Page 134 of First-Time Caller
“Oh, yeah. There were flowers. No card, though.” I pause, feeling awkward. “Sorry about that.”
“Ah, it’s no worries. A beautiful woman deserves beautiful flowers.”
“Oh. Um. Thank—thank you.” I stammer. My face feels like it’s on fire. Aiden is still staring at his notepad, silent. I have no idea what to do with myself. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of the ocean without a life raft, and Aiden is waving from the deck of a ship as he slowly passes by. “Did you want to hear a song, or . . .”
I kick Aiden under the table. He jolts in his seat. “Yeah,” he agrees, sullen. “Want to play a tune for Rosie?”
Colin chuckles. “I was hoping I could play a song for Lucie, if that’s all right?”
Oh boy. Oh god. I officially want the planet to swallow me whole. I want to become one with the magma within the Earth’s crust. I guess Ms. Shirley was right. “Colin, that’s really sweet, but—”
“What song?” Aiden asks, cutting me off.
“‘Gasoline’ by Audioslave. You know? Because Lu is a mechanic?”
“That’s lovely,” Aiden deadpans. “Sounds like you’re an excellent candidate for ‘Lucie’s Road to Love, sponsored by Mr. Tire.’”
I stare at him, my heart in my throat. I cover my microphone with my hand. “Aiden. What are you doing?”
Colin laughs nervously on the other end of the line. “I mean, yeah. I was sort of hoping she’d be interested.”
“She is,” Aiden says, and something dark and ugly sinks like a knife between my shoulder blades. I’m not and he knows that. Heknowsit. “Hold tight for me, Colin. We’ll get you guys set up after this song.”
He stabs the buttons on his keyboard and rips off his headphones before the song can start. I hear a guitar riff and slowly slip my headphones off too.
Silence stretches thick between us. I’m waiting for an explanation that Aiden has no intention of providing.
“I’m interested?” I finally ask, while Aiden continues to try to mop up the spilled ink from his broken pen, his jaw clenched tight and his knee bouncing up and down.
“He seems like a nice guy,” Aiden bites out, tossing a heap of wet napkins into the wastebasket. Ink is smeared across his notebook, a deep slash of black.
“So, you decided to sign me up for a date?” I hate how my voice is wobbling. It makes me feel weak. Worse, it makes me feel stupid.
He shrugs his shoulders. “He sent you flowers.”
“And?”
“You never told me someone sent you flowers.”
Because I didn’t think they were for me. No one has ever sent me flowers before. “I didn’t—”
“You seem to have common interests,” Aiden continues, talking over me. “Things to talk about.”
“I mean, car repair is more of a job than an interest, but—”
“He’s a good choice for you. The right choice.”
I shake my head. “You said I’d be the boss. That I’d get to decide.”
Aiden nods, finally meeting my eyes for the first time tonight. But they look wrong. Distant. Guarded. He crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair. “I’m just nudging you in the right direction. Sometimes you need a nudge.”
I flinch. “What are you—” My voice breaks in the middle. “What’s happening right now?” I manage on a whisper.
Aiden’s eyes fall to my knees. I feel like I’ve swallowed an entire nest of bees, an anxious buzzing in my throat. I swallow around it, but it gets worse the longer he doesn’t answer.
“Aiden.” I say his name and his eyes soften. But he still doesn’t look at me. “You want me to go out with this guy?”
His hand rises and I notice a faint tremble before he drags his thumb below his bottom lip. He takes his time to answer, and that’s a different sort of pain. A crack in the middle of my chest.
