Page 11 of Memories of You

“Any texts?”

She shook her head.

“Voicemails?”

“Yes, but just silence. The breathing’s only when I answer,but I don’t answer my cell. Just the office phone. It doesn’t have caller ID.And during business hours, Marge takes the calls at the front desk.”

“Any bad dates recently?”

She made a snorting noise. “Nothing but bad dates,” shesaid. “But not very many of them. And I don’t think any of the guys seem likethe type.”

“You never know. Tell me about them. Names, where you metthem, all the details. I’ll check them out.”

“Yeah, well.” She drew in a breath. “God, this isembarrassing.”

“Dating?” He nodded sagely. “Yeah. Pathetic.”

“You’re so not funny. No, the details. It was, you know, oneof those apps. A friend of mine designed it, so I’m in the beta program, and—”

“Your friend’s name?”

“What? No, it’s not him.”

He stared her down until she conceded, and he wrote Cedric’sname and details in his phone to follow up on tomorrow. “And the actual dates? Or were they justhookups?”

“No. No, no.” She shook her head. “I’ll forward all theinformation I have later,” she promised. “It’s not like you’re going to trackthem down tonight. But they were not hookups.”

“Right,” he said, a bit alarmed by her tone. “Sorry formisunderstanding.”

“Oh, hell,” she said, then shifted on the sofa and pulledher knees up, which had the unfortunate side-effect of removing her feet fromhis lap.

He turned so he was looking at her more directly. “Abby,what’s going on?”

“I don’t do hookups,” she said. “I mean, I know that makesme some sort of prehistoric weirdo, but it’s not my thing. I’m not interestedin hookups or friends-with-benefits or any of that. I want—” She shook her head.“Never mind. Getting off topic.” She drew in a breath. “The point of the app isto let folks have it both ways. Tribe Find. You can search for romanceor hookups or just friends.”

“And you were looking for friends?”

She lowered her eyes, her neck and ears turning pink as shesaid, “Romance. But it didn’t work out. Not even a smidgeon of a spark. I don’tknow…”

“What?” He was genuinely interested. He wanted inside herhead. He was fascinated by what she wanted and what made her tick.

“I just—I’d had such shit luck in the real world, I guess Ihoped that filling out a profile would help. But it didn’t help at all.”

“The real world. Who?”

“It’s—there was this guy named Travis who worked with me.And we started going to dinner sometimes, and then we started sleepingtogether.”

With every word, Renly felt a tightening in his gut, and herealized that he really, really didn’t like this Travis guy. “Did he hurt you?”

“No, nothing like that.”

“I don’t mean physically.”

A smile flickered on her lips, and her voice was softer whenshe said, “No. Thanks, though. No, it wasn’t that he hurt me. I guess it wasthat we didn’t understand each other. We started hanging out together, thensleeping together. And I thought it was going somewhere, and he thought it wasfriends with benefits. But it got to where we couldn’t even go to a moviewithout ending up in bed.”

“And that was bad?”

She lifted her hands. “I wanted a relationship—somethingreal, you know. He just wanted fun. I finally told him that we had to stop.”