An Open Relationship? Fine Meet My New Boyfriend novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Audition

Cillian knocked on the glass door at six minutes past close.

He had a paper bag from the Greek place on the corner and a pencil behind his ear.

"I didn't know if you'd eaten," he said. "You didn't look like someone who had last night."

"I had a bite of burrata."

"That's not eating."

Dani looked at him from behind the register for a long time.

"Are you the one who kissed her?" she asked.

"Yes."

"Good kisser?"

"Dani," I said.

"I'm asking for the record." She took her coat from the hook. "I'm going home. I'm not going to ask what you two are doing. If I asked, I'd have to ask him about his intentions."

"They're to be a boyfriend for thirty days," Cillian said.

"Those are terrible intentions." She pointed at him. "Be good at it."

She left, and the bell rang, and the shop was quiet.

He set out the food on the counter beside the roses and sat on Dani's stool.

I told him what I knew while we ate.

I said that Trevor did the weather on Channel 6 and had a mother who loved me, and that he had a woman named Tilly he'd been seeing since spring.

I left out that she had been in my shop that morning.

I wasn't ready to say it out loud.

"All right," Cillian said. He wiped his hands on a napkin. "Then we need a story. Where did we meet?"

"Here. You came in for flowers."

"What kind?"

"Tulips."

"For who?"

"Your mother."

"My mother's allergic to tulips," he said.

"You're a man who doesn't know what his mother is allergic to."

"I'm a man who learned that day." He thought. "Two weeks ago. A Tuesday. You said they were forty percent off and I said they were wilting, and you said so was I."

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