Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (115 page)

I typed and deleted, typed and deleted,
typed and deleted until I finally had a message I thought would be short enough
without being demanding or sounding pathetic.
How’s Friday night treating you?
I tapped send before I could think
about it too much and put my phone aside, standing and walking into the kitchen
to give myself something to do. I didn’t want a beer; I definitely didn’t want
anything harder than a beer—the idea of drinking my sorrows away, all alone in
my apartment, seemed even more pathetic than contacting Natalie had been. I
settled for a glass of water and a bowl of popcorn, telling myself that waiting
for the popcorn to finish would at least kill three minutes’ worth of time.

By the time I sat back down on the couch
with my bowl of popcorn, Natalie had replied.
Relaxing and watching a movie that isn’t a cartoon or a sing-along! My
Friday night is terribly exciting. You?
I considered bluffing, but there
was no point in it. I bit the bullet and replied honestly. Or at least mostly
honestly.

I’m
wallowing in self-pity—I asked four women out this week and not a single one of
them said yes. I could use a pep talk if you’re not enjoying your relaxation
too much to offer it.
I put the phone aside so I wouldn’t be
tempted to stare at the screen waiting for a reply and flipped through the
channels for a while, eating popcorn. When I heard the chirp that told me that
there was a new text message, I made myself count to twenty before I looked at
it.

Only
four? If you promise you’re not drunk, you can call me if you want.
I laughed in spite of myself. I set aside my popcorn, took a sip of water to
get rid of the salty, buttery taste in my mouth, and took a deep breath before
tapping the icon to call her.

The other end of the line rang twice.
“Hey, Zeke,” Natalie said; in the background I could faintly hear dialogue from
something on the TV—not clearly enough to make out what was being said, just
that it was between two women. “So, you’re getting rejected?”

“Ouch,” I said, smiling wryly. “When you
say it that way, it hurts that much more.” She laughed softly.

“Sorry, I should have been more delicate,”
she said. The warmth in her voice, the friendly bantering quality was so
soothing in a weird way I couldn’t define. “Four women?”

“Six, actually,” I admitted. “I was trying
to salvage the little bit of pride I had left to me.”

“Six isn’t bad,” she said. I thought I
heard her moving around somehow—though I couldn’t say just how.

“Six women decided they didn’t want to
even grab coffee or a drink with me,” I pointed out. “Six women in three days.”

“There are a couple of points I’d like to
make before we get to the pep talk portion of this conversation,” Natalie told
me.

“You have the floor,” I said.

“First: you’ve only asked on average three
women a day. That tells me that you’re being at least a little selective in who
you’re asking—which, believe it or not, is kind of an advanced trait compared
to some of the guys I’ve worked with.”

“I shudder to think that three women a day
is a small number of date requests,” I said, shaking my head.

“One of the guys I coached about six
months ago, once he got the go-ahead, asked ten women out in one day—and
predictably, he got turned down ten times.”

I laughed, trying to picture a man running
up to every woman he saw around him to ask her out. “Point taken.”

“So you’re being selective in who you’re
asking out—that’s good. The second point I’d like to make is that you’re at
least asking women out at all.”

“Of course, I am. That’s the whole point
of this,” I countered.

“Again: you’d think it’d be obvious, but I
had another guy that I coached that when he got clearance to start asking women
out, he couldn’t pluck up the courage to do it.”

“This isn’t the part of the conversation
that’s the pep talk?” I took another sip of my water, smiling—and feeling
better—in spite of myself.

“No,” Natalie said, and I could hear the
smile in her voice. “This is that part: dating is a numbers game in a very real
way.”

“But the guy who asked out ten women…” I
let the end of the sentence trail off unfinished.

“He took it to an extreme,” she told me.
“No matter how hot you are, no matter how wealthy or stylish or great, you’re
not going to be a match for every woman on the planet. I guarantee you that
even when he was famous—before he was married—Brad Pitt got turned down at
least a dozen times for dates. Johnny Depp has been shot down. Prince probably
got shot down, too—though I’m not convinced that he wasn’t some kind of alien
from a race that existed solely for the purposes of having sex.” I laughed.

“I take that point,” I said, laughing
again. “Okay, fine. Everyone gets rejected sometimes.”

“You have to ask a lot of women out to get
a yes, and women have to ask a lot of guys to get a yes, too.” I imagined
Natalie shrugging. “That’s why when you get to the actual matchmaking part of
your contract, it’s not like you’re only going to be set up with one person.”

“That’s good to know,” I said. “How many
chances am I going to get?”

Natalie snorted. “Usually Katie or someone
else compiles a list of at least five or six women who would be a decent match
for a client, based on reports and interviews and profiles. So with them, you
won’t have to worry about getting turned down—they’re already going to have
interests that go along with yours, and they’re going to be interested in going
on a date with you.” I considered that.

“I’m trying to decide if it’s more
pathetic that I can’t get dates with women I just ask out of the blue, or if
it’s just practical to go with women who have been pre-screened for me,” I said
after a moment.

“It’s practical,” Natalie told me. “If I
weren’t working for the company, I’d use them.”

“Maybe you’d have ended up one of my
matches,” I suggested playfully.

She chuckled. “Maybe! But who knows? Maybe
whoever coached me to be a better date wouldn’t be done with me until after
you’d already found your Ms. Right. Or vice versa.”

“That’d be a shame,” I said, shaking my
head. “What are you watching?”

“Just a dumb comedy,” she said. “You? I
can hear the TV on your end.”

“I have no idea,” I admitted. “I’ve just
been flipping through the channels. We’re both such thrilling, exciting
people.”

“Very much so,” Natalie agreed, her voice
dripping with sarcasm. “Why aren’t you out at a bar asking women out there?
You’d have great success.”

