Page 17 of Comeback
She stared at me until the sight of me made her roll her eyes. No answer.
“I’m still looking for that, too,” I said. I pointed at her ring. “So what does Mackenzie’s father do in Bayfield?”
She looked at her ring and stifled a laugh. “He doesn’t live here, and he didn’t give me the ring, either.”
“I see. Who did?”
“Someone close to me.”
I eyed her suspiciously. Wasshe taken or not?
She was quick to change the subject. “What doyoudo in Bayfield, Jack?”
“I’m just enjoying life right now,” I said, and something inside me winced in revolt. It was funny how something could be true and yet so wrong at the same time …
“Ah, you’re unemployed,” she said with a note of judgment.
“If you want to put it like that, yeah, I guess,” I said. I never told girls what I did in a previous life, or that I never had to worry about money again.
“You guess?” she asked, making a face.
“I stay busy.”
She wasn’t impressed by my evasiveness.
“Weird,” she said.
This was going sideways, and I was kicking myself for asking her out in the first place. I wasn’t even sure what I was after with her. And that was exactly why I didn’t try to talk to people—there wasn’t anything I could say without revealing myself.
“This was a mistake,” I said. “Look, forget it. I’m sorry I dragged you over here. I can see that you hate me.”
I started to slide out of the booth, but she stopped me from leaving.
“Wait. I don’t hateyou. I don’t evenknowyou. I just don’t want you to get the wrong idea.”
“About what?”
“Me. I’m not interested in seeing anybody right now.”
“So you’re single?”
She slapped her palm on the table and laughed. “That—right there! That’s what I’m talking about. Your eyes just lit up when you asked me that.”
“Well …” I laughed. “Areyou single?”
“I’m a single mom, Jack. My hands are very, very full, and I don’t have the time to play games.”
“Huh.”
She clicked her tongue. “And now you look disappointed.”
“No, it’s not that. I mean—I guess I had this idea in my head that you were happily married.”
Her face scrunched with confusion. “You wanted to take a happily married woman out on a dinner date?”
I hung my head. “It’s complicated.”
“Right. I’m sure it is.”
