Chapter 90
AN: Thanks to Laureen for her fabulous ideas! =D
At
six-thirty on Friday evening, Claire stood in front of the full-length mirror
she’d hung on the back of her bathroom door, scrutinizing her reflection. Why she even cared what she looked like, she
did not know. This wasn’t a real “date,”
per se, at least not in her mind. She
was only doing this as a favor to Jamie… although why, she did not know
either. He didn’t really deserve any
favors from her, after the conflict he’d caused when Nick had been in town the
week before, but nonetheless, here she was, dressed up and ready to go.
Their
reservations were at a sports bar and grill type restaurant, so she’d dressed
casually nice, in a pair of fitted jeans and a simple, wrap top. Of course, the bright purple cast immobilized
across her front was an attractive touch.
She rolled her eyes at it, but decided it could have been worse. Much worse.
Again, she wondered why it even mattered, because she wasn’t looking to
hook up with anyone. Still, she knew
little about Jamie’s coworker, this Stew guy, and figured she had better at
least try to make herself look presentable, just in case. After all, you never knew when you were going
to meet someone. She’d met Nick in the
chemotherapy room at the hospital, for crying out loud.
After
putting a stray piece of hair back into place, Claire decided she was good to
go and left the bathroom, shutting the light off on her way out. Jamie was due to pick her up in ten minutes
for their seven o’clock reservations.
They’d be meeting their “dates,” Sarah and Stew, at the restaurant.
Flopping
down onto her couch, she turned on her TV and waited for Jamie to get there.
***
Rock music
and TVs were blaring as the hostess led Jamie and Claire through the crowded
restaurant to their booth. Claire saw
that two people were already sitting there, on opposite sides of the
table. One was a willowy brunette with a
deep tan, a waterfall of long, shiny hair cascading down her bare back, and
large, coffee-colored eyes that were framed by thick, mascara-lacquered
lashes. In her presence, Claire felt
very plain.
The other
was a skinny guy that looked like he weighed less than her, his boney shoulders
and elbows protruding through his rust-colored polo shirt, the collar of which
was buttoned to the very top. He had
short, medium brown hair in a non-descript cut, and his thin face was
clean-shaven and shaped by delicate features, yet sort of handsome in a way.
“Hey,
Sarah,” she heard Jamie greeting the brunette silkily. Then she felt his hand circle her waist. “Stew, I’d like you to meet my friend, Claire
Ryan. Claire, this is-“
“Stewart
Grose,” chimed in the guy in a deep, loud voice, extending his hand up to her.
His last name is Gross? That’s unfortunate, was the first thing she thought,
stifling a giggle as she put on a genial smile and took his hand. Shaking it amiably, she replied, “Nice to
meet you… Stewart? Or do you go by Stew?”
“Stew is
fine,” said Stew, in the same loud, sort of monotonic voice.
Nodding,
she slipped into the spot next to him.
Jamie, she saw, had sidled into the booth next to Sarah and was already
chattering away to her, the smirk he always got when he was flirting fixed upon
his face. Clearing her throat, she
attracted Sarah’s attention and offered the girl a pleasant smile. “Jamie forgot to introduce us,” she said and
held her hand out across the table. “I’m
Claire.”
“Sarah,”
the brunette smiled back, shaking her hand lightly before turning back towards
Jamie.
Even before
a waitress came to take their drink orders, Claire could tell that there was
not going to be much conversation going on between the four of them. Jamie and Sarah already seemed totally
engrossed with each other, leaving her to make small talk with Stew. She shot daggers across the table at Jamie
with her eyes, furious with him for putting her in this awkward situation,
before dutifully turning to her ‘blind date.’
“So…” she began slowly, “Are you an actuary too?”
“Yes,” Stew
answered and immediately launched into an explanation of his job title,
detailing exactly what he did for the company for which he and Jamie both
worked. Claire had heard the condensed
version of this job description from Jamie himself, but Stew managed to turn it
into a five-minute speech. She tried to
keep an interested expression on her face, nodding every few seconds at what he
was saying, but behind her glazed eyes, she wasn’t processing a word of it. Instead, she was contemplating ways to kill
Jamie.
“So, what
do you do?” Stew asked her finally.
Blinking
out of her stupor, Claire focused on his face once again and replied, “Oh, I’m
a dental hygienist.” She figured there
was no explanation needed along with her job title, so she left it at that.
“Oh,” said
Stew flatly, looking like he had just caught a whiff of something nasty.
Claire
frowned. “I like it,” she added. “Good hours, good money… comfy work
clothes…” She forced a smile, which was
not returned. Unnerved, she shifted her
eyes to one of the many TVs mounted high on the walls. They were all tuned to various sports
stations and games, although most were showing the pre-game coverage of the
Miami Heat basketball game. “Do you
watch a lot of basketball?” she asked Stew, gesturing at the TV screen.
“No. I don’t really like sports,” Stew responded
dryly.
“Oh.” -my God, she added internally, rolling
her eyes as she looked away. Be nice,
she warned herself and turned back to him.
