Page 37 of Summer Affair
She glued her gaze to her glass, watching the condensation slip slowly down the side and onto the counter. She wanted to forget the whole thing, drive home, crawl under the covers with a giant box of doughnuts and die silently of embarrassment.
“Poor Ken will have to find somewhere else to sit.”
“He will?”
“Oh yeah. Any guy who vacates a seat across from a beautiful lady deserves to lose his seat.” Clay slid into the booth, almost dwarfing it with his sheer size. Behind him, her two trouble rousers rose their hands in the air like goalposts, to imply touchdown.
“He’s just a widower practicing putting himself out there, so we talked about how hard it was.” She met his gaze head-on. “Are you here to save me from the humiliation?”
His whole face softened, and he rested his hands on the table, an inch from hers. In fact, she’d been thinking about him all week. Had a hard time keeping from glancing over every two seconds.
“I’m here to talk with you.” He looked over his shoulder at Ken, who was looking back. “He anyoneIneed to have a talk with?”
She snorted. “Nope. Nice but boring.”
He smiled and nearly knocked her off her seat. “His banter wasn’t Jillian-grade?”
“No, not his fault. He’s an engineer, mainly robotic. So he talks to machines all day. He told me how they tested the sensitivity level of the suction and pull lever by placing a stack of hundreds on the conveyor belt, then made it rain over a blow-up doll named Lana.”
His smile curled up at the edges. “Suction and Pull? Worst pickup line ever?”
“Not any worse than, ‘While I’m in strong favor of both those statements, you might want to wait until I turn my back,’” she said in a manly voice.
“First off, I don’t sound like that,” he defended. “And secondly, I was being a gentleman.” Clay rested his elbows on the table. “Did he ask you out for a date?”
“Nope, he told me I reminded him of his daughter’s third-grade teacher. So I told him instead of practicing on me, he should go ask her out tomorrow at carpool pickup.”
“Jillian the matchmaker.”
“Jillian the Girl on Fire, who is incredibly out of practice with small talk.”
“I disagree. Your small talk is on par. As for practicing, practice on me.”
She peered up at him, knowing that despite the dim lighting he could see her blush. “Why?”
“Maybe I need some practice.” This time when she snorted, he didn’t laugh. He looked serious and almost shy. “So, what’s step one?”
“You offer to buy me a drink.” He signaled to Owen for a refill on Jillian’s drink, then clicked up a second finger.
“You just ordered a drink that comes with a toasted marshmallow for garnish.”
“Are you saying I’m too manly for a s’more-tini?”
“Well, yeah.” He laughed and the tension between them broke. The connection felt easy like it had been before she snapped at him. “I came here tonight to talk to you,” she admitted.
“I want to talk to you too.”
She reached across the table and put a hand over his mouth. He lifted a brow. “Can I go first before I lose my nerve?” She didn’t even let him answer and she didn’t remove her hand. “The other day, I was just thrown by your kindness and instead of seeing it for the genuine favor that it was, I tried to find some ulterior motive, when there wasn’t one.”
He tried to speak, and she pressed her hand firmer to his mouth. She felt him grin against her palm. “And what I should have said is thank you. No matter how hard it was for my pride, I couldn’t have swung summer camp right now and without your donation, I would have maxed out my credit cards.”
She lowered her hands. “I have a hard time accepting help because by the end of my marriage I felt helpless. With Dirk there’s never any compromise. If I wanted to make the marriage work, and for Sammy I did, then I had to find ways to fit into Dirk’s world, and that often meant giving up things that mattered to me.”
“Like what?”
Her muscles tensed with shame as she struggled to maintain eye contact. “My career, my friends, big pieces of identity. The old adage ‘It’s my way or the highway’ was alive and well in our marriage. Three years later, I need a podcast to help reclaim the parts of myself that I loved and lost. So when things are taken out of my control, it kicks up that cornered feeling I used to get in my marriage. However, that didn’t give me the right to snap at you and I’m sorry. I’m always afraid people will go back on their word and leave me to pick up the pieces.”
Silently, he reached out and gently brushed his finger across her knuckles. “You don’t have anything to apologize for. Everything you said was right. I should have told you, especially when we kissed. I just didn’t want it to feel like all the other donations. This one was different. Sammy is different.”
