The Awkward Path To Getting Lucky. Summer Heacock

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СКАЧАТЬ issues and I’m kind of a dick. I mean, the cards are stacked against us, Mr. Cleary.”

      “See, now we have to make it. It’s a challenge. We must conquer this mountain.”

      I take in a dramatic, shuddering breath. Reaching out, I take his wrist and squeeze it defiantly. “You’re right. We can do this. Success will be ours.” Thankfully he laughs, so I let him go and take a drink. “We need to keep our momentum going.”

      “It’s crucial,” he says with a wink and takes another sip of his beer. “Tell me something fantastic you did today.”

      My hands feel suddenly hot as I remember Alice and her info-bomb. She’s very pretty. Red hair, freckles, a perkiness I don’t possess. I wonder if Ryan has told her about our situation. Maybe they’re going out fully knowing the endgame is sex.

      I gulp my beer and push the images out of my head.

      I think about telling Ben that the most fantastic thing I did today was ask him out because my business hasn’t had company in two straight years, and at the moment, the prospect of a trial run is starting to seem very appealing, but that seems slightly inappropriate. Slightly.

      I sigh. “I feel like I’m letting down our cause to say all I really did today was plot how to make ravens out of fondant. Although, on Friday, I got to design a boob-cake. That was a highlight.”

      Ben splutters on his beer. “Boob-cake?”

      “It’s a cake shaped like a breast.”

      “Your job is obviously better than mine.”

      I consider this as I take a long sip. “Probably fact.”

      Reaching up and loosening his tie a bit, he asks, “So, how did you get into the business of boob-cakes to begin with? If I’d been given that pitch on career day in high school, I don’t think I could have resisted the lure.”

      “The boob-cake siren song is a mighty one,” I agree. “And it just sort of happened. Shannon and I went to State together. She was a business major, and I was dicking around in communications with an art minor solely because my mother refused to have a child planning to base her life off an art degree.

      “Shannon graduated and got married, had her son, and I met Butter during my senior year on campus. She was part of this bake sale that was trying to raise money for the culinary arts majors to take a trip to France, and she sold me the best goddamn cupcake I’d ever had in my life. To this day, nothing has ever tasted as good as that crème brûlée cupcake.

      “We became pals, and after we’d all graduated, we tried our hands at various crap jobs. A few years ago, Shannon had a moment where she realized that she hated watching her degree gathering dust but couldn’t see herself schlepping in an office somewhere. I was working as the lowest level assistant possible at a horrible radio station that aired nothing but aggressive talk radio, and I had exactly no desire to move up the ranks. One night we were ranting about adulthood, and Butter brought cupcakes. Lightning struck, and that was it. Cup My Cakes was born.”

      “Butter’s kind of the lynchpin, then?”

      I nod. “Indeed. We owe all our baking know-how to her. Well, and her Noni back in Hawaii, who taught Butter everything she knows.”

      “I feel like I need to send her a fruit basket or something.” He laughs. “My team is obsessed with those cupcakes. And to think it all started because you ladies realized how much adulting truly sucks.”

      I take another drink. “I’m pretty sure that’s how Charlie’s Angels formed.”

      Before I can turn the conversation to the fantastic parts of his day, he turns in his stool to face me, leaning one elbow on the bar. “Kat, in the interest of keeping this second drink dream alive, I’m going for gold here. I have a confession.”

      I make my eyes go wide. “Oh, my. Okay.” Turning dramatically in my seat, I place my hands in my lap. “I’m ready.”

      “Yes, I did change my shirt because I was meeting you for drinks. And I actually let myself fret about it for a while, too. So when you noticed, I almost fell out of my chair. And I ordered what you were drinking when I came in because I was so nervous, I honestly in that moment forgot what it is I normally drink. And, Kat, I have been buying from your shop for five months, and every week for five months, I’ve thought about how I might someday work up to asking you out. When you said someone was getting married at the shop the other day, for a second I thought maybe it was you and I’d missed my window.” He grins at me, and I take special notice of his white-but-not-too-white teeth. “Now, I’m not saying I’d ever anticipated those particular circumstances bringing this date about, but I’m glad they did.” He holds his hands up in front of him. “Our glasses are almost empty. So. That’s my Hail Mary for a second drink.”

      I tilt my head to the side as he takes the last sip from his glass, setting it back down on his napkin with an ominous clink.

      This is wrong. Ben isn’t here because he’s emotionally confused by his significant other dating someone new. He’s not here because he’s debating whether or not to try practice sex with me. He’s not here on the whim of a bad mood and a semi-joking idea.

      Here’s here because he likes me. Because he has been thinking for some time of being here with me.

      I feel genuinely sick to my stomach with guilt at the thought of what’s unfolded in this bar. I want to come clean with him about the reality of my current romantic entanglements—but more than that, selfishly, cowardly, I want to keep feeling what it’s like to be on a first date with Ben Cleary.

      “That was a pretty solid Hail Mary,” I offer.

      “I went for it,” he says. “Although, to sweeten the pot, I will say, were there to be a second drink, I would also be willing to throw in dinner, because I’m a gentleman like that. And because I’m hungry.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Wait. Unless...you don’t study people about their food the way you do with their drinks, do you?”

      I shake my head. “God, no. That’s not okay. Drinks are drinks. Food is for eating and magic and shutting the hell up. You don’t mess with food.”

      “See, now I know we can be friends.”

      I gesture to the bartender, and Ben’s lip twitches ever so slightly. I take a breath and say, “We’ll take two Guinnesses.”

      * * *

      All in all, this was a weird day.

      Back in my apartment, I set the two ridiculously large boxes of sexual therapy devices on my coffee table.

      It’s incredibly late, and I have to be up at dawn to be at the shop, but I’ve got only twenty-nine days to beat this deadline. Shannon’s right; this is never going to work if I keep finding reasons to put it off. It’s my deadline, and I need to bloody well stick with it.

      I open the boxes and start laying out the bounty. Damn, the gals really spared no expense. I think they’ve overestimated the actual number of vaginas I have.

      Flipping through the Encyclopedia Vaginica Shannon printed off for me, I realize that I remember most of these instructions from my doctor. Start slowly, be gentle, go small, work your way up. The vagina is a СКАЧАТЬ