AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Unfortunately, she was also my ex.
“Ava,” I said as she leaned forward to kiss me on both cheeks, without hesitation, as if we were in a piazza in Italy rather than a restaurant in New York. It was that pretentiousness that had turned me off eventually. “Do you remember Thayle Burke?” I sat back down as Ava gave Thayle the once-over.
“I think so. You’re Grado’s wine club manager?” she asked, not unkindly but without warmth.
“I am,” Thayle said. “We met twice, the second time just a few weeks after I started at Grado.”
“A Wednesday night,” Ava said, giving her attention back to me. “Do you still do that?”
“We do,” I said, not wanting to encourage her to stay, keeping my answers short.
“I loved those Wednesdays,” she said. “This is a long drive for dinner for you.”
“We’re here for the night,” I said. “The post-harvest wine tour.”
“Oh, that’s right. I remember Marco did it with a friend of his the year we, well...” She darted a look at Thayle. “That one year.”
“He did.” I really wanted her to move on at this point. Thayle smiled at Ava, but she clearly wasn’t loving the company. I didn’t blame her. How could I have dated this woman for four months?
“I hear you’re getting a formal review from Sarah Gibson?”
“You heard right.”
The waiter came back just then with the dessert. He put it on the table between us, and I didn’t miss the look Ava gave the plate, as if she’d rather die than take a bite of anything that might put an ounce of fat on her body. She was a runner, like me. But Ava didn’t run to eat, drink and be merry. She did it to balance out every calorie she put into her mouth, another trait that had turned me off.
“Well, I’ll let you kids enjoy the tiramisu,” she said. “It was nice meeting you, Thayle.”
“Likewise,” Thayle ground out. As Ava walked away, I didn’t have to guess at what she thought of my ex.
“Meeting you, seeing you again. Same difference,” Thayle mumbled.
I really shouldn’t have been enjoying Thayle’s jealousy. “Not a fan?”
She gave methelook, stabbing her dessert with a fork. “Don’t suppose you two ever shared tiramisu on your dates.”
We didn’t, actually. I picked up my own fork. “I like this side of you,” I admitted.
“Really? That’s great to hear since I probably will react the exact same way every time one of your Harvard-educated blond bombshell ex-girlfriends, who clearly needs to eat a cheeseburger, flirts with you in front of me.”
So much to unpack there. “First of all, she wasn’t flirting.”
“Of course you wouldn’t notice.”
I ignored the jab. “And she’s not a bombshell. Though Ava definitely needs to eat a cheeseburger.”
“You don’t have to do that, you know.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend I’m the prettiest woman in the world. I would never expect you not to notice a woman like Ava.”
“First of all, you’re right. You’re not the prettiest woman in the world. You are the most gorgeous woman in the world, and there’s a difference. Second, if I don’t notice a woman like her, it’s because I grew a brain. Is she pretty? And smart? Sure. But she’s also so superficial that I can’t believe we lasted so long. That’s not me, Thayle, and you know it.”
“It’s not,” she conceded. “Which is why Min and I were so surprised when you didn’t break up after a week.”
I swallowed my forkful and said, “Maybe if I hadn’t been mending a wounded heart I might not have settled, trying to get someone else off my mind.”
“Wounded heart?”
