Finally Moving On After A Decade novel · Chapter 10 of 24
Chapter 10: The Dinner
Freja picked the restaurant, and she picked it as a dare.
"It's called Gino's," she said, on the sidewalk on Tuesday night. "The booths are red and the lasagna tastes like it was frozen in 1998."
"Why are we here?"
"Because it's the worst place in Portland, and nobody at Fairhaven will see us." She pushed the door open. "I won four hundred thousand dollars. I'm allowed one bad dinner."
Lydia had moved out on Sunday.
She took two suitcases and a lamp and left a note on the kitchen counter that said only, "I forgive you."
I had put it in the recycling.
The waiter brought bread and a candle in a red glass, and Freja took off her rain jacket and sat across from me in a green sweater.
Her hair was down for the first time.
It was longer than I had thought, and it fell past her shoulders in dark copper.
"You look like you're waiting for a verdict," she said.
"I haven't been on a date in ten years."
"This isn't a date. It's lot ten."
"Right."
"Order the wine. You promised the wine."
I ordered the wine, and we ate the lasagna, and it was exactly as bad as she had said.
She told me about the winter her father died.
She had taken the Fairhaven job at twenty-two because nobody else wanted to be in that building.
I told her about the shop and the chairs and the old man who taught me to steam a joint apart so you never had to break it.
Somewhere in the second glass she began to laugh at everything I said.
Somewhere in the third I noticed I was talking more than I had in a year.
Keep reading free with an account. Start Finally Moving On After A Decade from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.
← Chapter 9 · All chapters · Chapter 11 →
Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend