Page 50 of It's Not PMS, It's You

Max didn’t feel the need to say anything as I followed him to an unspecified location. The man was short on words, but that was a thousand times better than Babbling Bagel Barney.

I was still curious why he wanted to meet at the park, but I would find out soon enough.

Hopefully it wouldn’t take long because I was starving. And after having to listen to Mason and the other suits all morning, I needed a break.

Max led me past the adjacent dog park where I spotted a golden retriever chasing another dog and immediately thought of Nick and Karma.

Had I overreacted with him?

Maybe I’d been extra mad because I had flashed him again.

I definitely had a right to be upset, and decided I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it.

Admittedly, it was sweet that Nick wanted to make sure nothing happened to the dog this morning, but not at the expense of my rose garden. I still didn’t know what I was going to do with that disaster, but I wasn’t going to worry about that just then.

“There.” Max pointed to a group of trees just past the dog park and stopped. “I like to watch and listen to the birds here. And lucky for us, it’s mating season.” He grinned and pulled out some folding binoculars from his suit jacket pocket, flipping them open and looking through the lenses.

Was he spying on the birds as they did the deed?

Did I have a sick pervert on my hands here?

A minute later, Max handed the binoculars to me and then pointed at the tree. “Look half way up, then just a little bit over to the right.”

I hesitated, but then grabbed the binoculars from Max, pressing them to my eyes.

I moved them around to try to see better, trying to find what he was looking at, and finally found it.

“Oh, wow.” I zoomed in a little more to get a look at the bird’s nest with three little baby finches. “That is the cutest thing.”

“I usually like to head out into nature to bird watch, to one of the state parks, but I discovered that there are some brilliant examples of nature right here in the city, in our own backyard.”

I watched as the mama bird fed food from her mouth to the baby birds.

I pulled the binoculars away from my eyes. “So cool. Thanks for sharing that with me.”

Max nodded and took the binoculars from me, folding them and sticking them back in his pocket. “You’re welcome. Let’s get something to eat.”

Now he was speaking my language.

Maybe I’d worried about Max and had been bent out of shape for nothing. He just wanted to show me a bird’s nest and nothing more. It was sweet, actually, and a very good sign.

Now, hopefully the rest of the date would be just as nice.

We walked through the heart of Little Italy and right by Sogno di Vino, Sorrento Ristorante, Mona Lisa Deli, and Filipi’s Pizza Grotto, the wonderful smell of each place practically stopping me in my tracks.

Any of these will do! Where are we going?

Then we rounded the corner and—

“Watch out.” Max grabbed me and pulled me out of the way of a kid riding his scooter on the sidewalk.

“Thank you.” I watched the boy disappear down the sidewalk, weaving in and out of the people like a maniac. “That was close.”

A gentleman.

Max was scoring points rather quickly with me and we hadn’t even made it to lunch yet.

I continued to walk down the sidewalk and—