Once Upon Stilettos

Marcia slammed her book shut. “Let’s go get some coffee,” she said. Gemma was still protesting as Marcia dragged her out the door.



That left me alone to wait nervously. I paced our tiny living room as I counted down the minutes until Ethan was due. All I wanted was a relatively normal date. Boring would be perfectly fine with me. Was that too much to ask? In my life, it usually was.



A knock on my front door startled me. I’d been expecting to hear the buzzer from the front door downstairs. I opened the door to see Ethan standing there, looking very GQ in a sweater, jacket, and slacks. “Hi, how did you get in?” I asked.



“I hit the wrong button by mistake, and your neighbor buzzed me in. You look great, by the way.”



“Thanks.” I felt oddly flustered, more nervous than I had been before my very first date back in high school when my entire family hid in the kitchen while I greeted the guy. “Let me get my purse.”



I locked my apartment, then we went down the stairs. I had to hang onto the railing, my legs felt so watery with pre-date jitters. On the landing below my floor, a door opened and a grizzled head stuck out. “You could be more courteous to your neighbors, you know,” the person said. “All that pacing in those heels—click, click, click. And then he has to go and push the wrong button.”



“Sorry about that, Mrs. Jacobs,” I said, feeling my face turn beet red. Great, now I sounded like a lousy neighbor, and Ethan knew I was nervous about the date.



When we made it outside, he said with a grin, “She seems charming.”



“I think she’s the designated building curmudgeon.”



“Every building has to have one.” He opened the back door of a cab waiting in front of my building. “Your chariot, milady.”



I got in and slid across the seat to make room for him. He gave the cabdriver a nod, and the cab took off. “I planned something a little different. I hope you don’t mind,” he said as he settled back into the seat next to me.



“I’m sure it’ll be great,” I said, fingering the strap of my purse. This was why I wanted a boyfriend—to reach a comfort zone with a person so I didn’t have to go through this kind of stress every weekend. But as my roommates never ceased to remind me, you had to date to get a boyfriend.



“And let’s hope it doesn’t go like last time,” he said with a laugh. “I like Rod and Owen, but I don’t want them showing up on all our dates.”



I’d been so good about not thinking about a certain other person, and there my date had to go and mention him. I distracted myself by focusing on his casual mention of “all our dates.” That was the kind of detail Marcia and Gemma would want to hear later when we analyzed every second of this date. There was a strong implication that he wanted to make this a steady thing. Then again, would he have asked me out at all if he already knew he didn’t want to see me again after this date?



This dating stuff was way too complicated, and I was too old to be such a novice at it.



The cab pulled up in front of a Midtown restaurant. Ethan paid the driver, then got out and helped me out of the cab. He held his arm out for me to take—my mom would have been so impressed with such a gentlemanly show of manners—and escorted me inside. I was surprised to see one long table rather than the usual restaurant arrangement of scattered individual tables.



“It’s a wine dinner,” Ethan explained. “There’s a wine selected to go with each course, all from the same winery. I thought it would be fun. We’ll have other people to chat with and an automatic topic of conversation.”



I was all in favor of having a topic of conversation that didn’t involve magical intellectual property, which was what we’d talked about on our last date. I was nervous about the wine, though. In addition to being a total lightweight who’s under the table asleep after a couple of glasses, I had the world’s least sophisticated palate. I couldn’t find anything wrong with white zinfandel, something that drove my roommates crazy. They said no real wine drinker would go near that pink stuff. I’d look like a total hick among people who could discern a hint of oak in a full-bodied red, or whatever it was people said when they were analyzing wines.



We had to mingle with the other diners while eating appetizers brought around by waiters. I wasn’t exactly sure what was in each bite, but the wine they gave us with that course was pretty good. I sipped at it, knowing I needed to pace myself.



The crowd, however, was enough to drive me to drink. These people reminded me of my old job, the one I left when I joined MSI. They’d all probably be shocked and horrified that a small-town Texas girl was in their midst. I was careful to suppress my accent while making small talk. These were the kind of people who’d automatically look down on me for not being a born-and-bred city slicker. I felt a bit better when I saw that Ethan looked stiff and uncomfortable, too. He didn’t know anyone there, either.