Kiernan and Montana aren't looking for complicated in their Chicago summer, but somehow complicated has found them.
[co-written with @w1ldflow3r]
[extended summary inside]
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I wish my date had stood me up.
My ego might have complained initially, but at least I wouldn't be spending my precious Friday evening at some trendy hole-in-the-wall deep dish pizza place in Lincoln Park.
Unfortunately, Jed Montgomery seemed too nice and too damn bashful to have ever considered doing so. Jed was exactly what I'd envisioned a former offensive lineman from Notre Dame would look like. He filled his side of the booth with muscle that strained against his pocketed Brooks Brothers t-shirt, and if he leaned over the table, his head might have brushed the stained glass lamp that hung above us.
I'd clocked his light-wash jeans when he stood up to greet me at the table earlier, and I momentarily second-guessed my semi-glamorous outfit choice consisting of a mini black halter dress and cropped white cardigan.
"Another drink?" he asked with a pinched smile. He had kind brown eyes, so I figured he wasn't about to snap my 5'5'' frame in half.
Please, God, no.
"Sure, why not?" My words betrayed the desperate voice in my head. That voice was a selfish bitch who wanted to collapse onto my suede couch and deteriorate while watching The West Wing.
Jed threw me another small smile before getting up and meandering through other high-top tables to the bar. Judging by the young, professional looking crowd, this place was a local hang-out spot happy hour after work. I watched as Jed parted the sea of people standing beneath the glow of the televisions mounted above the bar, broadcasting live from Wrigley Field. He stopped beside a guy our age who looked like he'd come straight from the financial district in a pressed suit, and before I could blink, they were laughing like old buddies.
I grimanced and threw back the rest of my Gin & Tonic like it was a shot of espresso. These Midwestern men seemed to make friends wherever they went. They were too friendly to be authentic.
The same could also be said for my coworker Emelia King, who grew up 20 miles outside of Chicago, and was the reason I was in this deep dish disaster in the first place. I'd met Emelia only one month prior, when I moved to Chicago in the dead heat of July, but she'd already commenderred the wheel of my social life (or lack thereof). I didn't like mixing my work life with my social life, but that practice went out the window when I moved to a city where I didn't know a single soul my age.
Last weekend, she'd insisted that going out for drinks with one of her closest guy friends from Notre Dame would be worth my time and introduce me to the Chicago dating scene. So far I'd deemed it a failure on both accounts, especially when I shocked Jed when I informed him that my alma mater Yale was in Connecticut, and not New York.
He wasn't making me uncomfortable, but the situation was. How the hell was I supposed to tell Emelia that her friend seemed comfortable coming across as a simpleton from the cornfields of Iowa? Also, what about me convinced her that I'd be remotely compatible with him?
