“No, I’m set. Thanks, though.”
Her roommates left for brunch, and she went on staring at her device. The instant the phone registered sufficient power to turn itself on, she unlocked the screen, checked that no emergencies had been reported in the Monaghan family chat, opened her message thread with Bannister—and made a noise like shower sandals skidding on wet tile, something between a groan and a shriek.
“Argh!”
He’d sent his first message just after she’d dropped her phone into the bathroom sink. The next texts had come more than an hour after they’d planned to meet at the bar.
Damn.
Last night’s alcohol headache rose again, blood vessels pulsing in her skull like the bass beats from the Wine Room. A waterlogged phone, frustrated and tipsy tears over a bottle of Chardonnay, and Ethan Meyer, stiff and awkward in aftershave-scented cashmere?
Disaster.
She swallowed, breathed, and clicked into the reply field.
Erin
Hi, Bannister. I’m so sorry about not responding to your messages last night, and sorry that we didn’t find each other in the Wine Room. I dropped my phone into the sink in the bathroom, and it died.
She didn’t mention why she’d been so uncoordinated, or why she’d been in the bathroom at the exact time when they were supposed to meet. She didn’t mention her run-in with Ethan, or why she would’ve been bad company for anyone—even Bannister—after her confrontation with her rival at the door. What use would that be? The odds of artistic Bannister knowing robotic Dr. Ethan Meyer were miniscule. Sharing his name would explain nothing. She hadn’t left their encounter feeling particularly proud of herself, either.
Pulse, went her headache.
She closed her eyes and typed blindly.
Erin
Could we reschedule and try again?
To avoid watching the screen for his reply, she gulped down an ibuprofen, yanked on a pair of running shorts, bundled her hair into a ponytail, taped up her blistered toes, then fought her way through the head opening of a racerback tank top when a lightsaber’sswishsounded from her phone.
Bannister
It’s fine. I’m glad you’re all right.
She sagged in relief, and swiveled the reversed shirt around her neck to insert her arms.
Bannister
Rescheduling is good. The bar was so loud last night that it wouldn’t have been an easy place to talk, anyway.
Erin
It was! I think one of the groups there might’ve been a bachelorette party.
Then again, attempting to prove she’d been on site, that she wasn’t making excuses for standing him up:
Erin
Did you try any of the wines? My white went nicely with the house snack platter.
Bannister
I had a Malbec. It tasted like tannin.
He’d been one of the twenty or thirty men drinking red. That didn’t narrow down the possibilities for identifying him by much: any one of the people with whom she’d bumped shoulders or knees that night—people who’d seen her with her mascara dripping and her gestures sloppy. Who might’ve seen her confrontation with Ethan. He could’ve been anyone, and seen anything. So she didn’t ask Bannister what he’d worn on Saturday, or where he’d waited for her. If she broached those questions, he could volley them back to her. And the truth was, she didn’t want him to have seen her there. But she’d manage their second meeting differently. She’d make very sure that Ethan wasn’t present, too.
Erin
