Chapter Eight
Stefan
I’d been too nervous—weirdly enough, for me—to put off getting ready for my mystery date as late as I usually would have. Between the blue balls from the night before and how much Sabrina had intrigued me, I couldn’t make myself wait. I got to the bar about twenty minutes early, one of the roses from the arrangement she’d brought me the day before tucked into my blazer pocket.
Giordano’s was already hopping when I got there, with tons of couples. Most of them had the obvious signs of a first date, or at least an early date: people fidgeting and blushing and smiling as they talked to each other, looking like anxious greyhounds at the gate. Some of the couples seated around the bar and restaurant did have the veteran look: not as many bouquets of flowers sitting on the table, no stuffed animals set aside to make room for food or drinks, but dressed nicely. There were one or two couples who I was pretty sure were having their first night out since they’d had a kid—they had that tired, relieved look.
I sat at the bar and waited for Sabrina to arrive, nursing a beer to steady my nerves. It was risky, what I’d suggested. It would be hard to convince my friends and their girlfriends that the girl I was with was someone I’d been dating for a little more than a year, especially since I didn’t know the first thing about her other than where she worked and the fact that she was sarcastic and funny. I saw a couple of women come in and take up the last two seats at the bar, on the far end away from me. One looked to be in her sixties, with dark blond hair that was going gray, dressed modestly but still with some style, her hair in a long braid. The other one looked a bit younger, with reddish-brown hair that fell past her shoulders, and she wore a dress that fell down to her shins, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a bra underneath it.
Neither of them was Sabrina, so I kept nursing my beer for a while longer. I checked the time and saw that it was about ten minutes before I was supposed to meet the delivery girl. She should, I hoped, be there soon. As I looked around, hoping to spot Sabrina, I saw another woman come in—maybe in her late twenties, dressed to the nines, but in a very particular way: her black hair was in a tight bun, and her dress was all black, clinging to the curves of her body. She was actually pretty good-looking, with her pale skin and the cleavage at the front of her dress, and she grinned and hurried over to the two women who had come in before. Maybe she was one of their daughters?
I looked around again and saw the goth-looking girl approaching me, looking a little confused but otherwise perfectly confident. I smile politely at her, thinking maybe she recognized me from somewhere or had a question to ask me.
“Stefan?” I blinked.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, I don’t remember you from yesterday, but you seem nice enough,” the woman said. “We can still do the date if you want.”
I stared at her in confusion for a moment and then caught movement in the corner of my eye. A woman came into Giordano’s, and I glanced in that direction, still trying to figure out what to say to this random—beautiful—goth woman who’d come up to me and seemed to know my name. When my gaze fell on the new person who entered, my heart started beating a bit faster.
“Sabrina!” I called out. It was her. Obviously not in her uniform—that would be crazy—but she looked amazing in the deep green cocktail dress she’d put on, and with her hair loose around her shoulders. She’d taken off a light coat as she’d come in, and her shoulders showed in the dress.
“What? I’m Sabrina,” the goth woman next to me said. She followed my gaze.
Sabrina hadn’t even looked in our direction but had made a beeline for the two women on the other end of the bar.
“What?” the goth woman’s words cut through my distraction, and I looked at her in confusion.
“I’m Sabrina. That is Emma,” the woman said, scowling slightly. “Good job, jerk.” She shook her head and turned around, walking back the way she’d come before I could even process what she’d said.
Sabrina met up with the group and started talking to all of them and if it weren’t for the fact that my friends would be arriving in less than half an hour, I would have just slunk out of the restaurant right then. All four women—including Emma—turned their heads and looked at me as Sabrina continued to speak. I felt like the world’s biggest creep. It went on for a good ten, maybe fifteen minutes, and I wondered just how low a guy could sink in a twenty-four-hour period.
