Page 9 of The Best Worst Mistake (Off-Limits #2)

Abby

I push myself out from the table, making more room for the next course.

Dax might be the only person in the world to order a post-dinner appetizer.

And now, he’s ordered two, even though we hardly touched the first, before settling on the chocolate soufflé for dessert.

I’m not even sure what makes a soufflé any different than the chocolate cake on the line right below it, but I have a strong feeling that he chose it simply because the menu states it’ll take an extra thirty minutes to bake before it arrives at our table.

“You two okay with waiting around that long?” the waiter asks, eyeballing us both with a stack of plates balanced down his arms that he’s just cleared from the table next to us.

We’ve already seen three other couples come and go from that table since we arrived, and there’s a fourth couple being seated there right now.

“I can’t turn down a freshly-baked chocolate soufflé. Can you?” Dax asks, eyes gleaming like a kid who’s just discovered a secret stash of cookies his mom and dad hid in the closet.

I roll my eyes in a full circle before landing them back on his.

And yet, I’m secretly not mad about it. Sure, I would have loved to be finishing my third orgasm with him by now, but I’m having a surprisingly fun time catching up with him.

So much that I’ve hardly noticed time passing.

He’s kept me laughing all evening with stories about his life back in L.A.

, which sounds far more endearing than mine.

“Why do I get the feeling you’re just trying to buy more time?” I narrow my eyes across the candles which have shrunk to mere nubs by now.

The waiter looks pointedly between us.

“That’s not a no.” Dax smiles triumphantly, then turns to the waiter. “Which means it’s a yes. We’ll go for it. Thanks.”

The waiter sighs — like, legitimately sighs — before nodding once and heading back to the kitchen with his stack of plates.

“Why do I get the sense that we’ve overstayed our welcome?” I whisper, grinning.

Since Olivia moved to what feels like another world, I suppose I’ve been more starved of face-to-face friendship than I realized.

Tonight has felt fun compared to the rigid, downtrodden colleagues I usually share a quick lunch or happy hour with.

We usually end up with the whole table complaining endlessly about nonexistent work–life balances and then storm back into the office together, parting ways at the water cooler.

“I’ll leave him a tip that makes it worth it,” Dax says. “Promise. Everything about tonight has already been worth it.”

I like the grin that stretches across his face, but it’s the look in his eyes that makes my eyes flutter down toward the table. My stomach twists in a knot. I wasn’t expecting to have this much fun.

“Are you ordering soufflés and appetizers so you’re too stuffed to bother with that walk I suggested earlier?” I ask.

Dax erupts into laughter and smacks his fingers against the edge of the table.

“Christ, I forgot how attractive your dimples are,” he tells me, completely avoiding my question. “How could I have forgotten about those?”

I purposefully wipe any dimples from my expression, though they might be permanently etched on my cheeks now, based on how much smiling I’ve done over the last three hours.

“I have to ask, did you really just want to come here to catch up with me?” I watch his face as I ask. “Then back home to L.A. tomorrow?”

“Isn’t that why you agreed?” he asks, the look in his eye vaguely challenging me to admit more.

“You drove a hard bargain,” I remind him.

“Truthfully, I almost didn’t even say hi when I saw you this morning.” He takes his napkin from his lap and tosses it on the table. Then he tosses the rest of what’s left in his wine glass down his throat.

What?

My heart kicks up a notch. “Why?”

Why wouldn’t he have talked to me?

“I didn’t know if you’d want me to. Or, frankly, if I wanted me to.”

My mouth goes dry.

“Well, I’m glad you did,” I tell him, glancing at the empty bottle, wishing there was another splash to pour in my glass, but the wine’s gone now, too. “Tonight was more fun than I expected, honestly. Why didn’t you ever ask me out properly back in law school?”

He starts to say something but pauses to study the look in my eyes. The air practically thickens between us. I shouldn’t have said that.

He breaks into a laugh, more strained than it was a minute ago . . . if only just.

“You’re unbelievable,” he says, tipping his chair back.

“Forget I said that last part,” I say. “We’re here now, so . . .”

“Are we really not going to address the fact that we slept together for a whole two years, and then you ghosted me one day, and I never heard from you again?” he asks.

The woman at the table beside us audibly gasps. I glare over at her, then back at Dax.

I lower my voice. “We were practically kids then.” It’s a lame excuse, and I know it. We weren’t kids at all.

“If I remember correctly, we were pretty damn good at what we were doing back then,” he says. “Nothing childish about it.”

The woman coughs loudly, like she’s gotten a piece of lettuce lodged there. Her date subtly nods his head toward us.

I swallow, wanting to clear this up quickly.

“That’s fair. But you did come talk to me at Carrie’s this morning, and I’m really glad you did.

