Boomerang Read online

  I watch as the hostess brings her to a table only a few feet away from my booth and says. “How’s this?”

  Mia does a double take when she sees me. “Oh . . . Um, this is fine.”

  Then she sits so that I have a perfect side view of her perfect body.

  Awesome. Looks like I’ll be spraining my peripheral vision tonight.

  I pull my phone out of my pocket and check the time. Five minutes until our dates get here. Opening the menu again, I stare at lists of food, not really seeing anything but letters, until Mia crosses her legs. Then my eyes pull over like they’re attached by a string.

  She looks goddamn amazing. Couldn’t she have worn sweatpants? A trench coat, maybe?

  She catches me looking, so I clear my throat.

  “Ready for the Robster?”

  “Ready. You?”

  “Yep.”

  We fall quiet but keep looking at each other. I wish it were awkward, but it’s not. Looking into her eyes just feels right.

  Mia looks away first, her attention shifting to the front of the restaurant, where a girl with a turquoise gift bag in her hands is speaking to the hostess. I recognize my date, Raylene. Walking up right behind her is RobbyDTF in the flesh, scanning the restaurant with the hungry look of a great white shark.

  I get up from the booth, raising a hand so my date sees me.

  “Ethan Vance?” she squeaks as she walks up. She does a mini-clap thing, then looks me up and down with such crazy excitement on her face that I want to make a break for it right then. “I’m Raylene Powers. My gawd! Aren’t you gorgeous? How much fun are we going to have? Isn’t this night already the best?”

  I have no idea which question to answer, and I’m too busy focusing on the full-body hug Robby is giving Mia. He’s practically lifting her off the ground.

  “Nice to meet you, Raylene.” I shake her hand, trying to ignore the way her inch-long fake nails dig into my skin. Then I wait for her to sit down before I take the opposite seat.

  Raylene reaches for her dinner napkin. Her hand freezes, hovering there for a second, her fingertips trembling slightly. “Do you want me to sit next to you?” she asks. “I just sat here because it seems customary, but I can move if you want, so we’re closer? What do you think? Too much or okay?”

  Holy shit.

  Holy. SHIT.

  “What—no,” I stammer. “I think we’re good like this.”

  Raylene’s shoulders sag, and I see my night going up in flames, with my career roasting over them, all because I couldn’t survive a single date. Words tumble out of my mouth before I can stop them. “Whatever makes you comfortable, Raylene. If you want to sit next to me, by all means. Please do.”

  “Great!” She scoots to my side. “That’s so nice of you. Charming, actually. People say that chivalry is dead, but I don’t know what they’re talking about.” As she speaks, she pulls over her place setting and straightens everything in front of her with total precision, like she sees only right angles. Then she straightens my fork and knife. Wine glass. Water glass.

  “Perfect!” she says, when there’s nothing left. “We are ready to go! Isn’t this great? I’m already having so much fun. Aren’t you?”

  Suddenly, I’m having a hard time processing everything. Raylene claimed to be twenty-four in her profile, but I’m thinking she’s ten years past that at least. The other thing is the way I can see white all around her dilated pupils, like she just saw a ghost. And won a new car. Then there’s the way Robby is talking to Mia’s rack, like her eyes are at chest level. It’s really too fucking much to handle.

  A bead of sweat runs down my ribs. I draw a deep, deep breath—then blow it back out as I see a steaming plate of kung pao noodles go by.

  Too late. My stomach twists.

  “Ethan?” Raylene says.

  “Yeah?” I’m boxed in. The only way I get out of this booth is by climbing over it, and I’m actually considering it. There is a part of me that’s dying right now. Dying and screaming Cookie! Baudelaire!

  Raylene turns a little, hiding a smile behind her shoulder in a gesture that I think is supposed to be coy. “I brought you a little something. Don’t worry, it’s nothing extravagant. I wouldn’t do something that forward or slutty. That’s totally not my style.” Raylene’s eyes go even wider and drop to my pants before coming back up. “I made triple-quadruple sure this was okay with the salesman at the store. He said this was the perfect thing for a first date. Not too much. Just right.” She hands me the gift bag, which says Tiffany’s on the side. “So, here. Open it!”