“So what kind of stuff do you like?”
“Oh… I
don’t know… I like history.”
“History
buff, huh? That’s cool. Do you watch the History Channel? They’ve got some really cool shows on there…
I love Histories Mysteries and Modern Marvels…” She babbled on, trying to get him engaged in
some kind of conversation, but everything she said seemed to lead to a
dead-end.
“No. I don’t really watch much TV. Just MSNBC usually.”
Claire
blinked. “Oh. So you’re a current events guy?”
“Yes.”
“Well,
that’s good. Nice to know what’s going
on in the world.”
“Yes.”
Claire
blinked again. He reminded her of a
robot. A very, very boring robot. She looked over at Jamie, who was still
flirting with Sarah, completely oblivious to her fizzling across from him. At least they seemed to be hitting it off
well. She wished they had just gone on a
date by themselves and spared her the misery of trying to make small talk with
a cyborg.
When their
waitress finally brought their drinks and wrote down their dinner orders,
Claire realized with dread that the night was just beginning. This place was packed tonight; it was going
to take forever to get their food. Dear
God, she thought with desperation. Someone
shoot me now.
After she’d
placed her order, she raised her eyes back to the TV screen, thankful it was
there. If things didn’t perk up with
Stew soon, at least she could be mildly entertained by the basketball game.
This was
ruined for her when Stew said, “Excuse me, waitress? Could you change our TV to MSNBC please?”
Claire
looked slowly over at him, thinking he had to be joking. Too bad he seemed to have no sense of
humor. The waitress didn’t react at
first, probably thinking he was kidding too, but when she saw that he wasn’t,
she obediently flipped through the channels until she came to the twenty-four
hour news station. Claire sighed softly
and stole another look at Stew. She sort
of felt like wrapping her hands around his scrawny neck and strangling him. This was torture. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t
want to be rude. Instead, she muttered,
“Excuse me; I’m gonna go to the restroom” and slid out of the booth before Stew
could even reply.
In the
privacy of the ladies’ room, she slipped into an empty stall and dug her cell
phone out of her purse. Scrolling
through the contacts she had stored on the phone, she punched a button and
lifted the phone to her ear as it dialed.
Moments later, Laureen’s cheerful voice answered, “Hey, Claire!”
“Ahh,
Laureen, thank God you’re there,” Claire exclaimed through a huge sigh. “It’s not a bad time or anything, is it? I just need to rant for a minute.”
“No, no,
it’s fine! What’s wrong??”
“Nothing
serious. I’m just sitting in a bathroom
stall, hiding out from the most god-awful blind date in the history of blind
dates,” she agonized exaggeratedly.
“I didn’t
know you were going on a blind date tonight!” said Laureen with obvious
surprise. “I didn’t even know you were
looking to start dating again.”
“I’m not,”
replied Claire flatly. “It’s not even
really a date… more like a double date, but the ‘date’ part is really my friend
Jamie and this girl he works with. He
didn’t think she’d go out with him unless it was a group thing with this mutual
friend they have at work, so he dragged me along with him to be this other
guy’s ‘date’ just so he could get to know this chick.”
“That
sucks! It sounds like he’s just using
you.”
“He is,”
admitted Claire. “He totally is, and I
knew it from the moment he asked me. But
I’m just doing it as a favor to him, and he already knows he’s gonna owe me big
time for this. He just doesn’t know how
much… cause I had no idea it was going to be this bad! As soon as I get a minute alone with him, I’m
going to kill him for this.”
Laureen
laughed. “Why is it so bad? What’s wrong with the guy?”
“You know
Tim? Imagine Tim, but void of all
personality and interesting qualities.
Like Cyborg Tim.”
“Oh God!”
gasped Laureen, sounding horrified.
“That bad??”
“That
bad. He just made our waitress change the
channel on the TV from the Heat game to frickin’ MSNBC,” ranted Claire. “I had to get away… and we’ve only been here
ten minutes.”
“Oh God!”
Laureen cried again. “Do you need me to
save you? I can call you back in a few
minutes and pretend to be your mom or something, make up some kind of
emergency?”
She sounded
so eager that Claire had to smile, but she reluctantly answered, “Nah, that’s
okay… I should probably just go back out there and suck it up. It’s only one night. And then I can make Jamie pay.”
Laureen
laughed. “Okay. Well, if you change your mind, you can always
text me under the table. I’ll have my
phone with me.”
“Thanks,
Laureen, you’re the best,” Claire replied.
“I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Alrighty. Good luck!”
“Thanks,”
Claire laughed. Feeling better for
having vented, she dropped her phone back into her purse and unlocked the
stall. She stepped out and found a woman
standing at the sinks, leaning into the mirror as she applied a generous coat
of bright magenta lipstick. Startling,
Claire immediately felt her cheeks growing pink; she thought she’d been alone
in the bathroom. She started to hurry
out when the woman spoke up.
“Honey,
take it from me – you need to dump that zero and get yo’self a hero,”
the woman said emphatically, her eyes on Claire’s reflection in the mirror.
