let me off the hook, but not before extracting a promise to call ASAP after the second date. I was shaking my head as I got up to get ready for work. I swear, you’d think she was my agent or something.

  Halfway through the evening, my coworker Monica met me as I was coming out of the kitchen. She’s usually incredibly sweet, but that night she looked…frazzled. “Could you do me a giant favor?” she asked, a note of near-desperation evident in her voice. “I will literally do anything for you. I’ll take one of your shifts, if you want.”

  “Whoa, whoa.” I held up my hands to stop her. “What’s up?”

  Monica made a motion toward the back section of the dining area. “Can I switch a table with you? I can just take the next one.”

  I arched an eyebrow. It was not a typical request for her. “What table is it, and what’s wrong with them?”

  “It’s thirty-three. Normally I wouldn’t do this, but…she makes me really uncomfortable.”

  “She?” I raised the other eyebrow, but Monica only shook her head.

  “You’ll see. I mean, if you—”

  “Yeah, don’t worry about it. You take my next one.” Immediately, relief spread across her face, and I went off to find out exactly what was so bad about the couple at table thirty-three.

  As soon as I came into view of them, I regretted my decision instantly. Although Monica wasn’t a new employee, we had never really bonded outside of work. She didn’t know my personal history, so of course she hadn’t recognized Blaise Landon for what he was. Just like Friday at the diner, I’m pretty sure my heart stopped beating. His dinner companion had her back to me, but trust me, I could not wait to see what she looked like.

  “Hey,” Blaise said. The tone of his voice was far too congenial. “I didn’t know you still worked here.” His familiar condescension made all kinds of bad tastes crawl into my mouth. I forced a smile.

  “Nice to see you, too. Can I get you anything?” That was when I glanced over at the girl for the first time, and the moment I caught her eye, I understood why Monica passed her off to me. If women were knives, she would’ve been a switchblade. Every strand of her strawberry-blonde hair was in place, and her makeup was flawless, but she had these ruthless, icy eyes that made me wonder what in the hell Blaise thought he was doing with her.

  “Just water for me, thanks,” she said. When she smiled, her teeth were so straight
and white they looked like veneers. I nodded and turned back to Blaise.

  “You want a beer?” I asked.

  He considered it. “Nah, water’s fine for me too.” I had to force back the expression of shock that was fighting to take over my face.

  “Sure. I’ll be right back.” I tried to walk away as quickly as I could without seeming like I was in a hurry. The Blaise I knew would never have refused a beer, much less one that was directly offered. There was only one reason I could think of that would prevent him from imbibing any alcohol at all, and that was the need to make a good impression.

  They were totally on a date.

  Monica went by as I stood at the drink fountain in the back and gave me a grateful smile. I shrugged it off, electing not to tell her about Blaise. Had she known, she’d have been mortified, and I liked her too much to make her day any harder. Walking back to the table with the glasses in hand, I entertained the same thought I’d had on the beach about Jake’s anonymous ex. How bad could she be?

  After I’d asked if they needed a few minutes and received a positive answer, I was preparing to make my leave when Blaise stopped me. “By the way, Ari, this is Alyson. Alyson, Ari. She’s an old friend.” It wasn’t obvious to whom the ‘old friend’ remark was referring, but I strongly suspected he was talking about me.