  “Wow, Raylene. This is really nice of you, but I can’t—”

  “Yes, you can! Open it!”

  “Excuse me, waiter?” I say, catching a busboy walking by with a tray of empty dishes. “Drink, please? Double whiskey, straight up. Raylene, do you want anything?”

  “You drink?” She makes a face like I just told her I’m a pedophile. I must look terrified because she hurries to say, “It’s okay, it’s okay. We all have vices, right? Nobody’s perfect. Open, open!”

  I reach into the bag and pull out wads of tissue paper, half expecting to find a horse head or maybe a boiled pet rabbit, but it’s just a small box. I take it out and open it, and inside I find silver cuff links, similar to what Adam wears.

  I’m feeling a little dizzy at this point, but I can handle this. I have to.

  “Raylene . . . These are great, but I can’t accept them.”

  “But you have to! I can’t return them.” She takes them from me and holds them close to the candle. “They’re engraved, see? EJV. Ethan James Vance. That’s you! Aren’t they the best? Here, let me put them on you.”

  I can’t find a single thing to say, so I sit there, watching her long, shaking fingernails clip the cuffs onto my shirt.

  “They look soooo good on you,” she says once they’re on. “My gawd, you are so handsome. I was so worried, signing up for a dating site, but you are such a catch. Gawd, I bet you’re good in bed. Do you love them?”

  “Um . . .” Still nothing. No words. My mouth is starting to fill with warm saliva. I feel like those animals that chew off a limb to free themselves from a trap. I would give my right hand to not be here.

  “You can kiss me now if you want to,” Raylene says. “I’m just saying it would be fine with me, as a way of showing your gratitude. I wouldn’t think it was too forward.”

  Her hand comes down to my thigh, moving higher, and my dick literally retreats.

  Right at that moment, Mia looks over to our table for the first time.

  Chapter 25

  Mia

  Q: What’s your idea of a perfect date?

  My brain attempts to absorb the picture in front of me. Ethan and his date sit side-by-side in the booth, about as close to each other as paint to a wall. And on the table in front of them is a box from Tiffany’s.

  I can’t quite put it together.

  Did that ginger giant propose to Ethan?

  Taking a long and much-needed sip of my White Russian, I lean forward for a better view. Because judging from the location of her hands, she’s not trying to put the ring on his finger.

  “Oh, girl, look at you,” says my date, eyeing my breasts with all the bug-eyed subtlety of a cartoon wolf.

  I straighten sharply and exhale away my urge to stab him in his Bettie Page tie with my fork. One thing he’s got going for him: he’s not afraid to make a statement.

  And that statement is: I am gross.

  Robby leans back and does this weird chest-massaging thing he’s done about sixteen times in the last half hour. Like, look at my shiny shirt, girl. Let it hypnoooootize you.

  Which would be effective. If I was Baudelaire.

  “So, tell me,” I say, working to get my mind off Ethan and Ms. Handsy giggling nearby. “Why’d you pick Boomerang instead of another dating site?”

  Adam drilled into us that we’re not allowed to let on that we work for the company, so I have to be careful about int
errogating my date. Still, I need to get something out of this evening—other than a headache and a case of contact chlamydia.

  Robby snaps his fingers at our server, and I want to leap across the table and break them off at the knuckle. “I’ll take another one of these,” he tells her, circling the ice in his glass. “What about you, sweetheart?”

  “God, yes,” I reply and down the rest of my drink in one gulp. “So, Boomerang?”

  “Well, you know . . .” His eyes bounce around from my chest to his drink to a trio of girls crossing behind me to their table. He’s been doing that all night, too—this weird visual triangulation, as though he has to remain ever alert for a more interesting opportunity. Like when he receives an invitation to some nearby orgy. “The DTF doesn’t stand for ‘Desiring True Friends.’

  “Got it.”

  The server comes with a plate of pot stickers, and it dawns on me that we’ve only launched into the appetizer portion of the evening. A quiet groan of panic escapes me, but he doesn’t seem to notice.

