Friends & Fortune Cookies: A Sudden Falls Romance (12 page)

I laughed.

“You have a great laugh, Grace.”

I actually felt a blush creep up my face. I’d thought I’d left blushing behind in high school.

He glanced down at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting with a client in a bit, but would you like to get dinner later?”

I was really tempted. “Under normal circumstances, yes. However...” How to describe the Joe situation?

There’s this friend—with
loads
of potential—who is staying at my house because he’s been seriously injured so I’m taking care of him?
No. Probably not.

“I can’t tonight. What about next week?”

Rob smiled. “Would you let me make dinner for you?”

I couldn’t help but wonder what Joe would think, and I must have hesitated.

“I swear I’m not a serial killer.” Those dimples
were
killer, however. He handed me his business card. “You can check me out.”

I shoved Joe out of my mind and tucked the card into the front pocket of my purse, pulled out a notebook I always had tucked there, and scribbled my own number on a sheet of paper. Rob accepted the sheet with a smile then glanced at his watch. “I’m going to be late. He pulled his wallet out of his back pocket then waved a twenty-dollar bill at Cooper. “Thanks, man. I gotta motor. Keep the change.” He dropped the bill on the table.

And with that, he was gone.

Cooper came over. “Didn’t go well?” he asked with slightly sad eyes.

I found myself smiling as my eyes tracked Rob’s progress down the street in front of the plate-glass windows. “Actually, that was the best first date I’ve ever had.”

“Nice. Can’t wait to read about it!” Cooper gathered up our cups and napkins as I picked up my bag and headed for the door.

It only took a few minutes to make it to my office. I walked up the stairs of the old brick building off Sudden Falls’ main cross street. Everywhere I looked, my co-workers worked with their heads down. Almost as if they were studiously avoiding looking my way. The receptionist came out of the breakroom, saw me, and immediately turned on her heel.

A prickle of concern skated up the back of my neck. As soon as I set my stuff down, I searched out Dave.

“Heya, boss.”

“How was your morning?”

“Good. I’ve got good ideas for two new columns.”

“Outstanding.” He turned toward his laptop and typed for a second then flipped his computer around. “Your hit counts on your latest blogs have been out of this world. And you’re even getting a fair amount of traffic to some of your past articles.”

“Really? That’s great!”

“George as a new idea for you.”

“I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

“He found out his daughter is using Tinder. He wants the scoop.”

I’m sure a lot of people had found old-fashioned love with the app. But it had a reputation for being mostly used for hookups and only ran from smart phones. I dug my ancient flip phone out of my bag. “Won’t run on this.” And thank God for that.

“Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.” He pulled a white box out a desk drawer. “I bought you a present.”

“An iPhone? You shouldn’t have.” I mean he
really
shouldn’t have.

“If it’s an expense issue, it’s on the paper.” He handed me a business card. “This is our contact at the mobile carrier. Call him tonight and get your service transferred over.”

“What if I’m in the middle of my contract?” This was really high-handed. Plus, I didn’t want to have to learn new technology. As everyone knew, technology and I were not friends.

“You’ve had that piece of crap phone as long as I’ve known you.”

“The reason I still have this ‘piece-of-crap’ phone is that it hasn’t conked out on me, as most modern electronics seem to. I realize I’m in the minority here, but technology does not make my life easier.”

“Suck it up, buttercup. Tinder doesn’t run on a typewriter or the telegraph.”

Precisely my point.

“Let me know if you need help getting it set up,” he said.

“You don’t have that kind of time,” I mumbled even as I backed out of his office, mostly out of fear that he was going to send something else at me that I wouldn’t want to deal with.

Chapter 20 — Joe

I’d expected Gracie back no later than two-thirty. She hadn’t had a date with one of these Internet yahoos last longer than an hour. Well, except for the guy she was out with when I fell off the roof. Probably a sign in that. If the first time she went on a date unescorted I fell off a roof, how much worse would the second time be?

