"Didn't mommy say you're not to go into her den? The rest of the house is your playground. The den is where mommy does her work. Okay? Okay. I love you, too, kiddo. Can you give Debbie the phone?"
Jess held her phone aside, offering a sheepish grin and apologetic shake of her head to Maggie seated across from her in their cosy cocktail booth. Her friend didn't react, too self-preoccupied while mentally gnawing at her own immediate concerns.
Jess spoke on her phone again, "Hey, Debbie. Yeah, sorry. Carter just misses our evening snuggle. Mm-hmm. You're going to read him a bedtime story? Sure. Oh, one of mine? Oh, no, no... ha, ha... maybe not. I've used him as a guinea pig too many times, and he's no longer impressed. Ha, ha. Okay, help yourself to any snacks and feel free to watch TV once he's in bed. Hopefully I won't be too late. Thanks!"
As she put away her phone, Jess sighed, "That kid of mine. Last time Carter got into my den unsupervised, he took it upon himself to do a little editing work. The Rock Trolls ended up calling each other 'fart' and 'poop' for ten entire pages. Compelling reading, let me tell you."
Maggie wasn't paying attention. She was busy scanning the bar floor as she sat there stiffer than the two shots of liquor she had already imbibed. Jess could see the glow of cold perspiration all along the surface of her beleaguered friend's pale face and neck.
"Hey, Mags," Jess said, reaching over and patting Maggie's hands as she held them clenched around an empty glass, "you need to relax."
"Do you think he's here already?" Maggie asked, then anxiously checked her phone.
"Will you stop looking at your phone every ten seconds? Your battery must be nearly dead," Jess said, then scanned the crowded lounge. "You told him 8:00. He still has fifteen minutes. Why? Do you think he's hiding in a corner somewhere checking you out?"
Maggie fussed with the black velvet choker displayed prominently around her white neck. A pearl pendant dangled from it. Her pouty lips mumbled, "Maybe."
Jess smiled. "Then, so what? He's probably thinking, 'Wow! She's gorgeous! I need to down a few beers and build up my courage before I can approach this vision of hotness!'"
That sounded pretty stupid, even as she was saying it. Her attempts to loosen Maggie's screws bounced like sponges against a brick wall. Jess rolled her eyes. Her friend was sliding down that muddy hill of doubt faster and faster, and it was starting to make her feel bad.
She was doing a terrible job playing the supportive wingman on this blind date. Maggie should have picked someone else, to be honest. Jess was horribly out of practice. Hell, she had no practice at all. Being in a bar and meeting strangers for dates seemed so foreign to her having skipped that particular rite of passage.
Despite her relatively young age, her nightly routine for the past several years involved putting her toddler son to bed, then locking herself in her bedroom for a rigorous yoga session for an hour or two depending on how well the day's writing went. It was a fairly solitary life, but she had settled into it.
She didn't even know how to dress properly for stuff like this. Maggie had told her that they were going to a casual spot. It turned out the place was more like a nightclub than the pub bar that she had described. While everyone else was decked out in fashionably cool or provocative attire, Jess stuck out like a sore thumb in her jeans, an oversized tan cotton blouse and a white t-shirt. She wore barely any makeup and her rusty-blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail to hide the fact that she hadn't properly brushed it today.
Despite her conspicuousness, she soldiered on for her friend's sake. "Look, it's just a meetup, okay? Just meeting this guy, uh...?"
"Waylon."
"Just meeting... Waylon. Wow," she paused, still unable to get over that name. "You're just meeting Waylon to get to know each other. Put a face to all the blind messages you've sent so far to the guy."
Maggie nodded unconvincingly, still fidgeting with the choker around her neck as if it was actually strangling her.
"He seems like a nice guy, right?" Jess assured her. Truthfully, she had no idea what Waylon was like. Maggie just sprung it on her that she had met a guy on some app and that they were meeting up. Jess never saw the messages.
She knew Maggie had been out of the dating scene for a while and was surprised when she told her that she had jumped back in. Jess encouraged her, however. Maybe, depending on her friend's fortunes, she'd give it a whirl again and start dating someday.
Yeah. 'Someday'. She rolled her eyes.
"A nice guy..." Maggie sighed.
Jess smiled crookedly at her. "Yeah, I mean, you're smart. It's not like you would agree to meet some jerk who you figured was just looking to have a one night stand?"
The pinch of concern in Maggie's brow intensified painfully.
Jess leaned in and said, "I know you, Mags. I'm sure both you and he aren't the types who'd want to... you know."
"Fuck on a first date?" Maggie dropped.
Jess' jaw fell slack as her eyes rounded wider and wider with each blink at her friend's unexpected bluntness. "Gu-uhh... I... was thinking more like 'get intimate'?"
"God, I need to go to the washroom!" Maggie suddenly blurted. She stripped off the choker and tossed it onto the table before standing up and exiting the booth.
"Washroom? Wait. Right now? Mags you can't..." Jess looked bewildered as she haplessly watched her friend plough through the crowded lounge towards the washrooms. She slumped her shoulders, hunched over the table, bleak-faced. Softly groaning through clenched teeth, she rubbed her temples with her palms.
This wasn't going according to plan. She was supposed to be the one getting up at this time and finding an inconspicuous hidey-place in the bar. From that vantage point, she could safely observe --okay, stalk, if you will-- the proceedings at the booth when Waylon arrived. If anything went awry, she could come to make the save. They hadn't even worked out the signal for that, though.
"Shhhii-oot," she muttered, curling her lips to avoid uttering the actual expletive stewing in her head. It was kind of ridiculous how she contorted her mouth and managed to avoid cursing for so long. She actually used to swear quite liberally when she was in high school, enough to send her parish priest running to pray for her. When adulthood hit, though, it was like the vault had been sealed on her vocabulary of vulgarity, and she'd been particularly mindful of swearing for the last several years, being both a children's book author and a mother of a kindergartener.
The quickly souring situation and the bustling, stifling setting of the crowded lounge justified an exasperated response, however.
While she waited for Maggie to return, she nursed her drink with self-conscious sips. After another couple of minutes had passed, she sighed then glanced awkwardly around. A shiver suddenly coursed through her. A feeling like she was being watched crept up the skin of her neck, raising the fine strands of hair there. She blinked and shook her head while smirking to herself. So stupid. Why would anyone notice, let alone be watching, her?
To distract herself, she shifted her attention toward Maggie's choker abandoned on the table. She kind of liked it, though she did wonder if such a thing was fashionably outdated. She picked it up and slipped it around her neck, then checked herself out on her phone camera, running her fingers along the soft velvet. Not bad. A little accoutrement went a long way to improve her bland look. Well, not really.
She then noticed the time on her phone. Maggie had been gone for almost ten minutes. What in the world...?
Jess was about to stand and go after her friend in the washroom, but even before she raised her butt from the seat, she was confronted by the abrupt view of a man's torso.
"Oh!" She flinched and looked up, startled.
Standing by her booth was a brawny, solid figure holding a beer in his hand. He nodded his squared, dimpled jaw at her with a tight-lipped smile stretching the short stubble on his face. "Hey," he said.
"Uh, what?" Jess mumbled, still shaking the fog from her head. Don't be rude, she told herself then blurted, "I mean, hi!"
"Mind if I sit?" he asked, gesturing to the seat across from her.
Her brows pinched as she paused noticeably for a second, then eyed him and asked, "Sorry, are you... Waylon?"
He definitely did not look like a 'Waylon'.