  “Go on, honey,” he says and pushes the tray over to me. “You look like a girl who can eat. Am I right?”

  I freeze. “I . . . What?”

  He gets a panicked look, and a blush creeps up his neck, turning his complexion from pumpkin to tomato soup. “Oh, Jesus, I didn’t mean it like that. I’m not saying you’re fat. You’re not. You got some meat on you, sure. But it’s . . .” He swigs his vodka tonic, like he can swallow down his stupidity. “I mean you just look like you know how to, uh, enjoy things. Like you’re not one of those skinny salad-eating bitches.” Another gulp, and his volume dwindles like a wind-up doll running out of crank. “Not that it’s, uh, bad to . . . like . . . salads.”

  Would it be wrong for me to put my head in my hands and start keening? I hear Ethan cough and look over at his table to see the red-haired Mother Teresa brandishing a ceramic spoon in one hand and giggling.

  “Oh my gawd,” she says, brushing at his jacket. “Was that too hot? Did I burn you?”

  Was she feeding him?

  “Uh, no . . . Just shoved that spoon in a little deeper than I expected.” He casts a look in my direction, but it’s too dark in here to really read it.

  “Oh, poor baby,” she exclaims, and winds an arm around his neck. Lifting the spoon once more, she says, “Let me try again. I won’t put it so far in.”

  Robby snickers. “That’s what he said.”

  I rise from the table like I’m levitating. “I will return shortly,” I say in a weird formal tone, like I’ve suddenly become a dowager countess. I’m pretty sure my synapses have misfired and that I’m about two minutes away from being able to smell colors.

  Moving away from the table feels like the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I want to stand in the middle of the restaurant and pump my fists at the sky like Tim Robbins in Shawshank Redemption. Even better, I want to bypass the ladies room entirely and head straight for my car, but I’ve learned exactly nothing from Boomerang Client #1, other than the fact that he, alone among males of the species, enjoys sex.

  A giant woodcarving of Buddha hangs over the main dining area. I feel like lighting some incense and praying to him for a kitchen fire or an alien attack on the city. Instead, I move through the dimly lit space, passing one happy couple after another. The place is all sumptuous red upholstery, carved gold panels, and soft, sexy lighting, making everyone look absolutely fantastic and blissfully in love.

  In the restroom, I snap open my purse and fish out my cell phone, hoping with every bit of me that I’ll find a “rescue me” text from Ethan.

  Nothing.

  And no surprise. I have a close-up and personal view of how well things are going there. She’s all over him, and he’s eating it with a spoon. Literally.

  Staring at my sallow complexion under the fluorescent lights, I make a pact with myself. If I make it through dinner without vomiting satay or drenching my date in White Russian, I can spend all day tomorrow in my pajamas, bingeing on Dollhouse reruns.

  The door swings open, almost clocking me, and in walks Raylene Powers.

  “Oh, gawd, sorry,” she says, and flashes a bajillion kilowatt smile at me. She has pageant teeth and perfect alabaster skin, though under the unforgiving lights, I can see she’s way older than twenty-four.

  “No problem,” I tell her, and because I’m a glutton for punishment, I ask, “You having a good night?”

  “Oh, I’m having the best time,” she says, moving into a stall and continuing to talk to me while she pees. “I got so lucky. You wouldn’t believe it!”

  “Really?” I look around for something I can use to hang myself with but come up short. “How so?”

  “I let my friends make a profile for me on some dating site. And my first time out, I get this absolute hottie. I can’t believe my luck!”

  She keeps peeing, and I wonder if she has some kind of disorder.

  “And he’s nice, too,” she adds. “A little quiet, but I think it’s because he’s into me.”

  Finally, she flushes and comes out again. At the sink, she washes her hands meticulously, soaping up to her elbows like a surgeon. I hear her singing under her breath.

  “Dr. Oz says to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ twice while you wash,” she informs me. Her eyes are a lively chocolate brown, but the whites glow a bit feverishly, like she’s just had a face-to-face encounter with God.

  “Good to know.”

  She eyes me. “You’re with that cute guy, right?”

  “Me?”

