Dating in the Dark (Dating Trilogy Book 1) Page 7

  Mystery Date: Yeah, what happened?

  Me: Nothing too eventful. I just got lost in thought while I was in the shower and thought I was going to be late for work. Turns out I’m here ten minutes early.

  Mystery Date: In the shower, huh? Were they naughty thoughts?

  Her cheeks redden as she thinks of him thinking about her in the shower. That’s not even how she meant for it to come across, but she sees exactly why he would think so. She could continue on down that line of thinking and see where the conversation leads, or she could tell him the truth. Seeing as she’s about ready to go in for an eight-hour shift at work, now is not the ideal time to get all hot and bothered.

  Me: Wouldn’t that be exciting? No, I actually got some shampoo in my mouth and spit it out. It got me thinking about whether or not people actually spit in food at restaurants or if that’s just something they make up on TV, and then I got lost on a tangent of what else people put in food for shitty customers.

  She sends the long text message and starts gathering up her stuff for the day. The frigid morning air hits her face and she quickens her pace as she heads toward the front of the building. She scans her badge to get in and is instantly hit with a wave of heat as it floats outside. She glances down at her phone and takes a seat in one of the lobby chairs to finish off her conversation.

  Mystery Date: Definitely not just something made up for TV.

  Me: Oh? Do you know this from personal experience? Or do you have a friend in the restaurant industry?

  Mystery Date: Both actually. I know someone in the industry and I worked as a waiter while I was in college. Trust me, if you ever want to eat at a restaurant again, you don’t want to know what some people have put in food before.

  Me: I’ll take your word for it. That does not sound like something I want to know.

  Her bags go onto her shoulder as she uses her badge yet again to get onto the calling floor. She’s walking toward her desk when her phone dings with a notification. She glances down but ignores is at she makes her way over to her desk. A voice comes from behind her and she jumps at the booming sound.

  “Tinley, are you seriously texting someone right now? Do you not know that our ability to run credit cards for our customers could be completely compromised if someone saw your cell phone out? What are you thinking right now?”

  “Marek, calm down. It’s just in my hand, and it’s not like I’m even at my desk right now.”

  “No, you’re not at your desk, but the moment you stepped foot on the sales floor, your phone should have been out of sight. C’mon, you’ve worked here long enough to know this. I shouldn’t have to explain it to you.”

  Tinley slides her phone into her hoodie pocket and raises her hands. “All gone. No worries.”

  “I don’t feel like you’re taking this seriously right now. Does PCI compliance mean anything to you?”

  “You’re taking this way too far. It’s not like I was anywhere near a computer. We’re fine. Just let me get back to work.”

  He continues talking to her, but she pretends to not hear him as she walks over to her desk. Geez. Dakota tells her on a daily basis that she needs to get laid, but it seems like the person who is really dealing with that issue is Marek. He at least needs to get that stick up his ass pulled out. It’s like he’s dead set on making her day worse than it has to be.

  As soon as Tinley’s break comes up, she’s up and out of her seat as quickly as possible. Normally she lingers a bit to catch a call coming in, but she doesn’t even care about that anymore. She’s mostly eager to read the text message that’s waiting on her phone from this morning. It’s been burning a hole in her hoodie pocket for the past two hours, and now she can finally catch a glimpse of it.

  Mystery Date: See, I knew you were smart.

  The simple text makes her smile. He was totally complimenting himself on the fact that she agreed with what he had to say, but he complimented her at the same time too. It’s so completely high school for her to be getting this excited about it, but she can’t help herself. Out of the corner of her eye, she watches as Marek heads outside. She absolutely hates that they have identical work schedules. Every single day they work at the exact same time and have their breaks and lunches together. It’s totally annoying, but she doesn’t have a legitimate reason to ask for her schedule to be changed. Plus, she’s afraid if she were to ask for a schedule change, they’d move her to the swing shift, and that’s the last thing she wants. She actually likes her schedule, minus this annoyance, so she puts up with it.

  Me: How many times can you imagine stabbing needles through your boss’s head before it becomes excessive?

  Mystery Date: Depends. On a scale from one to uber douche, where does he/she land?

  She cracks up laughing at that one. She’s never met someone else, besides Dakota, who likes to mix it up and not just use douchebag all the time as an insult. In fact, when they’re really bored they’ll come up with different variations. They’ve been known to curl up on the couch with a bottle of wine and Urban Dictionary a time or two.

  Me: We’ll definitely put him into the doucheasaurus rex category.

  Mystery Date: That’s a new one for me. I’m going to assume that’s bad and say as many times as you need to in order to help get you through the day.

  Me: I like your thinking. What about you? Do you have asshole bosses you have to put up with?

  Mystery Date: Of course, who doesn’t? But I’m in that awkward position of having bosses and being a boss at the time same.

