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“How was your weekend?” Rose’s father asked on Monday night.
Rose paused the show she’d been watching and settled back on the couch for the phone call. “Not too exciting.”
By Rose’s standards, the weekend had been quite exciting, but it wasn’t the sort of thing she could talk to her father about. Though if Cal had already texted, she might have said, I met a guy. I’ve got a date next weekend.
Although she kept telling herself that it hadn’t been forty-eight hours yet and he would text her eventually, her doubts were starting to creep in.
“Rose?” Dad said. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah.” She paused. “I’m just a bit...lonely.”
“I know you’ll say I’m biased—”
She chuckled.
“—but you will find someone.”
Her father thought the world of her. Sometimes it was hard to voice her fears to him—she didn’t feel like he could really understand—but it was better to have someone who was always in her corner than the alternative, of course.
She switched the subject. “You’re still retiring? You haven’t changed your mind?”
“No, I haven’t changed my mind in the last two days,” he said, and she could hear his smile through the phone. “It’s time.”
They spoke for a few more minutes, and then Rose returned to comfort-watching The Untamed.
* * *
By Thursday, Cal still hadn’t texted, and Rose couldn’t avoid obsessing over it.
He was the one who’d asked for her number. He wouldn’t have done that if he wasn’t interested in more, right? Or had he asked just because he knew it was what she’d hoped to hear? That didn’t seem like Cal, but she reminded herself again that she hardly knew him.
Had he intended to ask her out, then decided that on second thought, he didn’t want to be with a woman who’d blurted out that she had an Instagram account for her stuffed alpaca?
What’s wrong with me? Am I unlovable?
Her dad loved her. His actions told her that—and his words did, too. But that was a different sort of love.
Cal’s never going to contact me, is he?
It had been more than ninety-six hours, and he’d said he wanted to take her out this coming weekend. Wouldn’t he have texted by now if he really intended to do that?
Yeah, she wasn’t going to hear from him.
She asked herself if her pessimism was “just her depression talking,” but that sent her on another spiral.
Damn.
* * *
Saturday evening, Rose got ready to go to Ossington Cider Bar. She put on jeans and a cute top, but it didn’t make her feel pretty.
She’d debated not going out with her friends. She just wasn’t in the mood.
But what else would she do? Wallow at home?
She and Sierra walked to the bar, where they met up with Charlotte and Nicole. Amy was pregnant and not feeling great, and she’d decided to skip tonight.
“So, Rose,” Nicole said, waggling her eyebrows once they all had a pint of cider in hand, “tell me about the guy you met.”
Right. Rose had texted Nicole about Cal last Sunday, but now, she didn’t feel like sharing the details she’d shared with Sierra.
“I never heard from him,” Rose said.
“Bastard,” Charlotte muttered. “Fucking bastard.”
“He’s one of those guys who just enjoys stringing women along,” Nicole said. “Bastard is right. You’re better off without him. If he were here, I’d force-feed him a whole bowl of those Brussels sprouts that Sierra keeps inexplicably ordering. Without the cheese and bacon.”
“Maybe he has good taste and likes Brussels sprouts,” Sierra said. “I mean, he chose Rose—”
“And never texted her,” Nicole said. “Don’t worry, Rose. We’ll find you someone else.”
“Thanks.” Rose didn’t really believe it would happen, though.
“You know where he lives, don’t you?” Charlotte asked. “We could, like, egg his house. Demand that he explain himself.”
That was true. Rose did know where Cal lived, but by not contacting her, he’d made his feelings clear. What was the point in going back there? She’d seem like a stalker.
Conversation moved on to other topics, and Rose forced herself to participate in the conversation and laugh at the appropriate times, but she wasn’t really into it.
That night, she went home and snuggled her plushies as she cried silently into the pillow.
He’s just a guy. We spent a single night together.
But that sort of thing was unusual for Rose. She wasn’t one of those sitcom characters who were always going on dates. She wasn’t like Nicole, who oozed sex appeal and used to sleep around a lot, back before she’d met David Cho. No, she was more like Charlotte, who hadn’t dated at all for five years after her ex. Charlotte had actually sworn off dating, but it wasn’t as if she’d had many interested men in that time, even though she was pretty awesome.
Rose had felt like she and Cal had something special. When he’d kissed her, when he’d given her a teddy bear to cuddle like it was no big deal, when he’d handed her that mug of coffee and their fingers brushed...
But really, she’d just spent one night with him. Why couldn’t she stop obsessing over this bastard, as Charlotte had called him?
Because you’re such a mess. You’re a loser and nobody—
She cut off the voice in her head. It was a liar. There were lots of great people in the world who wanted lasting relationships but weren’t lucky enough to have one. It didn’t mean there was anything wrong with her.
That was what she would say to a friend in this situation.
Rose used to have faith that love would happen to her eventually, but it had become harder to believe that in the last year or two.
She snuggled her plushies tight and focused on her breathing. Though her mind calmed, she still didn’t feel great, but she’d get through this.
She’d gotten through much worse, after all.
A few minutes later, she picked up her phone and played Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love of All.” She smiled through her tears as she remembered her mother singing along to this song while she did the dishes.
* * *
“You’re sure there’s no way to recover her number?” Cal asked Marv. They were in Cal’s apartment that Sunday, watching the Jays game and drinking beer.
“If you’d saved it to your Google account, it would be there,” Marv said. “But when you created the new contact, you must have just saved it on your phone.”
After lunch with his parents, Cal had hurried over to Rogers and gotten a new phone. He’d set it up and logged into his Google account. The phone had found all the apps he’d had on his old phone, as well as some of his contacts.
But not hers.
Cal rarely swore in anger, but he’d done it last Sunday afternoon.
He still had all the pieces of his old phone at home. Perhaps someone smarter than him or Marv would know how to retrieve her number, but so far, he’d come up empty.
“And you don’t, like, know her last name?” Marv asked. “That might make it easier to find her on social media.”
“No,” Cal said. “Though she does have an Instagram account for her alpaca.”
“A what?”
“An Instagram account. For her stuffed alpaca.”
“Yeah, I heard that part.”
Cal felt a little defensive. “So what? It makes her happy.”
He dropped his gaze to his new phone and pulled up Instagram. How did one find a stuffed alpaca on social media? He didn’t know her alpaca’s name or what it looked like, so how would he know it was hers?
Fifteen minutes later, he’d managed to find many alpaca farms and a stuffed alpaca named Sweetie Pie. Sweetie Pie was a striped alpaca based in Ireland. He’d also found a stuffed alpaca named Robbi, location unknown, but it looked tropical.
Ah, well. He’d have to give up.
He’d stopped by Nautilus last night to have a drink, just in case she decided to go there again, but he wasn’t going to start going there every day, and it hadn’t seemed like she went there very often anyway.
Marv cheered, and Cal glanced up. Looked like one of the Jays had hit a homerun, but Cal went back to his phone, trying to figure out what else he could do.
And then he remembered that it wasn’t completely hopeless—she knew where he lived, right? When she didn’t hear from him, hopefully she’d realize that he’d lost her number and come looking for him. It seemed like a bit of a longshot, but so it went.
Besides, there were lots of pretty women out there. No need to get hung up on this one just because they’d had a good night together.
His heart clenched as he thought of Rose curled up on his couch, unable to sleep.
He hoped she wasn’t too upset that he hadn’t texted.