Page 15 of Hands off his Dudette

Chapter 7

The food was delicious, and the movies never failed to entertain them, however many times they'd both seen them.

The simple companionship was everything to Finn. He hadn't truly understood how much Anna mattered until today, now that his mind was playing cruel games with him. Whispering things such as "what if I lose her?"

She was sitting next to him on the terrible, uncomfortable sofa that had never bothered him until today. Now he realized how hard and unseemly it really was. Shit, he should have made sure that Anna felt at home a long time ago. His neck might have thanked him for it.

Anna got showered and changed while the lasagna was baking, so she was wearing checked PJ pants and a tank top. Her face was freshly cleaned, and her hair tied in a ponytail. It hit him that he found her just as stunning as the day before.

"I wish Tolkien had annexed the recipe to Lembas Bread along his many appendixes," she said toward the end of the first movie.

They'd finished the two Hobbits and naturally followed it up with the first Lord of the Rings.

"You don't bake," Finn reminded her.

"But you could make it," she argued, somewhat reasonably.

He lifted his phone from the goldentable at his side, and sighed when he found it out of battery again.

"Give me your phone, I'll see if there's some recipe online."

She always charged hers.

After entering her password, Finn stared, his lips thin and his jaw set.

Her phone had automatically opened her messaging app and he saw the start of a new message from Nick Stone.

Thanks for yesterday. You were most...

Most what? Finn wondered.

He was dying, dying to click on the message, open it, read it. Instead, he switched apps, opening up a search engine.

"You have a message," he told Anna, before googling the recipe.

It looked simple enough. "We have all the ingredients," he told her. "I'll make it tomorrow night if you want. We can watch the other two movies and eat Lembas."

Anna lifted a brow. "You're not going out?"

He shook his head. He really wasn't in the right headspace to join his college friends and colleagues on a bar hop.

"And are you going on a date with Nick?" he asked, casually.

She shook her head. "Yeah, that would be a no. I won't see Nick again."

Oh.

"Oh" was the only thought that he could clearly formulate on the matter. He found himself saying it out loud. "Oh?"

As she added nothing, Finn nudged. "Why?"

"We didn't click." She didn't seem to care on way or another. "He was rude to our waiter," she added with a little wrinkle of her nose.

"Dick move. You're better off without him."

And Finn certainly felt a lot better now he was out of the picture. He smiled.

"Amelia is setting me up with a doctor from the hospital where she volunteers on Sunday, though. Wren knows him."

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