And that feeling only intensified when Emma left the group of women at the end of the bar and hurried up to me. She must have done her makeup, I realized as she approached, looking agitated, her cheeks a little pink; it wasn’t that she looked different from the day before, but her features were sharper, and her eyes looked deeper. Her lips were a deep, inviting red.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“Me? I thought I was meeting with you,” I said. “I thought we’d made an arrangement to meet up for you to pretend to be my girlfriend earlier.”
“What? No!” Emma shook her head, glaring at me a bit. “And why would you have made an arrangement with me and Sabrina? I already thought you were an ass, but now I’m pretty sure you’re a stupid ass.”
I looked around, aware that the people at the bar were beginning to take an interest in the drama unfolding between us. “Listen to me, okay?” I waited for Emma to nod. “I forgot the name you gave me yesterday, so I called the florist shop and they told me Sabrina is the one who does deliveries. I swear she sounded exactly like you over the phone, so how was I supposed to know it wasn’t you?”
Emma raised an eyebrow. “Well, for one, you could have remembered my name, if I made such an impression,” she said tartly.
I had to give her that.
“I’ll explain the reason why later. I promise it isn’t a crap reason. At least, I think it isn’t,” I told her. “I swear I thought I was talking to the beautiful delivery girl from yesterday. Sabrina agreed to go out with me, so I guess she thought I was someone she’d seen yesterday, too.” I shook my head. “How the hell did they confuse you for her?”
Emma’s scowl dissolved into sudden understanding. “Sabrina does most of our deliveries,” she explained. “We missed the order for your bouquet until after she’d left for the last run, so I took it since your place is closer to mine than anyone else’s.”
“Okay, that makes a little more sense,” I said. “Look, my friends are going to be here any minute. Can’t you just ditch your friends? Sabrina can take your place, since she’s obviously not going on the date with me.”
Before she could answer, my friends all came in with their girlfriends. I spotted Nate and his girl Jessica, then Mike and his girlfriend Monique, and finally Julian came in with Helena in tow. “That’s them,” I said, pointing as unobtrusively as possible so they wouldn’t see me. But the next moment, they spotted me at the bar and started moving in our direction. “Please, just play along, okay?”
Emma just stared at me as the three couples approached us.
“Looking good, Stefan,” Helena said with a smile. “This must be the famous girlfriend you haven’t let any of us meet yet?”
“I’m Mike,” my friend said, extending his hand to Emma.
“This is Emma, everyone,” I told them quickly. “Emma, this is Mike, Nate, Julian, Helena, Monique, and Jessica.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Emma said, shaking hands with my guys and accepting hugs from the women.
“We’re going to head in. You coming in or are you going to nurse that beer another hour?” Julian nodded to the almost-dead bottle on the bar next to me.
“We’ll follow you,” I told him.
The guys nodded, and the women all gave Emma a pleased smile. After another few moments, they started toward the hostess stand for the restaurant proper.
“We can wing this,” I said, finishing off my beer and dropping some cash on the bar for a tip. “Come on.” I started in the direction my friends had gone in, but Emma grabbed my arm, holding me back.
“No, we can’t wing this, and I’m not going to,” Emma said. “I didn’t agree to this.”
“I thought you had, or I would have already figured something out,” I told her.
“A lack of planning on your part doesn’t make an obligation on mine,” Emma countered with a little smile.
“Come on, please?” I held her gaze for a moment. “I’ll pay you. How much do you want? I can give you five hundred dollars to just pretend to be my girlfriend for the night.”
“Oh, no,” Emma said, laughing and shaking her head. “Not-uh. Tell them I had an emergency at the hospital I work at.” She snickered. “It’d be about as genuine as what you’ve already told them.”
“Emma, please just do me a solid and do this? I’ll buy you a great necklace to go with that dress and give you five hundred dollars. I’ll spend however much money you want at the flower shop. Please?”
Emma shook her head. “You’re on your own, Tex,” she said, patting my arm and then breaking away from me, heading for the group of women still sitting at the bar.