black leather boots – and decided she was good to go. “Is half an hour too soon?”
“Perfect. I’ll be the guy in the purple velvet jacket with a vicious case of acne.”
“Okay. I’ll be in my motorcycle leathers. If you still can’t spot me, I’m wearing the
“You like Hell’s Kitchen. You can leave for a drink on a second’s notice. And you’re not afraid to call a man out when he’s being stupid. You got it going on, Ally.”
MEGAN QUINN WAS alone in her apartment when the doorman buzzed.
She took a deep breath and folded her knees into her abdomen. Then she hit the pause button on the remote control, wiped a bead of sweat from her temple, and pushed herself up from the blue mat unrolled on the living room floor. She ran to the intercom. “Hello?”
“Delivery.”
“I didn’t order anything, Lewis.”
“He said 32M.”
“N, Lewis. He probably said N, as in Not M. As in Never for Megan, always for the neighbor.” The guys across the hallway ordered in dinner every night, usually from multiple establishments. And half of those nights, the doormen called to tell her about it by mistake.
“Not food this time. Flowers.”
“Well, it’s definitely not for me then.”
“Sorry.”
“Not a problem.”
Megan hung up the phone and looked in the mirror that hung beside it on the wall. She pressed her round cheeks with her palms, squishing the fat around her lips and nose. She tried to pinpoint when this had happened, and how long it would take to lose. She had been thin once. She had been confident. She sucked in her cheeks and held up the skin of her wrinkled forehead and for a moment looked like the girl who had waved from the homecoming float in Colorado while her date sang a comedic version of “Mandy,” substituting in “Oh, Megan.” Now she was so ashamed of how she looked that she was actually afraid of meeting any man who could possibly be
She looked away from the mirror, reminding herself that her days of feeling bad about herself were numbered. She had joined Weight Watchers. She was doing Pilates. She looked and felt better every day. She even forced herself to go shopping during her lunch break to buy some transition clothes now that her fat ones were too loose. Baby steps. Three months from now, she’d reach her goal weight and treat herself to an entirely new wardrobe.
As she settled back down onto her exercise mat, there was a knock on the door. “Who is it?” she yelled.
“Delivery.”
The delivery men didn’t speak English any better than Lewis, she thought as she climbed back up to her feet. She squinted against the peephole and saw a bouquet of flowers blocking the profile of a brown-haired delivery man.
“They’re not for me. 32F, maybe.” That’s where the long-haired skank with the chihuahua, pierced tongue, and all the boyfriends lived.
“Megan, they’re for you. It’s me. Greg. From FirstDate. I told you that if you wouldn’t go out with me, I’d show up at your door one day with flowers.”
It wasn’t actually the man at the door who had written that promise to Megan, but a very nice man named Greg London, who had been exchanging e-mails with Megan for a good solid week now on FirstDate. Lots of chemistry. Plenty of witty banter. Greg was one of the few men interested in meeting Megan in person, but Megan was mortified at the thought of meeting a trim stranger who described his perfect match as slender. Megan had been putting him off, racing to shed a few more pounds before the big introduction.
And now Greg had made good on his promise to surprise her one day with flowers. She did a panicked check in the mirror, then decided that sweat became her. She looked happy and healthy, and, screw it, she was finally going to meet Greg.
“How on earth did you find me?”
THE MAN STANDING outside 32M pictured the round face pressed against the peephole. Flowers and brown hair. That’s all she’d see.
Megan did not live long enough to learn the answer to her eager question. Just as she closed the door and locked it behind her, the man who called himself Enoch realized that Megan looked a lot like one of his foster mothers. He was still thinking about the absurdity of that when he grabbed her.
PART THREE
23
THE DELTA GRILL HAS A LOUISIANA THEME, COMPLETE WITH wood-planked floors, New Orleans bar signs, and live zydeco music. Ellie made her way past the band in the bar, searching for a face that matched the picture posted on FirstDate by Unpublished. They spotted each other simultaneously.
Peter stood up from a small table in the back to shake her hand. “I hope you don’t mind sitting here. I figured we could hear better.”
“No, it’s good. So I’ve taken one look at you. Is this the part where most of the girls run away?” Ellie asked.
“Yeah, but that was before someone told me about that whole using-soap-while-you-shower thing. I’m better now, I think.”
Ellie took a seat.
“Does this mean you’re staying?”
“Stop it,” Ellie said. “Yes, of course I’m staying.”
“Admit it. You’re relieved.”
Ellie kept a serious face for all of two seconds before she broke. She was in fact relieved. Peter was even better looking in person: small-framed, but not too small, and he had a cute smile that turned up more on one side than the other.
“I was a little nervous,” she admitted. “I’ve never gone out with someone from FirstDate before.”
“That’s what they all say.”
Ellie insisted she was telling the truth, but Peter waved her off. “I’m just kidding. This is my first time too. I just signed up a few weeks ago and wasn’t real happy with the kinds of responses I was finding out there.”
“
“Exactly. What is up with that? Anyway, you actually got my ridiculous sense of humor, so I figured I had to persuade you to meet me at least once before I canceled my membership.”
A waitress came by and asked what she could get them to drink. She plugged the hurricanes as the house
