Noelle August - Boomerang

“You better step up your game, son,” he says to Ethan. “This one’s gonna fritter you out of a job.”

“I’ll bring you a wedding cake tomorrow,” Ethan says with a scowl. “What do you need?”

“It’s more what you need,” he says, and takes my tablet. “Really, Mia? RobbyDTF? Just. No.”

“But look at that tan,” I say, grinning. “And maybe he comes with the girls, too.”

“Well, that would be a bonus. But no. Keep trying.” He walks around to Ethan’s side of the desk and leans over his shoulder.

“Seriously,” Ethan pushes away from him. “What’s up?”

“I’m here to help you pick a date, man!” he says. “It’s like a rite of passage here. Your first awkward Boomerang hookup. I need in on that action.”

“I think we’ve got it,” I say. “But thanks so much.”

“You don’t understand,” he tells me. “I work directly under Cookie. Do you know what that means? It means I get to have my ass chewed about twenty-six times a day.” He loops his thumbs into his trousers, grinning. “I can show you the teeth marks.”

“Not necessary,” I say. “Though you have my sympathies.”

“I should. So, what I’m saying is, you can’t deny a man his small pleasures.”

“Well then, by all means.” Ethan hands over his tablet. “You pick.” He drums his fingers on our desk and gives me a look. “Make her hot.”

“Duh, dude. Of course.” He takes the tablet, and I can see a reflection of the screen in his glasses as he scrolls through profiles. He stops on one and reads for a minute, his lips moving. “Oh, man,” he groans. “Her.”

Ethan takes a look and grins. “Definitely.”

Turning the tablet in my direction, Paolo asks, “What do you think?”

The girl is all long willowy limbs, a redhead with brown eyes and a spray of adorable freckles on her nose. Her name’s Raylene Powers, and her profile claims she’s an avid rock-climber and helps build houses for the homeless. In one photo, she’s actually standing between former president Jimmy Carter and Beyoncé.

I want to make a joke that he needs to find more of a go-getter, but my mouth feels packed with cotton. “Pretty,” I manage.

“Score!” exclaims Paolo. “That’s a winner.” He reaches for my computer. “Let’s do you now.”

“For Christ’s sake, Paolo,” comes a screeching voice that turns my spine to ice.

“Shit! Cookie,” Paolo whispers. He leaps to his feet, looking around for an escape route. “Hide me.”

I’m seriously about to stuff him under my desk when Cookie comes clipping around the corner. She stops and stands there, arms folded, and drills a hole through Paolo’s skull with her eyes.

“Paolo,” she says in a tone that’s terrifyingly pleasant. “Do you love this country?”

“You’re on your own, kid,” he says to me, and races away.

She aims her laser beam focus in my direction. “Did you want to offer me a pastry, Mia?”

I almost pee, she’s so scary. “Well, umm, you didn’t seem to want Ethan’s cookies the other day.”

She huffs away, and I watch her go.

Turning back to the screen, I sigh. “Oh, what the hell difference does it make?” I murmur, and launch my virtual boomerang at RobbyDTF.

Ethan

Q: We all have a disastrous date in our past. What’s yours?

Whoever invented the partner desk deserves a slow and agonizing death.

I can’t look up from my tablet without seeing Mia’s smile. Her lips. Her cleavage. She is literally in my visual “at ease” position. Right in front of me. Three feet away.

It’s been torture all week, and it’s not getting any easier.

I’m tempted to swap spots with the espresso machine and work at the kitchen counter, but that’s probably what she wants. I have to be the reason she ramped up her clothes from work appropriate to drop-dead sexy. The way she looks in that black dress is destroying my focus. Just killing it. But no way am I letting her know that.

To try to distract myself, I pull up my date’s profile.

Redheads have never been my thing since that hair color’s pretty much lost on me, but she looks promising, even if she did go to USC. I can get past an intercollegiate rivalry and overlook her name, Raylene Powers, which is just . . . confusingly masculine. Paolo called her hot. That’s a little generous, but she’s no slouch in the looks department.

I try to picture myself having fun with her, maybe getting her back to my apartment, and end up with the memory of Mia naked in my bathroom, brushing her teeth with her finger.

Nice going, Vance. That worked.

Moving to plan B in my Mia Avoidance Strategy, I pull up the files I’m working on for the booth design. I’ve decided my entire approach is going to focus on movement, because it’s what I know best.

For my graduating thesis in psychology, I did a study on the aftereffect of endorphins on athletes. Based on my survey, the sense of euphoria after a strenuous workout had a predictable outcome, with seventy-two percent of my test subjects choosing getting down as their most desired post-endorphin-rush activity. Which was surprising, in a way, since that runner’s high feeling is similar to an orgasm afterglow, but hey. Can’t have too much of a good thing, can you?

I guess Old Newton had it right. Bodies in motion tend to want to stay in motion.

I type up some notes on how to integrate all of that into a booth design, zoning out for a while, until Cookie’s shrill voice explodes down the hall.

I glance up and find Mia watching me, her green eyes holding an undercurrent of sadness. I look down at my screen again, my stomach tightening. The things I said to her in the alcove at her parents’ house come to mind, and I feel my face heat.

What a fucking asshole.

I pulled the jealous boyfriend card on her after one kiss. But, Jesus. What a kiss. And it wasn’t just Saturday night. It was our first night, too. Mystery evening. In which I woke up with a hot, smart, funny naked girl in my bed.

Who’s now my co-worker.

Who’s also ironically making it hard for me to get any work done.

Christ. This has to go away.

