usefulness and is now just humiliating me. I search for the shirt I had on before. It was a light blue polo. Not fancy. My style of casual. Zoey is a classic girl. I should have gone with that.
Unless she’s hiding some inner wild child that I’ll be introduced to tonight. No. She’ll probably still have her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. I bet she wears a blouse. The thought makes me smile.
My original shirt is gone. I retrace my steps and remember it last crumpled on the dressing room floor. Didn’t I pick it up? That’s not like me to leave something on the floor of a dressing room.
But I’m feeling a little off. Okay, a lot off. Combine the nervousness of my first date in years—if this is even a date?—with how much I like Zoey, plus my fears about the age difference and the whole boss thing.
My head feels like a mini tornado has taken off, spiraling all my thoughts around. I’m feeling hot, too, and desperately hoping that I don’t start awkwardly sweating. Though it’s summer in Austin and we’re playing mini golf outside. There will be sweat.
I can’t change, but I can turn my shirt inside out. I’m in a mostly secluded part of the parking lot, so ignoring the cars zooming by at the nearby intersection, I lift the shirt over my head.
It’s covering my face when I hear Zoey’s voice. “Gavin?”
I should yank the shirt back down. Or yank it off. Quick decision. Easy. I’m a decisive person ninety-nine percent of the time.
This moment, apparently, is the rare one percent. I freeze, overthinking everything.
Not for long, just a few seconds, but when you’re a grown man caught in a parking lot with your shirt halfway over your head, seconds are decades. My hair will be totally gray by the time I make my choice.
Off. shirt off.
I whip the stupid graphic T over my head and attempt a casual smile. Don’t mind me, the parking lot stripper. Totally normal.
But it’s not just Zoey standing there. It’s a guy who I would have recognized anywhere as her brother. Not just by their matching hair and eye color, but their height and the expression they’re both wearing, a mix of confusion and suspicion. At least she’s looking at me now, unlike today in the office. Next to her brother is a diminutive woman with blonde and turquoise-tipped hair who is barely holding in her laughter.
And she is wearing—I kid you not—the girl’s version of the shirt I’m holding in my hands. I’m not sure if that would have won me points or taken them away.
“Everything okay?” Zoey asks, slowly. Carefully.
“Sure.” I take off my shirt in parking lots all the time. Catch me here three days a week at seven o’clock, sharp, folks. “I just spilled coffee on my shirt.”
“You don’t drink regular coffee after one,” Zoey says, a fact she’s picked up from working with me for two years. And man, does that fact about coffee make me sound like an old guy.
“It was decaf.”
“Your shirt is black,” Zoey’s friend says. Abby, I remember. Abby and Zane. She’s smirking, like she can smell the lie coming off me in waves.
“Happy birthday,” I say, desperate for a deflection.
Zoey grins and dips her chin, like she’s suddenly a shy version of herself. And, I note, that she is wearing a blouse and a ponytail. The khaki shorts are a surprise. I do my best not to ogle her legs.
“Is this her present?” Abby asks, pointing to my bare torso.
And now they’re all staring at my naked top half. Not that I have anything to be embarrassed about. I’m in great shape. For your age, a tiny, critical voice in my head says. For any age, I tell it.
But whether I look good or not, there’s a difference between being shirtless at a pool or one of the lakes or rivers around Austin and being shirtless in the parking lot of a mini golf place. I watch as a family walks by, the mother throwing me a glowering look as she puts a hand over her daughter’s eyes.
Being shirtless here is like being a circus pony on a ranch. Or an old pervert in a parking lot.
“No, it’s not.”
Zoey’s present is in the car. Well, her presents, because I couldn’t decide if buying her a necklace was too much. I have two gift bags stowed under the passenger seat. One with a necklace and the other with