Page 36 of Love or Leave

"They're going to get a lot of attention."

"And cause a lot of trouble," Max added.

Ethan laughed and shook his head. "We were thinking it would be fun to do a joint bachelor and bachelorette party bus tour. But there's not a lot of time."

"I can take off whenever," Max said.

"Same," said Adam. "What's your schedule like?"

Antonio shrugged. "Chaotic, but I'm owed a lot of favours."

Adam smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze. "Thanks, man. I'm glad you're here."

Antonio smiled and nodded. "Me, too."

They dove into discussing the details—the venue, flowers, food, and everything else—but Antonio fell silent. He wasn't much of a talker, anyway. But he was incredibly grateful to be there with friends and to have things to look forward.

He'd meant it when he'd told Cara that his new group of friends in Mapleton was the only thing going right in his life.

And it was going very right, and he was very thankful.

nine

Cara sat across from Jalen and resisted the urge to fidget with her bracelet as her mind flitted, trying to remember the topics she'd read to bring up on a first date. She'd felt good at the start of the date, excited even. But now that they were there, sitting across from each other in silence, she was panicking.

She made a mental note to look up how to cope with silence when she got home, then cleared her throat. "So, what do you do for work?"

Jalen looked up from his menu and put on an arrogant smile. "I'm a lead software engineer for a tech startup."

Cara nodded, searched for a follow-up question while he went back to reading the menu.

"What are you engineering?"

Jalen looked up again, then glanced around as if it was a stupid question.

Was it?

"I just work on code all day."

She wanted to say “coding what?” but didn't want to face his arrogance again, so she kept her mouth shut.

To say it wasn't going great would be an understatement.

Well, maybe that wasn't fair. He hadn't done or said anything problematic to her. He just didn't seem that interested in speaking, which made her incredibly uncomfortable.

She pretended to peruse her own menu, even though she could recite it like the quadratic equation.

When he'd suggested “this great new place called Keller's,” she'd agreed, expecting him to see the connection, but then realized he didn't even know her last name.

Then she was sure he'd figure it out when both the hostess and waiter greeted her by name, but he just smiled obliviously and sat.

It was clear he wasn't that curious about her. In fact, he hadn't asked her a single question in the ten minutes they'd already spent sitting across from each other.

Cara glanced at her watch. Nope, it had only been four minutes.

Why was time moving so slowly?

She hoped their conversation would become more organic as they settled in and became comfortable, but it wasn't looking good, and she was getting more and more fidgety.

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