  Me: Well I hope you at least like your job. I could never be management at the place where I work—too much politics.

  Mystery Date: You’ll find that pretty much anywhere you work though.

  Me: I wouldn’t know, I haven’t had many jobs.

  Mystery Date: Are you that young? Or have you just stuck around at the same place for a long time?

  Me: Fishing for my age, are we? How old are you?

  Mystery Date: It would be nice to know how old you are. I at least know you’re legal since you had to be twenty-one to do the speed dating, but other than that, it’s a complete mystery to me. I’m 35.

  She contemplates playing with him and seeing how far she can take this. She kind of enjoys the banter that they always have together, but playing coy about her age seems almost juvenile and pointless. Besides, since he’s already thirty-five he probably doesn’t want to be with a young girl that plays games. She needs to act more mature. More like her age.

  Me: 29

  Mystery Date: That is a relief. I don’t think I could handle being with someone ten years younger than me. I’d like to date a grown-up.

  Me: That’s me, grown-up girl who’s stayed too long at a job she hates. With that, I’ll leave you for the time being. Back to work it is.

  This time she instantly puts her phone back into her hoodie pocket. She’d rather not have a repeat of this morning if Marek catches her carrying her phone, but if Mystery Date sends another text right away, she doesn’t want to wait two hours to find out what it says. That was just too much for her anxiety last time and made her morning stretch on for days. Maybe, if she’s lucky, this time she’ll get busy and time will fly by.

  Chapter 14

  The last drop of wine slides down her throat and she hums in satisfaction. She picked out a new brand to try this time around and was not disappointed with the results. The fruit flavors were incredibly fresh and crisp with the perfect mix of sweet and dry. If there’s one thing she can’t stand is an overly dry glass of wine and anything too sweet makes her sick to stomach before she can even finish her first glass. She drops the glass off in the kitchen and pads her way down to her bedroom. She starts getting undressed for the evening when her phone dings with a new text message alert.

  Surprisingly her day passed by incredibly fast. After her texting conversation with Mystery Date this morning, she kept it up and continued chatting with him on her lunch and afternoon break. He was super-fast to reply
both times and she couldn’t hide her giddiness. She has no idea what he does for work, but obviously, his work place is more flexible when it comes to using his phone. Now that she thinks about it, they haven’t really discussed what either one of them do for work. Not that she’s too eager to share the fact that she’s spent most of her twenties working at a call center and she hasn’t progressed at all in her career.

  Mystery Date: As much as I enjoy texting back and forth with you, don’t you think we should go on that second date?

  The phone slips from her fingers and clatters on the floor below. A second date? She knew it was coming eventually, but it feels soon—too soon. What if she gets to wherever they decide to go and he realizes how much of a mistake he made? That the girl standing in front of him is not what he had in mind at all?

  Me: A second date?

  Mystery Date: Even though we couldn’t see each other, we technically already had the first date. What if you’ve been chatting with me this entire time and I’m a hideous beast? ;)

  The winking face at the end of his text indicates that he meant it as a joke, but in reality, this is what she’s afraid of—not that he will be ugly, but that he won’t be okay with the way she looks. It’s not like she’s going to be winning any beauty pageants any time soon.

  Me: I highly doubt you’re a hideous beast, and besides, I’m not shallow. I wouldn’t suddenly stop talking to you based on your looks. Would you do that to me?

  She does secretly hope he is as attractive on the outside as he is on the inside.

  Mystery Date: Not possible. I already know you’re gorgeous.

  Me: How can you tell? You’ve never seen me before.

  Mystery Date: Because there’s more to a person than how they look on the outside. So far I like everything about you, so I don’t foresee that changing just because we meet face to face.

  She glances up at the mirror in front of her. She’s never referred to herself as ugly before, but gorgeous is definitely not the word to describe her either. She’s been called plain Jane, average, and up until this point in her life, she’s been accustomed to it. That’s just who she is and she’s okay with it, but now Mystery Date has her questioning everything. What if she’s not good enough for him because she’s just average? He says physical appearances don’t matter, but everyone says that. That’s the nice thing to say until the true colors come out, and they always do.

  Mystery Date: Good, we’re on the same page then.

  Mystery Date: Meet me at Big House Bookstore on Friday at eight.

  Big House Bookstore? She’s never even heard of that place before. She sends off a quick reply that she’ll be there and does an internet search to find the address. If anything, Friday will bring new adventures, and potentially more than that. She hasn’t been this excited in a long time, and now she’s counting down the minutes until the big night.

  The aroma of lavender and chamomile surrounds Tinley as she sinks deeper and deeper into her bathtub. She decided to light every calming candle she owns and fill her bathtub with lavender bubble bath. Either she’ll be incredibly calm or she’ll fall asleep. Not that the latter would be the worst-case scenario at this point. She definitely needs to chill the fuck out.