  “Yes!” She gives me a wink and then leans into the mirror, like she’s staring into infinity. “That good-looking guy in the purple shirt. You’re with him?” She inserts a fingernail between her teeth, and says, “Got it! God, I think that was there since lunch!”

  “Umm . . . Yeah, that’s my date.”

  “Well, I hope your evening goes as well as mine is.”

  “And I completely wish you the same.”

  “Oh, I’ve got big plans for mine,” she says and drills me once more with a look of low-level mania. “I’m going to drag him home and screw his eyes out.” She flutters her fingers at me. “Ta!”

  “Ta,” I say, as the door swings shut in my face.

  Chapter 26

  Ethan

  Q: Surf, ski, or another word that starts with “S”?

  When our food arrives, Raylene launches into a discussion about her favorite vacation spots, Hawaii and the Desert, which I’ve learned is what people in Los Angeles call Palm Springs. Because LA is such a rainforest.

  “We should go together!” she says, wiping every single bead of condensation off her water glass. “Either place. Or, oh my gawd—both! Not anytime soon, don’t worry. Just someday. No pressure. It’s only a suggestion, but wouldn’t it be so fun?”

  I take a moment to frame an answer that isn’t flat-out rude.

  “Actually, I’m not much for the beach, Raylene. I grew up in Colorado, so mountains are more—”

  “I bet you look amazing in swim trunks.” She sets the water glass back in its symmetrically optimal location and smiles at me, wrinkling her nose. “I thought I felt a six-pack earlier. Did I? Do you? Have one?”

  The answer is yes. I’ve always had a strong stomach, but I will eat this entire plate of Chinese noodles—which I can’t even look at—before I admit that. “Well, Raylene, I—whoa!”

  I jam myself against the end of the booth as she reaches for my abs.

  “Oh, I’m only playing with you!” She laughs. She retracts her claws and shakes her head like I’m being ridiculous. “Some things are so much better if you wait for them. Anticipation is the best, don’t you think? Plus, I did feel a six-pack before when my elbow brushed against you, so I already know!”

  As a psych major, I spent a whole quarter learning about the symptoms of shock. I’m definitely sweating. Can’t cool down. Shortness of breath? Check. Confusion, anxiety, agitation? Triple check.

  Raylene picks up her fork. “Do y
ou also have those lower stomach muscles that sweep down? You know those V-shaped ones? My girlfriend Mona calls them dick indicators. What a name, right?” She covers a smile behind her hand. “My gawd! I can’t believe I just said that, but I feel so comfortable around you! You’re so nice, Ethan. This food is so good. But you’re not eating very much. Isn’t this night the best?”

  “Yeah, the food is really . . . fragrant.” The smell in here is going to kill me dead if Raylene doesn’t take me out first.

  As Raylene takes a few bites, I steal another glance at Mia. She’s in professional mode, the expression on her face a little reserved, the intelligence in her eyes out in full, sparkling force. That means she’s not into the Robster, which is the only item in tonight’s plus column. But I hate the fact that he’s put away four drinks in the past hour—and that he’s still talking directly at her rack.

  “Can you believe that, Ethan James?” Raylene says, scaling the walls of my mental fortress. “I mean, it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?”

  I missed the moment I became Ethan James.

  “I, uh . . .” My mind does a little rewind and playback, searching for what I’m supposed to have a hard time believing. “Wow. It really gets to be a hundred and ten degrees in the Desert? I can’t even imagine that kind of heat.”

  Which is a fucking lie, because I’m pretty sure that’s my body temp right now.

  Raylene nods slowly, a smile spreading over her lips. “That heat exists, Ethan James. I will prove it to you!”

  I tug open the top button of my shirt and stare at my water glass, tempted to dump it over my head. Raylene has officially broken my soul.

  It’s an asshole thing to do, but as soon as she finishes a few more bites, I ask for the check. A glance over at Mia’s table shows me that she and the Robster haven’t even gotten their main courses yet, but I can’t stay in this booth any longer. I will suffer permanent damage if I don’t leave now.

  “Aren’t you eager?” Raylene says, doing her coy behind-the-shoulder smile. “Okay.”