the bar is cute. She’s closer to my age than Zoey. She’s not my employee like Zoey. She’s smiling rather than shutting me out the way Zoey does.
And … nothing. I feel exactly nothing. Because she isn’t Zoey.
“What can I get you?” the waitress asks, sidling up to Thayden.
“I’ll have a water,” I say, but she’s not looking at me. I sigh, wishing just once, we could have a meal without him picking up some woman. He may be my best friend, but he can also be a complete idiot.
As evidenced by the fact that he already has the waitress giggling. How does he do that? And why?
I mean, I know why. I get the appeal … sort of. My body gets the appeal. But long ago, I learned the hard way that letting my body make the decisions alone results in marrying a giant mistake. Thayden may make fun of me, calling me a monk, but I’ll take self-imposed singleness over risk any day of the week.
“Do we need to go over this again?” Thayden asks me when the waitress disappears—after handing him her number.
I swear, the man would be a millionaire another few times over if he had a dollar for every phone number he got.
“First of all, Zoey is a millennial,” Thayden says.
“You’re a millennial,” I remind him.
He grins. “And proud of it. But you.” He pokes at my chest, and I slap his hand away. “You’re a Gen X. And you can’t stand the way we don’t use top sheets and how we eat avocado toast.”
“I happen to love avocado toast. I’m thankful that someone came up with the idea, and even more grateful that every restaurant in Austin serves such a delicacy.”
Thayden leans closer, a smirk on his lips. “Right now, Zoey is probably at home with her parents, ignoring a mountain of student debt, and retweeting Kylie Jenner.”
“I didn’t think millennials used Twitter.”
His eyes sparkle, and I find myself smiling, even though I also want to kick the legs of his chair out from under him. “Yes, but it’s an ironic retweet.”
“I don’t even know what that means. Also, did you google millennial stereotypes before showing up?”
“No, old man. I’m living them.”
I roll my eyes. Thayden is anything but the stereotypes we mentioned. Unlike me, his family didn’t hand him money by way of a trust fund. His dad made Thayden start in the family law firm as an assistant, forcing him to work his way up, even after he passed the bar. It’s Thayden’s namesake and should be his legacy. There’s no love lost between them because of this, but Thayden has legitimately earned his spot at the table.
I would point out that his work ethic is far more boomer than millennial, but I’d like to forget this whole conversation. And anything that reminds me how much older than Zoey I am.
“So, did anything interesting happen in the office today?”
Other than me making a fool of myself, not much. “I’d rather not talk about it,” I say. “In six months when I sell, I won’t need to worry about it.”
“You said that six months ago.”
And six months before that. I’ve owned Morgan-Beckwith for two years, which is a year longer than I usually stay with a business. My goal is to scoop up a company that could be profitable but isn’t. I flip it to turn a good profit, then move on to the next business. A reporter once referred to it as spinning straw into gold.
Most people in my line of work buy a company, chop it up for parts, fire everyone, and make a fresh start. That’s too easy. I like rehab better than demo. It’s definitely not more profitable, but I’m doing well. And I don’t need the money anyway. Oil and the mineral rights on our family ranch gave me a safety net that would catch me falling from space.
The point is, I should have left Morgan-Beckwith a year ago. There is one reason I haven’t. One very compelling and impossible reason.
“You could always ask her out, you know,” Thayden says.
“I’m her boss.”
“You’re about to not be her boss. Sell. Ask her out. Or, ask her out now and have a secret office romance. You won’t believe the thrill of keeping it quiet.”
I don’t even want to ask how he knows. “I can’t ask her out.” Can I? No. I can’t. I shouldn’t.
But I want to.
“You could also move on to someone else. Or … marry her.” He grins,