He was an older man with a salt-and-pepper handlebar mustache that made me smile, and his nose scrunched as he looked over the list of names in front of him. “It will be approximately forty minutes before I can have a table ready for you twobelle donne. You may wait here or I can seat you at the bar to await your table. The choice is yours.”
My gaze shifted to Alana, silently asking what she preferred to do.
“The bar is fine,” she said to the maître d’. She turned to me and tossed me a wink. “That bartender is super cute.”
The maître d’ scoffed at Alana’s comment and blushed crimson, clearly flustered with her forwardness. He gestured with his head for us to follow him and led us to the bar.
“Thank you,” I told him as I sat on the barstool and picked up the drink menu that laid on the bar in front of me. He gave a curt nod before scurrying away.
“You calling the bartender cute embarrassed him,” I told Alana while handing her the drink menu.
She shrugged, skimming over the menu in front of her. “It’s not a crime for a woman to find another woman attractive. The bartender is a bombshell. Just look at her.”
Following her gaze to the woman behind the bar, I nodded, agreeing with Alana that she was beautiful. She gracefully floated around the bar, her smile warm as she sat drinks in front of her customers. “So what’s it going to be?” I asked, nodding my head toward the menu in her hands.
“Ugh, I don’t know. What are you getting?”
“Moscato, I’m in the mood for sweet.”
“That sounds good. I’ll get the same.” She closed the drink menu and sat it down in front of her.
As Alana watched the bartender, I swiveled on my barstool and looked around at everyone in the restaurant. A variety of people dined on their meals: couples on dates, groups of friends enjoying a meal together, families catching up. A few even dined alone, and I smiled, knowing that sometimes eating alone at a restaurant was exactly what the soul needed.
My eyes drifted from table to table, but snapped back to one in particular, a face that I recognized.
Oliver?
Spinning back toward Alana, I gripped her wrist. “Oh my God, I think that’s Oliver.”
Her eyes tore away from the movements of the bartender and met mine. “Who’s Oliver?” she asked with confusion.
“Oliver. Remember the guy from SparksFly who ghosted me? We were supposed to meet for dinner and he never showed?”
“OH! Oliver. Yes. See, in my mind, his name was just douchebag.”
I snorted, rolling my eyes at her while I nodded my head. “Well, I’m pretty sure that’s him. At least it looks like him.”
She turned on her stool, following my line of sight to the man sitting across the room at a table for two near the window. Across from him sat a woman with raven hair and bright red lipstick. She threw her head back with laughter, and Oliver beamed at her. They looked happy, and even though he stood me up for our date, I was happy that it had all worked out in the end.
“She’s too hot for him, but then again, so are you,” Alana chimed. “Oh shit, he’s looking over here.”
Alana giggled, “Double crap. Guess who’s walking over here right now.”
Groaning, I tossed my head back, rolling it side to side on my shoulders to ease some of the tension. This would be awkward.
“Lily?” a deep baritone sounded behind us. I huffed out a breath before turning around yet again. Here goes nothing.
Pasting on a plastic smile, I gave him a small wave. “Hey, Oliver, right? I thought that was you.”
His fingers mechanically brushed over the top of his head through his hair. “Yeah, same. Look, I won’t take much of your time, but I just wanted to come over and apologize to you about not texting you back after we were supposed to meet up for a date.”
“Um, that’s okay. What happened, though? Just decided you weren’t interested?”
“Oh, no. When I got to the restaurant, there was a cop outside, and he demanded that I blow you off and I lose your number. He didn’t seem like the type of guy whose bad side you wanted to be on, so I weighed the risks and unfortunately, despite really wanting to get to know you, decided I wasn’t really in a position to be pissing off cops. So, I left. But that doesn’t excuse my behavior or my choice, and I apologize.”
My heart plummeted into my stomach. Noah. Noah had sabotaged my date. That selfish mother fu—, “Way to have a backbone, Oliver,” I laughed manically, shaking my head as I assessed him with fresh eyes. The man I had once found attractive in his profile picture stood before me and I didn’t know what I had even seen in him to begin with.
I wasn’t upset that he had chosen self-preservation but found the entire situation absolutely hysterical. I couldn’t stop laughing.
