“You too.”
He didn’t know people usually called her Sam. He didn’t know her.
He was a nice-enough-looking man. He had a pleasing symmetry about him. But that’s all it was. Pleasing. It didn’t make her feel like she was struggling to breathe, or like her skin was too tight or…
She cleared her throat. “Are you…from here?”
“Uh, no. I’m here on business.”
She wondered if he had a wife at home. But that didn’t matter. Because she had a husband at home.Nothingwas going to happen.
This was just a novelty. A wild, out of her every experience novelty. Wasn’t that the point of all this?
“What kind of business?” she asked.
“It’s a real estate agent convention,” he said.
She laughed because she really couldn’t help herself. “A real estate agent? Wow.”
“What?”
“I have a type,” she said, taking a sip of her margarita and grimacing. “Or a type has me. I don’t know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Well, she’d walked herself into this one. “My uh…my husband is a real estate agent.”
He looked down at her hand, which she knew was bare. “You’re married?”
Well, this was the moment. She could say yes, and he’d probably leave, and she wouldn’t know what it was like to spend the evening being flirted with by a random man, or he’d stay and prove he was maybe a little more of a creep than she could enjoy even just for a conversation.
But why flirt with him at all?
You’re Penelope to his Odysseus, remember?
Flirting wasn’t sexing it up with sirens, so her inner voice could calm the hell down.
“Separated,” she said.
“Sorry. Been there. Not fun.”
She laughed. “No.”
“What brings you here?”
“Oh, I’m traveling with a friend who restores classic cars. I’m the secondary driver on the trip.”
“Wow. What kind of car?”
“A 1957 Bel Air.”
“I have no idea what that is,” he said, smiling. “I guess that makes me uncultured.”
She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have known until recently, but I’m now intimately acquainted.” She regretted her choice of words slightly. Except he looked like he was genuinely enjoying talking with her.
What a novelty.
A man who hadn’t known her since high school. Who didn’t just think he knew everything about her, but had to actually ask.