I flipped through all one hundred and forty channels on Gracie’s guest-room TV, not landing on any one program for longer than three seconds. If I wasn’t fighting a bum ankle and bruised ribs, I would have been pacing.

Between the number of days we had left to finish the house, my dwindling bank account, and the possibility that Gracie had met someone worthy of her time, I had spent far too much time in my head.

By the time she finally came through the door at four-thirty, I was climbing the walls. I hobbled my way out to the living room before she had even set her bags down.

“Where have you been?” The demand raced from my lips before I could temper it.

She ground to a halt.

“And hello to you, as well.”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. I had to stop in at my office.”

“Oh.”

“How are you feeling?”

“Better.” Physically at least. I didn’t tell her about my accounting findings. I wanted to get back to the job site.

“That’s good.”

“How was the date?” I expected her to say awful. She had yet to meet anyone who wasn’t horrible. I don’t know why I’d been so worried.

“He was actually... really nice.”

Wait...
what?!
I tensed, and my ribs reminded me why that was a terrible idea.

“He’s smart, funny, and attractive, appears professionally successful, and nothing about him shouted psychotic serial killer.”

This was almost worse than falling off the roof. I felt the sensation of free-fall as she told me about some joke her date had made.

“Does this mean we’re not going speed-dating?” She’d strong-armed me into that one last week, but now it seemed preferable than her going out with someone else for a second time.

“No. I’m still going. I have to try a little of everything for the articles.” She shrugged. “You don’t have to come if you don’t want to.”

No way in hell was I going to give some other schmuck the opportunity to sweep her off her feet.

“Speaking of trying everything...”

I raised an eyebrow and waited, fairly certain she wasn’t going to suggest hooking up with a pal as one of the “everything” options. But a guy could hope.

She dug around in her bag.

“Could you help me set this up?”

She handed over a smallish white box. This was actually more of a surprise than her suggesting we hook up. “What made you decide to get an iPhone?”

She sighed. “It’s a
benefit
of work. What else?”

“That’s a nice benefit.”

“It comes with strings,” she said. “They’re trying to drag me, kicking and screaming, into the twenty-first century.”

“They haven’t figured out it’s a lost cause?”

“Don’t make me hurt you.”

“You wouldn’t hit a guy with bruised ribs.”

“Don’t be too sure.”

We sat down on the couch, and I pulled the phone out of the box and plugged it in. While it booted up, I looked over at Gracie, who sat on the opposite end of the sofa worrying her lip with her teeth. “What apps do you want on here?” I asked.

“I don’t even know.” She let out a frustrated breath. “I have to test out Tinder...”

I think she might have mentioned a couple of other dating site apps after that, but I couldn’t be sure for all the rushing in my ears.

“Do you think that’s a good idea?” I felt a headache brewing behind my eyes. Or maybe that was the concussion.

“No. But I don’t have a choice.”

I took a moment’s satisfaction in the pinch lines at the side of her mouth. If she didn’t
want
to do this, then hopefully nothing would come of it.

Finally, somewhere in the neighborhood of forty-two tries, she remembered her iTunes password, and we got her phone set up. And by “we”, I mean “
I”.
She then called the phone carrier to have her service transferred over.

By then, it was after six. “Want to order in a pizza?” I asked.

“Sure.” She picked up the flip phone then set it back down. “I guess this doesn’t work anymore, does it?”

“Nope. And you don’t actually even have to call. You can use the online ordering app.”

“I miss the days when people talked to each other.”

I laughed. “Do you want to try to download the Pizza Hut app?” My stomach grumbled in protest. It could be ten o’clock before dinner arrived.

I talked her through it, and eventually we had pizza ordered.

“That wasn’t as bad as I thought.” She leaned her shoulder into mine. “You’re a good teacher. I appreciate that you don’t get frustrated with me.”

She straightened, and I immediately missed the warmth of her arm against mine. I cleared my throat. “Not a problem.”

“So you don’t mind showing me how Tinder works?”

Problem.

