Page 59 of First-Time Caller
Grayson looks offended. “I didn’t break. I entered. The door was open.”
“Assault then.”
Grayson claps me on the shoulder and shakes me once. “He’s fine.”
Lucie frowns at me. “Sorry about all of this.”
I shake my head. “Don’t worry about it.” I don’t care about canvas paintings or Hughie still shifting awkwardly in the doorway or why Lucie’s baby daddy is rushing to defend her honor in the middle of the night. I only care why Lucie has that look on her face and what happened. “Why don’t you come back? Have a coffee.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to be in the booth.”
I could not possibly care any less about the show. “You don’t need to be in the booth,” I murmur, taking half a step closer. My fingertips drift along her elbow. “You’re freezing. Warm up for a few minutes.”
I’m desperate to keep her here. I can feel it buzzing under my skin, the frantic desire tofix it. Whatever it is.
“She doesn’t need to be in the booth, but you do,” Maggie interrupts. “Jackson’s been in there too long. You know what happens when he gets antsy.”
He starts nervously talking in weather jargon and no one has any idea what he’s saying. I sigh, aggravated. Maggie must be able to tell, because she presses her palm to my shoulder, pushing. “The booth, Aiden,” she says again. “Lucie. Grayson. Why don’t you two come back to my office? We’ll see if we can figure this out.”
“Absolutely not,” I cut in.
Maggie arches an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”
“You can’t shove me back in the booth,” I say, on the verge of losing my fucking mind. I look over at Lucie again. She’s staring at the floor, arms curled around herself, eyes puffy. It’s breaking my heart. I clench my jaw and look back to Maggie. “Not until I know Lucie is okay.”
Grayson makes a considering sound somewhere to the left of me. “I like this one,” he murmurs to Lucie. To me, he says, “Apologies for almost punching you in the face.”
I wave my hand. I would have punched myself in the face too if I thought I made Lucie cry. “Don’t worry about it.”
The four of us—five, including Hughie—stand there in the lobby in an awkward standoff. I can feel the impatience rolling off Maggie next to me, but she doesn’t push Lucie to explain.
“This is an overreaction,” Lucie tries.
“Can’t be helped,” Grayson says, hands shoved in his pockets. “Might as well spill the beans, Lu.”
She gives him a half-hearted glare and then scratches above her eyebrow. She drops her hand to her side with a sigh.
“I’m fine,” she says, and everyone in the room makes different sounds of skepticism. “Elliott had a stupid bet with his friends, okay? He thought he could . . . trick me, I guess. By saying all the right things. He wanted to prove that women who want romance are silly or something. It was all very ridiculous. I left him at the restaurant and came home. He didn’t do anything. He made me feel stupid. That’s all.”
I’m going to kill that slimy piece of shit.
“Maggie,” I say slowly, my voice calm despite the rage twisting in my gut. “Don’t you have some sort of database for the people who text that phone?”
Grayson looks how I feel, his shoulders hunched to his ears and his mouth twisted in a frown. “An address, perhaps?”
“I have an ice pick in my car,” Hughie adds from his spot by the door.
Maggie presses her hand to her chest. “Jesus Christ, Hughie.”
“No,” Lucie says, her smile a fraction of its usual size. She looks at Hughie, then Grayson, then me. “No,” she says again, softer. “It’s fine. It’s over. I dumped a glass of fancy white wine on his lap so it looked like he peed himself. I would like to move on and never speak of this again.”
“You know how you should move on?” Grayson asks, still looking like he’d like to commit a crime but also like he’s just been handed his very favorite gift. Lucie is back to looking resigned to her fate.
“I’m sure you’re going to tell me, Gray.”
He hardly waits for her to finish. “You should go on another date.”
“I’m not sure how that will—”
