He winced, staring at me with a pitying expression. “Yeah, you probably didn’t know, so I’ll give you a pass, but we find getting called Stevies offensive.”
“Oh.” What do you even say to that?
“I’m glad that I got a chance to tell you about all this now… especially away from that bartender and his immodest outfit.” Peter muttered, glaring in the direction David had gone with our orders, as if the man had done something to him personally.
“You think that the bartender is dressed… immodestly?” I didn’t have to look at David to recall exactly what he was wearing. A long-sleeved button up, that was form-fitting. The fabric hugged every inch of that chiseled body, giving just a hint of muscles in all the right places. David wore coal gray chinos that were dressy and fitted enough to show off the generous curve of an ass that was nothing short of a work of art. So Sexy David was immodest—in his long sleeves and dress pants? In an outfit that covered almost every inch of his body? “How is it immodest?”
Okay, so I only mildly didn’t want to know about the chicken. Ireallydidn’t want to know what this Peter guy found wrong with Sexy David’s wardrobe.
Peter sighed heavily, staring down at his folded hands, like the full force of Sexy David’simmodest outfitweighed heavily on him. “You just seem like such a lovely girl. I’d hate to see someone as beautiful and innocent as you lose their way… fall into the path of sin.”
“Uh huh.” How do you take back a question—before getting an answer? Was Peter really suggesting that Sexy David’s outfit would drag me into a world of sin?
I mean… itwassinfully delicious, but his apparel would only drag me into sin if I was lucky. Preferably at that point, those clothes would besinfullyarranged somewhere on the floor of his bedroom… or something.
Honestly, the only sinful part of this whole situation was the fact that David just seemed so damn perfect when dating him was out of the question. But just because his outfit was evil or whatever, didn’t mean that I wanted my date to go on telling me how the hot bartender’s outfit was evil.
“But when men don clothing, they must not wear excessive finery. That shows that their hearts are never with the Lord, but filled instead with themselves. The fabric holds the weight of all their ego.” Peter sighed, like he was exasperated with all these men who had theaudacityto want to look nice.
So basically, the outfit that Peter chose for this date wasn’t a mistake; it was a direct instruction from the divine authority of some guy named Stephen Brown. If I was understanding him correctly, Sexy David’s outfit was immodest… because it was too sexy. The fact that he looked good meant his heart was like, ungodly or whatever.
Right.
“I see…”
“It is my dearest wish that you do see. That I can pull you away from this path of unrighteousness and lead you back intothe light.” Peter’s eyes were wide and pleading. Begging me to let him save me.
Yeah, no.
If I were going to be converted into a cult, it would at least be one that let me dress cool and eat my damn chicken.
This had to be some kind of cosmic joke, right? Was online dating really this hard, or was I just extremely bad at picking out guys?
My spiraling thoughts were interrupted when David returned with our food. I smiled at him, letting my gaze linger for just a moment on hisimmodestoutfit.
Making direct eye contact with Peter, I speared the biggest chunk of chicken from my salad and plopped it straight into my mouth, chewing with relish. Ignoring the fact that he got slightly tense, as if I was murdering the poultry right in front of him.
If I had to deal with another wasted date, I was at least going to enjoy the food.
CHAPTER 6
AVRIL
As usual,Zane knocked at the absolute worst possible time.
I rolled my eyes the moment my back turned after letting him into my room. Wine glass in hand, my hair mussed up from all the times I ran my hands through it in exasperation… my workspace was unrecognizable. The seating charts and bridal magazines were nowhere in sight. Now instead, I had resorted to printing out pictures of some of the beta guys and lining them up on my corkboard like a list of wanted posters for the FBI… it really didn’t help that I had attached tacks with little pieces of yarn to connect some of the pictures.
Okay, so when I had started doing this about an hour ago, I had thought that it would help me to visualize important personality traits… but looking at it now without any context; it looked like I was tracking a serial killer. Or making a list of my next victims. Whatever was going on, there was something about yarn on a corkboard that gave off the vibe that I was doing some crazy paranoid shit.
Zane walked straight to my workspace, staring at the corkboard with his eyebrows raised. He waved at my picture collection. “Is this a good thing, or…”
“It’s fine. Everything’s fine. I mean, the last two dates I went on were the worst I’d had in my life, but besides that, everything’s just peachy.” I took a deep sip of wine, then stopped to swirl it around a bit, staring at the deep purple, when what I really wanted to do was down the rest of the glass like a shot and grab another.
“Whoa, sis. Two bad dates doesn’t mean anything. Everyone goes on bad dates every once in a while.”
“My last date—the guy was in a literal cult.”
Zane winced. “How did you know that he was in a cult?”
