Page 77 of Guys Can't Write Romance
“I don’t understand what you find amusing about that.”
“Nothing,” she said quickly. “Just remembering something.”
Like the way Chad had explained the seventh-inning stretch by demonstrating increasingly ridiculous stretches until she’d laughed so hard her sides hurt. Or how he’d taught her to keep score using greasy French fries as position markers, then ate up all the errors.
“So, what do you think about that?” Ethan’s voice pulled her back to the present.
“About what?” she said, realizing with a start that he’d been talking this entire time.
“Were you even listening?”
“Sorry. I got a little distracted.”
“Apparently so. I was explaining an interesting article I read on the correlation between proper dining etiquette and career advancement. Did you know that people pick up on social cues like that when considering promotions?”
“No. I didn’t know that,” she said, basically on autopilot at this point, but her mind was still at O’Donnell’s, where someone was now attempting ‘Born to be Wild’ with more enthusiasm than talent.
As she listened, something occurred to her: the old Daisy, in the pre-Chad days, would have been horrified at the idea of going inside a sports bar or singing karaoke. The old Daisywouldn’t be walking to a five-star restaurant thinking about baseball and French fry scorekeeping and the way Chad’s eyes lit up when he laughed.
Oh, man.
The realization hit her like a punch in the gut. When had she stopped being the old Daisy? When had her carefully constructed world of order and predictability started feeling like a constraint rather than a comfort?
And why didn’t that terrify her as much as it should?
She glanced at Ethan, walking beside her with perfect posture, engaged in a monologue about proper networking strategies, completely unaware of the seismic shift occurring in her thoughts.
“Daisy?” Ethan frowned. “You seem distracted. Is everything alright?”
“Just thinking about character development,” she said.
And it was the truth.
She just wasn’t sure anymore which character was really developing, the one in her novel, or herself.
Within fifteen minutes of extracting Chad from his apartment, the boys rolled into The Salty Siren with Chad in tow.
“Red alert, Carly!” Troy called to the cute blond bartender as they carried Chad in. “We need drinks, stat.”
“And nothing fruity, no matter how much he begs,” Brett added.
They planted Chad on a stool at the bar, and Rhino slapped his credit card down on the bar. “We’ve got a major crisis over here,” Rhino said to Carly as she walked over. “Can you keep the drinks coming until he doesn’t look like this anymore.” He pointed to Chad.
Carly looked at Chad. “You mean the mopey look like someone just killed his puppy?”
“That’s the one.”
“I’m not moping,” Chad insisted. “I’m plotting revenge on these guys.”
Carly poured a pint of beer and slid it to Chad. “What happened?”
“These idiots kidnapped me.”
“He’s leaving out the reason why,” Rhino stepped back in. “I want you to picture this. You come home from the gym, ready to kick back and have some normalcy, and there’s your roommate watching Hallmark movies. Your male roommate.”
Carly snickered. “Chad McKenzie was watching Hallmark movies?”
“Yup. Caught him in the act. And found a stash of them under the TV.”
