Page 18 of Ashes to Ink

Ryan squeezed her hand as they walked into the restaurant.“Abby? You doing all right?”

She nodded. “Yeah, just getting a little too introspective.Ignore me.”

“The problem is, Abby, I can’t ignore you.”

She swallowed hard as they followed the hostess to theirtable. Ryan said all the right things at the right times. She couldn’t help butwonder why she couldn’t seem to do the same.

She didn’t know what to say to him to explain that shereally did enjoy his company. Maybe she should just say those words out loud,but she didn’t want to scare him.

She was really bad at this. She always had been. It was awonder that Max had taken to her at all.

And…she should probably stop thinking about Max since shewas on a date.

“So, do you have any food allergies I should worry about?”

Abby shook her head at Ryan’s question. “No, although Iprobably shouldn’t eat a whole bowl of pasta. Maybe I should add a veggie orsome protein to it.”

“True, although I could probably eat a whole bowl of pastaright now. I think I was too nervous to eat all day.” Ryan winced, shaking his head.“Forget I said that. Pretend I’m all manly and confident and know what I’mdoing.”

Abby grinned, sipping her water. “Thank God. Because I feellike I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“Yay, that makes two of us. Should make for some rousingconversation.”

“And if we do get that big bowl of pasta, it means we caneat more when things get awkward.”

Ryan raised his water glass in a toast, and she laughed.Maybe they could do this. After all, they were just Ryan and Abby. Friends.

And totally not freaking out, even if they were doing ittogether.

Maybe. “So, how was work?” Ryan asked.

They had already given their orders to the waiter and werenow sipping on a nice house red wine. It was part of happy hour, thankfully.She knew that both she and Ryan liked to save their money. And she knew thatRyan would only have one glass, considering that he’d already told her as much.She only wanted one glass as well because she needed to keep her wits abouther. Plus, she wanted to make sure that when she went to pick up Julia later,she wasn’t completely intoxicated.

Being a single mom wasn’t easy, but she was figuring it out.

At least, she hoped she was.

The food came, and she dug into her scallop linguine. Shedidn’t usually go for seafood, but it sounded amazing. Ryan got the chickenpiccata with a little side of Alfredo. The fact that he had gotten an extraside of pasta just made them both laugh.

“It’s really for both of us,” he said once the waiter hadleft. “Just in case we say something stupid and need to stuff our faces withpasta.”

She smiled, glancing at the Alfredo. “It looks amazing.”

He looked up at her. “Everything looks pretty damn amazing.”

They dug in, talking about their jobs and Julia betweenbites. They didn’t talk too much about family or anything too serious. She knewthat this was a decent first-date conversation and going into anything tooserious would be hurtful. Maybe not for him, but definitely for her.

“So, we doing pretty good for our first date?” Ryan asked afterthey had been eating for a bit.

“I think so,” she said, setting her fork and knife down.“It’s been a while since I went on a first date. Or at least a good one.”

“Really? So those other dates that you went on reallysucked?”

She shook her head. “I’ve only been on two dates since Max,and they were okay. Nothing to write home about. I think this one’s going muchbetter. My first date with Max? That one sucked. I’m not going to lie. Therewas tuna fish involved, and a broken-down car. But it still ended prettynicely.”

She smiled, then froze, realizing exactly what she had beentalking about.

“I’m sorry, Ryan. I didn’t mean to bring him up.”