Page 19 of Cakewalk
I felt an odd pang deep down in my chest, and I wasn’t sure what it meant. Maybe it was trying to tell me:Hey, moron, this is the type of girl you actually get serious with. She sees something in you that nobody else has. She sees you as a better man than you are.
But I wasn’t that better man. She deserved someone better than an ex-con.
So I’d help her get over this fear of hers instead. I’d help her stop thinking of sex as this do-or-die thing. Then she’d be able to move forward with her life.
“Want me to help you christen your new apartment?” Jade started, trying to sound confident and failing pretty hard. “I don’t know if you’ve been inside yet, but it comes with a bed.”
I glanced out the windows. “I have somewhere else in mind. But let’s table that discussion for now, shall we?”
Her brows furrowed, but she nodded. “Okay.”
I looked over the menu, remembering she had mentioned that she loved this place. “What’s good here?”
“Everything. The chicken parm’s great.”
The waitress eventually returned, took our orders, both chicken parmesans, then we were alone again, save for the old couple in the back. I turned my full attention to Jade, whose big hazel eyes and constantly blushing cheeks I couldn’t get enough of.
“So, you quit the family cake shop. Any plans for what you might do next?”
She shook her head softly. “I’ll probably look around at the local non-profits. There’s the animal shelter, the food kitchen. Sometimes the Historical Society will renovate one of the old homes or buildings. One of those could probably use someone like me.”
“As a volunteer?”
“No. As a fundraiser. Setting up fundraising events and awareness campaigns for donations. PR work, basically. There are lots of retirees around here, and they can scrounge up a lot of funding if you can convince them the cause is good, and that you have a good plan for their money. It’s not like this town has much of an economy from tourists or new residents moving in, so the retirees are really the only way to subsist around here.”
I nodded, intrigued by it all. I hadn’t really considered how places like this town got money outside of commerce. Raising money wasn’t ever a thing I had to worry about. “So, is that what you were going to college for?”
“Yeah,” she said, her expression rueful. “Just a general business degree. I dropped out, though.”
“I remember you telling me. To help your sister.”
“Partially.”
I was surprised to hear that.
“I had all of this anxiety too, though. And tuition was so expensive, yet I wasn’t seeing how it was ever going to pay off. College was sold to me as some sort of life changing experience, and like some milestone Ihadto hit to be a fully fledged adult. But most of the classes felt pointless. Completely unrelated to what I wanted to do. I’d rather get real experience in the field.”
“Nothing beats real experience,” I said, and she seemed relieved, as if she had thought I might judge her as a no-good drop-out. “I don’t have a degree either, yet I’m running a multi-million dollar company. I learned everything I needed to know under my father’s wing.”
Jade smiled at that. “You must be close to your father, then.”
She couldn’t be more wrong. “Sometimes. So you have a place to stay?”
“Yeah. I’m house- and pet-sitting for a couple of months. Hence King Kong.”
“That damned lizard who got us into this mess.”
She laughed. “That’s the one.”
Once our food arrived, it seemed neither of us had a huge appetite. As good as the meal was, we only picked at it. I think we were both thinking about the mutually beneficial arrangement we had agreed upon.
Thankfully, she didn’t ask me too many personal questions, probably picking up on my earlier caginess about myself. I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to avoid telling her exactly what I had been up to the past five years if she had asked me more directly. Instead, she talked about some Calhoon history, then books and shows she liked, and didn’t seem to realize that I wasn’t familiar with anything that was released in the past half decade.
Still, her enthusiasm was cute.
Eventually it came time to finish up. The old couple was long gone, and I had a feeling the owner was waiting for us to leave so he could call it a night, if his hovering by the register was anything to go by. It was sad to see this place so dead, especially considering how good dinner was.
When the check came, I handed the waitress my credit card. Jade made a half-hearted attempt to pay half, but when I insisted, she gave in without much fuss.
