“What? What do you mean? I wasn’t going to say anything.” She’s way too bright and cheerful now to be telling the truth.
I give her my best annoyed-mother look. “Don’t play, May. You were about to say something about Toni. What was it?”
May fiddles with a wrapper from one of the muffins for a little while before she answers me. “I really shouldn’t say.”
I steal the paper from her to get her attention. “No, you really should say.”
May is opening her mouth to answer my question when her phone rings. She picks it up to look at the screen, and holds up her finger at me. “I have to take this. It’s Ozzie.”
I try not to be annoyed when she pulls his call up. Instead, I clean up our mess as she exchanges a short conversation with her boyfriend. I really want to know what she was going to spill about Toni. If I knew the woman better, maybe I could fix whatever I’ve done wrong. I wouldn’t want to work at Bourbon Street Boys if Toni hates me; it would be way too uncomfortable.
I’m rinsing the coffee mugs in the sink when May stands.
“Are you leaving?” I ask.
“Yes. Ozzie has something he needs me to do right away.”
How convenient. “Are you going to finish telling me about Toni before you go?”
“Maybe another time.” She throws her purse strap over her shoulder and shoves her phone inside the bag. “You’re going to be at the warehouse today at eleven-thirty, right?”
“Yes. I’m going to finish typing up a report about what I found this morning, get dressed, and drive over.”
May gives me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Great. I’ll see you then. Thanks for the muffins.” She grabs another one off the plate on the counter and heads down the hallway toward the front door. “I’m going to give one to Ozzie. Don’t be surprised if he asks you for the recipe!”
I shake my head as I walk over to the hallway and watch my sister go out the front door. I can almost imagine myself doing something as inane as exchanging a recipe with that giant hulk of a man—the man she fell in love with after meeting him one time. Our lives are totally crazy right now, but for the first time ever I’m starting to like crazy.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
I should probably be more responsible and finish typing up my report for the team first, but I’m anxious. All this talk about Dev and a potential relationship with him has made me realize how badly I need to get out into the world and stop pretending like I’m eighty-five years old and done with dating. I’m only thirty-two. I still have a lot of life to live. I still have a lot of sex to have. And if it’s not going to be with Dev, it needs to be with someone else. I can’t count on the fact that my sister’s vibes about him and me are right.
After I’m sure my sister has gone, I go into my home office and start up my computer. I’m still in my sweatsuit, sporting a pretty righteous case of bedhead, but it doesn’t matter. My future date will never see me looking like this. If the stories that I’ve read online are true, I’ll probably pick the worst guy in the whole town to go out on a first date with, and I’ll have a really funny story to tell my friends later.
I go to the dating website and stare at the home screen. I’m still logged on from when Dev and I were on there together. What should I do now? Should I start a new search, or should I use the one I already conducted when I was looking for Dev?
Since I can’t decide, I decide to fill in my own profile. That takes me all of ten minutes, and then I’m stuck back at the beginning again. How do I find a date?
My search results to find Dev are still there: a list of almost thirty names with one-liners from their ads. I try to imagine what my potential date might look like, and what he’d like to do in his free time, but the only thing that comes to mind is a man who looks like Dev and enjoys his hobbies too. I should just go ahead and admit I’m more than a little infatuated with him.
I click on the search results to refresh them. There are twenty-nine names now. “Oh, what the hell. Might as well start with these guys and see where it gets me.”
I scan through the offerings and find myself narrowing them down to the same three that I had chosen before. I know the one that says he’s still looking for his favorite person is Dev, so obviously I avoid that one. How desperate would that be, to purposely pick him and then pretend like I forgot? Ugh, how embarrassing.
Instead, I click on the one that says Take my hand and we’ll wander off together somewhere. When I click the Read More link and absorb his more detailed profile, I am struck once again by how much he reminds me of Dev. New Orleans is a pretty big place, though, so I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that there’s more than one guy who meets my criteria and seems similar to another. Rather than second-guess what I’m doing, I go ahead and click the Send Message button and type out a quick note.