  She can’t afford to go on vacations, so every once in a while, she’ll use her vacation time to take a Friday off and give herself a three-day weekend. It just so happens that she had already requested today off from work, and she hasn’t been able to decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Sure, she was able to sleep in, but since waking up, her nerves have gotten the better of her, hence the supposedly soothing bathtub. No matter what she does to try to calm herself down, she can’t help but go into freak-out mode thinking about her date tonight. She keeps running all the what-ifs through her mind, and they’re making her anxiety skyrocket.

  She thought about doing a little drinking, but she definitely doesn’t want to show up completely smashed, and even her normal therapy of baking cupcakes isn’t working. At least a dozen times, she’s picked up her phone to send a text canceling the date, but every time, she talks herself out of it. Even though the thought of putting herself out there like this is terrifying, she’d always wonder what if, and that is the biggest what-if of them all.

  She doesn’t want to have regrets about this life and the things she could have done. She wants to look back and know with absolute certainty that she did everything she was supposed to and then some. Sitting on the sidelines watching her own life pass her by isn’t something she wants to keep doing. That’s really what this whole thing was about in the first place. Tara and Dakota weren’t pushing her to do this so she would have a man in her life, although that was a plus; it was to get her to finally do something outside her comfort zone, to finally force her to live a little, and she has no desire to let either one of them—or herself—down.

  She slides her fingers down her leg, loving the feeling of them being freshly shaved. She has no idea how tonight is going to go, but she figured to err on the side of optimism and be prepared just in case. Before starting her bath, she took a shower and shaved. Everything. It took a good forty-five minutes, but it was definitely worth it and if tonight goes well she’ll be happy that she prepared. It’s been a long time since the last time she had sex, so she’s a little nervous just thinking about the mechanics of it all, but if their chemistry stays the same once they’re face to face, they don’t have anything to worry about. At least that’s what she hopes.

  Chapter 15

  It’s just a date. No big deal.

  She has repeated that mantra no less than fifty times since she pulled her car into the bookstore’s parking lot, not to mention the number of times she tried tricking herself into believing it as she was getting ready for the night. Still, no matter how many times she tells herself this, it doesn’t change the fact that it’s not true. No part of this is no big deal. In fact, it’s a really huge deal. She can’t remember the last time she went on a date with someone, let alone someone she’s been talking to but hasn’t ever seen with her own eyes. Fortunately, there’s no risk of catfishing here since they’ve already met in person.

  She didn’t question her date’s location choice when he offered it up, but now that she’s here, it does seem like an odd venue. Then again, maybe he’s a major bookworm and wants to know what kinds of books she reads, like a test or something. She walks inside and is immediately hit with that scent of old books. She’s not huge on reading, but she can’t deny the appeal of the musty smell. The room is filled with bookshelf upon bookshelf, and there are so many books they’re pretty much everywhere. The shelves are filled to the brim and even the floor in front of each shelf has stacks lined up. If she were a bigger reader she could imagine being in heaven in a place like this. She walks around and sees another room in the corner hidden by a curtain. She’s way too intrigued to pass that by and heads straight toward it.

  Though the curtain, she’s met with a smaller room and even more bookshelves. There are more stacks of books on the floor back here as well. There are hundreds of them in this small space, and it looks more like a storage room than an actual part of the store. She starts to turn around when movement catches her attention out of the corner of her eye. There’s a guy standing near one of the shelves, and he’s looking right at her. “What’s the password?”

  Tinley looks behind her and back to the man standing in front of her. What is this guy talking about? A password? Is she in the wrong place? She can feel heat travel up her neck as she mumbles out, “Password? I’m supposed to be meeting a date here.”

  The guy tips his fedora and pulls on his suspenders. “You mean to tell me your date didn’t tell you about this place?”

  “What place is that exactly? He told me we were going to a bookstore. Well, actually he just gave me the name of this place and told me to meet him here, I had to look it up online to find out where it was even located. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You’re i
n for a treat then.” Without another word, he walks over to the shelf and pulls down on one of the books. The shelf swings wide open and the low, sultry sound of jazz music flows from within. The lights are dimmed down low, so Tinley isn’t quite sure what’s she getting herself into. The guy standing at the door leans over before she steps in and whispers in her ear, “Enjoy your evening. If anyone asks, the password is Capone.”

  She turns back around and looks at him questioningly. “As in Al Capone? That’s weird.”

  “You’ll see,” he adds with a wink before turning back around.

  Too intrigued to question him any further, she steps fully into the room as the door shuts tightly behind her with a click. A small part of her is scared of the unknown, but a larger part of her is too excited by all the mystery piling onto this evening. Even if it’s a bust with the guy she’s supposed to be meeting, this right here will make the outing worthwhile. She studies her surroundings and finds herself in a long cold stone hallway. The walls are lined with electric candelabras and the music floats into the hallway from speakers overhead.