I picked up her phone. “This piggybacks off Facebook. Do you remember your password?”

“It’s the same as my iTunes account.” Which was a not very complicated variation on her email address.

I sighed in her general direction.

“What? If my passwords aren’t all the same, then I forget them.”

I resisted shaking my head at her. “I won’t even tell you how complicated my password to log in at work is.”

“You work for a security firm. I can’t even imagine.”

I checked her privacy settings on Facebook and then made sure she had three photos that were public. And they weren’t necessarily her three
best
photos.

I wasn’t proud of myself.

After switching over to Tinder, I handed her the phone. “Time to write your profile. Keep it short. Most people only look at the pictures.”

“This is what’s wrong with our society.”

“I won’t argue with that.”

She started typing on the little keyboard. Five minutes later, she had a sentence. “I don’t like this,” she said between gritted teeth after autocorrect once again changed the word she wrote. “A brain-damaged penguin could type faster!”

It would have been ungentlemanly of me to agree with her. Not that I could reasonably disagree with her either. “Here. Let me help. You’ll get the hang of it. I promise.”

She dictated as I thumb-typed.

“Now what?” She worried her lip with her teeth again, and it took everything in me not to swipe my thumb across her mouth and take over with mine.

I stifled a groan.

“Now you start liking photos.” I showed her how to click the heart for profiles she liked or the “x” for profiles she wasn’t interested in. “You can also swipe left and right, but the buttons may be easier as you’re getting started.”

She started off slowly, thoughtfully reading every profile before she liked or disqualified. “Ooooh. This guy seems interesting…” She clicked the heart, and my skin began to crawl. This was excruciating.

Two more disqualifications, and then “Oh. Wow!”
Like.

I prayed for armed bandits to burst in and drag me away from this. Whatever torture they might have in store for me would be far less painful than watching Gracie find love on a hook-up app.

Chapter 21 — Grace

“Speed-Dating: Love at the speed of insanity.”
~ Luddite in Love: A Cautionary Tale of Dating in the Modern Age,
Grace Mendoza

I woke up Sunday morning to the sound of the shower. I hadn’t woken up to the sound of a man in my apartment in more than a year, and it was oddly disconcerting. Passing the bathroom on my way to the kitchen to start the coffeepot, I could smell the scent of Joe’s soap or shampoo or aftershave wafting out. It smelled better than anything—other than coffee—had a right to smell early in the morning, and my imagination careened wildly out of control.

I paused outside the door, almost against my will. Had he gotten dressed? Or was he wearing a towel, slung low on his waist, with little drops of water clinging to his shoulders as he leaned into the mirror to shave?

The door handle began to turn as I fantasized about licking water drops off Joe.

Joe!

I shook my head and managed to be several feet away from the door before it swung open.

“Oh. Hey. Good morning.”

Oh God. He was still in a towel.
Well, that answered that question.

His ribs were black and blue, and he still sported a black eye, but it looked a lot better than it had the previous day. The dark gray plastic brace still covered his foot.

What the heck is wrong with me?

“How are you feeling?” I asked finally after an awkward pause.

“Better.”

“Good.”

More awkward silence. “I think I’m going to get some coffee—”

“I’m going to get dressed,” Joe said at the same moment.

I managed not to physically run him over in my single-minded determination to get out of the hallway and away from his intoxicating cloud of clean, manly smells.

The whole day ended up feeling weird. We drank coffee, planned a lineup of movies, watched a couple, had lunch, watched a couple more, then prepared to get ready to go speed-dating. All the while, something in the back of my brain could focus on nothing more than Joe, damp from the shower. In the moments I let my imagination get away from me, that towel wasn’t well-fastened, and Joe wasn’t speedy in the towel-catching department.

It didn’t help that later in the day, when we
were
getting ready for speed-dating, he knocked on my bedroom door, which hadn’t latched and swung open. “Is there anything you can do about this?” He pointed to his eye, not realizing the unlatched door sent me in a flashback spiral to our prom night. Fortunately, this time I was dressed.