Page 47 of October
“I’d have a reason to pick them up.”
“India wasn’t reason enough?” Molly asked.
Finley just shook her head.
???
After they both took the brochures with the shelter’s information, slipping them into Molly’s purse and Finley’s pocket, they walked down the street to the restaurant where Finley had made a reservation. Once inside, Finley gave the hostess her name, and the woman grabbed two menus and some silverware wrapped in paper napkins and walked them to a table by the street-facing window. Molly sat down, and the hostess handed her the menu. Finley followed, and Molly caught her staring.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing. I’m just looking at you,” Finley said.
“Do I have dog hair on me or something?”
“No, Molls. You’re just really pretty, is all,” Finley said with a smile before she blushed a little and looked down at the menu as she opened it.
Molly blushed, too, and hid it beneath her own menu. Had she just made Finley Storm blush? Had Finley just called her pretty? This was all happening way too fast. It was somehow also way too slow. She’d wanted this for so long, since the first time she had seen Finley at work. Here they were at dinner together after all this time, though, and it felt like it was happening too quickly. Molly couldn’t process that this was a date, even though she knew it was.
“So, what are you in the mood for?” Finley asked.
“I don’t know,” she said.
She’d been staring at the menu but hadn’t retained anything she had read.
“Appetizer?”
“Whatever you want,” she said.
“They don’t have potato skins here,” Finley replied.
Molly lowered her menu and smiled, letting Finley know that she’d gotten the joke.
“We could try the calamari,” Finley suggested. “Do you eat seafood?”
“Sometimes. I like calamari.”
“I’ll get that, then.”
When the waiter approached, Finley ordered their appetizer and a beer for herself, and Molly just said she’d have the same, but she changed her mind at the last second.
“Actually, can I have wine instead?”
“Wine?” Finley asked.
“Yeah. Um… Red,” she said to the waiter. “The house wine is fine.”
“Sure,” he said and walked off.
“Wine?” Finley repeated her question. “I thought you were a beer girl.”
“I can do both,” she said.
“Oh, okay.”
Finley seemed confused but didn’t say anything else.
When the waiter returned with their drinks and asked them for their entrée orders, Molly thought about what India might have ordered here. She didn’t know why, and she tried to push it out of her mind. Finley had even told her that she liked that Molly was an eater. Still, she couldn’t stop herself.