Claire
giggled, and the woman quickly joined in.
“I’m serious now!” she added. “If
you want me to create a diversion or somethin’ while you scoot on outta here,
you just say the word, and I got your back.”
“Thanks,”
said Claire, still laughing at the absurdity of this whole situation. “I think I’m gonna stick it out though. Then I’m gonna kick my friend’s ass for
roping me into this.”
“Go on,
woman,” the elder urged, grinning at her over her shoulder.
Grinning
back, Claire walked out of the bathroom, trying to keep a straight face as she
reluctantly made her way back to their table.
Jamie and Sarah were still deep in conversation, with all the body
language of heavy flirting going on, and Stew was engrossed in the report on
MSNBC. He didn’t appear to even notice
her when she flopped back into the booth next to him, but after a few seconds,
he looked over and asked, “You okay?”
Claire
forced a cheeky smile onto her face and replied cheerfully, “Fine. Just had to free up some room before I ate,
you know? Hey, speaking of which, you
wouldn’t happen to have any Beano on you, would you? The food here gets me a little gassy.”
Score! she thought triumphantly, trying not
to laugh out loud at the revolted expression that came over Stew’s face,
distorting his refined features. She’d
come out of the restroom feeling empowered.
If I’m going to stick it out, why not have a little fun with him?
she decided.
“Uh… no,”
Stew answered quickly, averting his eyes.
“That’s
okay,” Claire managed to say, then quickly turned her head so that he would not
see the smile tugging on her lips. When
she’d composed herself, she looked back at him and smiled sweetly. He made sort of a grimace in return.
“So… uh…
what happened to your arm?” he asked after a few minutes of awkward silence,
seeming desperate to move to a new topic.
“I was in a
car accident, a little over three weeks ago,” she replied.
“Oh. Was it your fault?”
Claire was
caught off-guard by that question. Some
nerve, she thought, but she wasn’t going to lie. Smiling tightly, she replied, “Well,
technically… yeah, I guess you could say it was my fault.”
Stew shook
his head, looking smugly amused. “Women…
terrible drivers,” he scoffed.
Her eyes
widened. Did he really just say
that?? She couldn’t believe it – he
was not only a total cyborg; he was an asshole too! “Ex-cuse me?” she spouted indignantly.
Out of the
corner of her eye, she noticed Jamie and Sarah stop talking and look at
her. She glanced briefly at Jamie, then
back at Stew. “I see why you have a hard
time finding women who will go out with you,” she told him matter-of-factly. “No respectable woman wants to date some
lame-ass, chauvinistic bore. And that
includes me.”
Grabbing
her purse, she scooted out of the booth and stood up. Turning to Jamie, she said, “I can’t take
this guy; I’m sorry. Have fun with
Sarah.” Then she turned on her heel and
stalked away.
Jamie
caught up with her just outside the restaurant.
“I hate you!” she exclaimed as she rounded on him, giving him a
shove. “That Stew guy is a total
dick!! I thought you said he was nice!”
“He is
nice! At work he is, anyway,” insisted
Jamie.
“And is he
as interesting and exciting and personable at work too?”
she shot back sarcastically. “Good
God! Are you sure he’s not some machine
from the future sent back to terminate me?”
Jamie
snorted. “I love you, Claire. You’re so funny when you get all riled up
like this; I like you bitchy. You
shoulda hit him – that woulda been awesome!”
“Oh, shut
up,” she snapped. “I’m going home. Enjoy your night with Sarah.”
“How you
gettin’ home? You want my keys?” Jamie
asked, dangling them in front of her.
Only then did she remember that he’d driven her that night. God, she felt stupid.
Feeling
herself blush, she replied, “Thanks,” and snatched them out of his hand.
“You okay
to drive? Or you want me to take you
home?”
“Don’t be
stupid. You’re on a date. Go back inside; I’ll be fine. I can drive one-handed,” she assured him,
then added, on sudden inspiration, “Unless you think I can’t… cause I’m a woman.”
Jamie
rolled his eyes. “You know I don’t think
that. I don’t know why he said that, but
I apologize. I really thought this would
go better.”
“Whatever. It was all just about you and Sarah anyway,
so I hope that part goes well for you.
See ya later,” said Claire and turned away again, heading across the
parking lot to his car. He didn’t follow
her this time, but when she glanced back, he was still standing on the sidewalk
in front of the entrance. She wasn’t
really mad at him; she’d known the whole time that she was just a pawn in his
game to hook up with Sarah. She just
hadn’t expected to be coupled with such a jackass.
But what did you expect? she asked
herself silently, as she walked along. To
find a new boyfriend tonight? Yeah,
right. She didn’t want to get
involved with anyone else right now anyway.
The only thing she’d lost tonight was dinner.
As she
unlocked Jamie’s car and climbed into the driver’s seat, chuckling at the
complete audacity of Stew, the woman in the bathroom’s words returned to
her. Honey, take it from me – you
need to dump that zero and get yo’self a hero.
I had a hero, she realized regretfully. And I dumped him.
***