” I smile brightly. The couple at the table has gone silent, and I suddenly feel self-conscious.

“Any interest in skipping the soufflé and getting out of here? Maybe go for that walk now?”

I exhale slowly, hoping he’ll bite, then steal a glance at the woman next to us who isn’t even pretending to eat her salad anymore. She and her date are both unapologetically leaning over to their left side, waiting to hear what comes out next.

Dax doesn’t even notice.

“If I don’t ask you this now, I might not ever ask—” he starts.

But I don’t let him finish.

“Then don’t,” I quickly interrupt. “I don’t know if I have a good answer to what I think you might want to know. But it was a long time ago. Besides, you’re the one that said Fate put us both in Carrie’s shop today. Focus on that. Focus on what’s happening right now instead of—”

“Why did you cut things off between us . . . that last morning?” he asks.

I close my eyes, wishing he hadn’t asked.

My mind flashes back to the one time I allowed myself to spend the entire night at his place.

Before that, I’d always forced myself to leave before accidentally falling asleep in his bed.

But, I’d woken up that last morning to see his window blinds casting a shadow over the bed, each slat a black bar, the sun rising behind them.

I’d stayed without meaning to, but also without actively forcing myself to go.

Everything had seemed possible the night before, but the next morning I panicked and left, wanting to keep the perfect memory of him alive before it all came crashing down.

“We were graduating,” I answer, briskly. “You were going to L.A. and I was coming here. There was no point in dragging it out any longer.”

“Dragging what out longer?”

“I’m happy to remind you . . .” I say, letting my voice trail off.

A blanket of silence fills the table and I let it, since nothing coming out of my mouth is doing a stellar job of defusing this. But I get the sense that Dax is well-versed in the same stone-cold silence method, because he just leans into the space between us, waiting for me to go on.

The wine I’ve consumed tonight must be doing its job to make me feel more brazen, I suppose, because the next sentence out of my mouth doesn’t leave any room for error or misunderstanding.

“So, is all this because you’re just not interested in having sex with me anymore?”

I don’t care that the couple next to us freeze, then stare over at our table. They’ve hit the jackpot of voyeuristic conversation topics a mere foot away.

Dax, however, is unperturbed.

“Who said that I’m not interested in having sex with you anymore?” he asks, lowering his voice.

“You, evidently.” I cross my arms.

“When?”

“You didn’t have to. You’ve ordered almost everything on the menu, including a fucking thirty-minute soufflé.”

“Oh, that. No, I’m just not interested in meaningless anything anymore.”

“Who said it has to be meaningless?” I shoot back before I can stop myself.

Shit .

The words hang in the air between us and I watch as Dax inhales them, a smile forming on his lips. I wish I could grab each word and stuff every last one back into my mouth.

“Ah,” he says, leaning back in his chair, grinning.

“No, no, don’t ah me right now,” I say, annoyed.

“So, this isn’t meaningless.” He waves his hand around the table. “Was it the white tablecloth that did it for you? Or was it the candlelight between us?”

His eyes dance across the table at me when I finally look up.

“Stop being weird,” I tell him. “You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be.”

“Sex is never not complicated,” he says. “What we had was never not complicated.”

“So I hear,” I grumble, recalling Olivia’s words from our earlier conversation.

I glare over at the woman at the table next to us. She snaps her eyes back to her salad and starts rooting her fork around in the lettuce, frowning.

I shift in my seat.

“Are you ready to go?” I ask, annoyed that we still have an audience.

“But the soufflé still has—”

“Fuck the soufflé,” I interrupt and stand up.

The woman scoffs, looking nearly faint.

“ Fuck the soufflé ?” he asks.

I turn to the table next to us.

“You heard me,” I announce to them.

Their eyes grow wide, not even hiding their shock at how the conversation they’ve been so evidently eavesdropping on just took a left turn.

“Now, stand up,” I say, motioning to Dax.

“I still have to pay.” He’s not even looking around for the waiter.

“Fucking hell,” I groan, pulling my wallet out of my purse. I only have two twenties, which is not remotely enough to cover the bill, and paying with a card will take too long.

Dax tosses one, two, three — okay, five one-hundred-dollar bills down on the table between us.

I stare back at him.

“Told you I’d make it worth his time,” he says.

“Show-off,” I mumble.

But, he finally stands up, causing a nerve in my stomach to snap. I turn back to the couple who now shamelessly watch us.

“Please tell the waiter that our soufflé was actually ordered for the two of you — and this should cover the bill.”

“Uh, thanks,” the man says, weakly. “And good luck. Tonight. With your—”

“Oh, shut up,” I tell him.

Then I grab Dax’s elbow and lead him out of the restaurant and out onto the street that’ll take us back to my place.