“Excuse me?”
“The beer. Is that your usual drink?”
His eyes narrow slightly at me, considering. “No, it’s not. And yes, I ordered it because it’s what you had, and it was easier. I didn’t really think about it.”
“If you’d gotten here first, what would you have ordered?”
His lip twitches. “Why do you ask?”
“The drink of choice can say a lot about a person,” I suggest, morphing my nerves into theories. “It’s not an exact science, but I think there’s something to it. Like, if you ordered a whiskey, but made a sour face with each drink, I’d say you were trying to impress me with your manliness. If you ordered a martini, I’d wonder more about what kind of business you do. If you ordered a fancy martini with lots of specifics, I’d say you might be a little pretentious. If you had a beer like this on your own, I’d say you were laid-back. But see, you ordered it because I had it, so now I don’t know much at all.”
Somewhere in my mind, a voice reminds me that Ryan always orders whatever’s on tap.
Ben laughs and rubs his hand over his forehead. “You get all of that from a drink order?”
I take a sip of my beer and try not to imagine how Ryan’s date with Alice will go as the bartender sets Ben’s glass down in front of him. Ben stares at the drink and chuckles to himself. He twists a bit in his chair, and I point to his chest, exclaiming, “Hey! You changed your shirt!”
He looks down, then back up at me. “Yes?”
“Did you change your shirt because we were having drinks, Ben?”
He laughs loudly and rubs his hands roughly over both eyes this time. Reaching over, he grabs his glass and takes a very long drink.
“You are...” He sets his beer back down and stares at me, grinning as he searches for the appropriate word. “Very intimidating. Do you know that? I honestly can’t tell if this is your personality and I should be really intrigued, or I’m being punished for the other morning.”
I sit straight up, mortified. “What? No! I’m not punishing you! Why would you think that?”
He leans forward and puts one hand on the bar. “You’re just really forward. Not that it’s a bad thing,” he clarifies. “I just kind of feel like I’m making a poor showing, you know?”
Running a hand through my hair, I huff. “I’m sorry. I think I’m so used to being Little Miss Sassypants with everyone at the shop, I don’t know when to shut it off. But I swear this isn’t a deliberate thing.” A horrible calculation of the sheer volume of time I’ve been with Ryan pops into my head. “And...um. Wow. This is probably an overshare, but I just realized it’s been an age since I’ve been on a date, so it’s possible the etiquette has escaped me. Really, I’m sorry if I offended you.”
He smiles kindly and leans back in his chair. “You didn’t. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t reading you wrong. And how long is an age?”
I do the math in my head and try not to visibly shudder. I don’t have the stones to say I haven’t been on an actual date in probably three years. Nor do I have the stones to say that technically I’m only on a break from the person I went on those last dates with.
I’m an asshole.
I finally say, “Longer than a while, less than an eon?”
He studies me for a moment. “I get that. This is actually my first night out in a good minute.”
“Life, am I right?”
“I will cheers to that with my questionable drink choice,” he says with a wink.
“Aww.” I laugh. “I really am a jerk. I’m sorry. I just think it’s interesting! Really, what would you have ordered if you’d gotten here first?”
He thinks about it for a moment. “Let’s see. I have to be in the mood for a martini, but when I am, I order it dirty and with gin. Garner whatever information from that you can. Also, I’m a dreadful Irishman, and my father is forever disappointed, but I don’t generally care for whiskey, so my manliness will have to remain in question. So if I’d ordered first? Probably a Guinness or a gin and tonic. Those are my regulars.”
I giggle into my glass. “Those are good regulars. Guinness will be my next order if we make it to drink two, just FYI.”
“If?”
“Well, it’s all very up in the air, isn’t it? I’ve managed to intimidate you, we have translation 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