The only real mistakes are failures to learn, Coach Williams used to say, and my ass is learning. I’m not going to let this girl ruin my plans. I’m not going to let her become an obsession.

Or maybe I am.

Jabbing at my keyboard, I pull up RobbyDTF’s profile. Robby Down to Fuck. Excellent freaking choice, Mia. I shake my head, staring at his fake-tan mug. Zooming in, I notice he has bad teeth. Then I spend the rest of the day thinking of ways I can force him into much-needed orthodontia. Really, I’d be doing the guy a favor.

At six, I stand and sling my messenger bag over my shoulder. “So,” I say to Mia. I’ve denied myself the pleasure of looking at her for hours, but the flipside is that now I feel like I’m starving for the sight of her. I rub a hand over my hair, trying not to stare. “See you tonight at Rock Sugar?”

“Wow,” Mia says. “Time flies.”

I almost roll my eyes. Time did not fly. Today time broke a wing and had to be put down. I’ve just spent four hundred and eighty minutes thinking about Mia, looking at Mia, and actively not thinking about and looking at Mia.

She shuts down her tablet and pulls her purse onto her lap. Usually it drives me nuts when girls can’t find crap in their purses, but I’m a fan of this quirk of hers. Free pass to check her out. Which I shouldn’t be doing, but screw it. A man only has so much self-control.

The girl is pure sex appeal, and those boots are killer on her. I’m picturing her with only those boots on when Mia comes up with her keys and stands.

“Do you need a ride?” she asks, scooting her chair in with her hip.

“Ethan?”

“What? Oh, no thanks. I’m good. Rhett’s waiting for me.”

She nods, and I can’t tell if it’s disappointment I see in her eyes. “What about tonight?”

“Thanks, but I’ve got Jason’s car.”

“Okay . . . How’s it going living with Isis?”

It’s cool that she asked. I want to tell her, but things between us need to stay strictly professional. I drew a line in the sand on Saturday, and I’m not crossing it.

“Great,” I say, using the mother of all non-answers.

“Great,” she says, giving me a taste of my own medicine.

She pulls her purse over her shoulder. “I guess I’ll see you later.”

“Hold up,” I say. “Should we have an abort signal or something for tonight? If it’s awful, we should be able to communicate that, so we can bail each other out. What do you say?”

What I really want is to be able to step in if she needs it.

Mia shrugs, like she can’t imagine Robby Down to Fuck being anything other than a complete gentleman. “Okay. How about we text the word Baudelaire?”

I shake my head. “Too hard to spell under duress. How about . . . Cookie?”

She smiles—a real smile—which guts me. I can’t fuckin’ win. She can be cold, or warm, or anything between and it doesn’t matter. I’m screwed.

“Cookie it is,” she says. “See you at eight.”

“Okay,” I hear myself say, but it’s not.

Nothing about this scenario is okay with me.

I’m the first one to arrive at the restaurant, which is a bad call. Technically, Rock Sugar isn’t Chinese food, it’s Asian fusion, but my body can’t tell the difference. The smell takes me back to that night two months ago with Alison, and a queasy feeling settles in my gut.

I grab a booth and take a moment to give myself a little pep talk about recommitting to the single lifestyle, which was the plan pre-Mia, and still is the damn plan. Land the job. Pay off some student loans. Apply to law school. All that stuff.

I open the menu and stare at it, wondering if I’m going to hurl before the food even gets here.

I feel Mia’s arrival before I see her. I look up and sure enough, there she is, following the hostess through the restaurant. She’s wearing a dress—red, I’m almost sure—that makes the black one from earlier look tame by comparison. Her curls are smoothed into long waves and she looks completely different but still the same—still unbelievably hot.

I watch as the hostess brings her to a table only a few feet away from my booth and says. “How’s this?”

Mia does a double take when she sees me. “Oh . . . Um, this is fine.”

Then she sits so that I have a perfect side view of her perfect body.

Awesome. Looks like I’ll be spraining my peripheral vision tonight.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the time. Five minutes until our dates get here. Opening the menu again, I stare at lists of food, not really seeing anything but letters, until Mia crosses her legs. Then my eyes pull over like they’re attached by a string.

She looks goddamn amazing. Couldn’t she have worn sweatpants? A trench coat, maybe?

She catches me looking, so I clear my throat.

“Ready for the Robster?”

“Ready. You?”

“Yep.”

We fall quiet but keep looking at each other. I wish it were awkward, but it’s not. Looking into her eyes just feels right.

Mia looks away first, her attention shifting to the front of the restaurant, where a girl with a turquoise gift bag in her hands is speaking to the hostess. I recognize my date, Raylene. Walking up right behind her is RobbyDTF in the flesh, scanning the restaurant with the hungry look of a great white shark.

I get up from the booth, raising a hand so my date sees me.

“Ethan Vance?” she squeaks as she walks up. She does a mini-clap thing, then looks me up and down with such crazy excitement on her face that I want to make a break for it right then. “I’m Raylene Powers. My gawd! Aren’t you gorgeous? How much fun are we going to have? Isn’t this night already the best?”

I have no idea which question to answer, and I’m too busy focusing on the full-body hug Robby is giving Mia. He’s practically lifting her off the ground.

“Nice to meet you, Raylene.” I shake her hand, trying to ignore the way her inch-long fake nails dig into my skin. Then I wait for her to sit down before I take the opposite seat.

Raylene reaches for her dinner napkin. Her hand freezes, hovering there for a second, her fingertips trembling slightly. “Do you want me to sit next to you?” she asks. “I just sat here because it seems customary, but I can move if you want, so we’re closer? What do you think? Too much or okay?”