“I don’t want to ask a bunch of drunk
women for their phone numbers,” I told her. “I’d rather be able to tell myself
that women who are sober and fully aware are interested in me.” I paused for a
moment; an idea tickled the back of my mind, a temptation so great I couldn’t
resist it any more than I’d been able to resist the urge to reach out to
Natalie in the first place. “Would I be totally out of base if I suggested that
since we’re both not doing anything exciting on a Friday night, we could do
nothing but watch TV together?”

“Over the phone? Or Skype?” I pressed my
lips together.
She’ll either go for it or
she’ll fire you as a client.

“In person,” I replied.

“I don’t know,” she said, sounding
flustered. “Brady’s in bed, and I can’t go anywhere.”

“I could come over—if you don’t mind,” I
told her. “And, it wouldn’t be a big deal; we’d just sit around watching TV,
maybe have a glass of wine. Celebrate being adults who can stay up past nine.” There
was a long silence on the other end and I thought at first that maybe the call
had dropped. After I confirmed that wasn’t the case, I thought that Natalie
would tell me off as soon as she got over her shock at my stupid, horrible
proposition.

“I guess it wouldn’t be a problem,” she
said finally. “As long as you’re okay with my house being a mess of toys and
the fact that I look like a slob—not professional at all. I’m not putting on
makeup for you.”

I laughed. “It’s not a real date,” I
pointed out. “We’ll just be hanging out, watching TV, reveling in how exciting
our lives are.” There was another long pause and I cringed. I could definitely
see why the women I’d asked out in the past few days had turned me down.

“Okay,” Natalie said. “You can come over.
I’ll text you my address.”

Chapter
Nineteen

Natalie

I had no idea what made me tell Zeke it
was okay for him to come over; it was a complete and total violation of the
professional code I’d agreed to. But I was bored and—I had to admit—feeling a
little lonely, sitting on my couch watching TV with Brady asleep in his room.
As soon as I sent Zeke my address, I rushed into my bedroom; I wasn’t about to
put makeup on or get fully dressed the way I would for one of our practice
dates, but I also wasn’t about to let him see me in an oversized tee shirt and
panties, either.

I pulled on a pair of jeans that I’d worn
earlier in the day, slipped on a bra, and threw a tank top over that. I brushed
my hair and managed to pull it back into a messy bun and decided that I didn’t
look completely terrible. By the time Zeke knocked quietly on my front door, I
was almost vibrating with the nervousness of what it would mean for me to let
him into my apartment, even if it was just a social visit, even if nothing at
all happened between us. I took a deep breath and unlocked the door, opening it
to reveal Zeke on the other side; he had a bottle of wine in his hand, and for
a second, just the sight of him—even in a simple pair of jeans and a black tank
top—was enough to make my heart stutter in my chest.

“Hi,” I said shyly.
Why am I being shy? I already know him. I know who he is, what he’s
like.
I tried to push the feeling away and stepped back from the door,
gesturing for him to enter. “I told you my house is a mess,” I added, smiling
nervously.

“This is what you consider a mess?” Zeke
stepped through the door and kicked off his shoes without me having to ask him,
pushing them against the wall where they’d be out of the way. Somehow the fact
that he was wearing black socks—not white—was appealing to me.
Woman, if you’re examining a guy’s sock
choices, you have real problems,
I thought firmly. “You didn’t sneak-clean
while you were waiting for me to get here, did you?” I laughed and shook my
head, closing and locking the door behind him.

“Hell, no,” I told him—it was honest
enough. “I changed into real clothes, but only because I thought it would
strain our professional relationship to be seen in pajamas.”

“You could have just told me to come in
pajamas, too, and then it would’ve been a slumber party—not that I’m planning
to stay the night.” I pointed to the bottle of wine in his hand.

“If you’re planning on drinking all of
that with me, you’re probably going to sleep on the couch or get a cab; I’m not
letting you drive drunk,” I told him firmly.

“I’ll catch a cab,” he said, smiling
slowly. “Got any glasses?”

“As a matter of fact, I do.” They’d been
given to me when Alex and I had gotten married; I was just glad that they were
neutral—no overt wedding motif or our names or anything like that. I went into
the kitchen and Zeke followed me, looking oddly at ease—and even more
strangely, just right—in my apartment.

I got the glasses off of their shelf at
the top of the cabinet, and Zeke found a corkscrew in one of my kitchen drawers.
In a matter of moments, we were both sipping the wine he’d brought, and I felt
the tension in the pit of my stomach start to ease. “Let’s go into the living
room; I’ll put something else on TV,” I suggested. In spite of the effects of
the wine, I still felt jittery—restless in a way that I hadn’t felt in years.

I finished off my first glass of wine
faster than I would have believed possible while we looked through the Netflix
selections, debating each possibility quietly. Zeke He our glasses and I made myself
sip more carefully as we finally began watching
The Princess Bride
. The last thing I wanted was to get drunk before
the movie was even a third done; I reminded myself that I had to keep my wits
about me.

We’d both seen the movie at least a dozen
times, so in between quoting our favorite lines, we started talking. “I really
appreciate you letting me come over,” Zeke told me, refilling our glasses once
more.
How much wine is even in that
bottle?
I tried to estimate—it hadn’t seemed that large when I’d first
looked at it, but it was definitely starting to effect me, and after three
glasses each, it didn’t seem to be empty.

“I have no idea why I agreed to that,” I
admitted, grinning.

“You felt bad for me, admit it,” he said,
mirroring my grin.

“I did not!” I could feel the heat in my
cheeks, and as Zeke shifted on the couch a few feet away from me, I saw a flash
of his abdomen—more than enough, as far as I was concerned. I looked at the TV
for a few seconds to try and get my composure. “I guess I was feeling lonely,
too.”