If We Were Perfect - Ana Huang Page 0,2

thousand dollars a night. I can squeeze a penny with my—”

Olivia never found out what he could squeeze a penny with—thank God—because she chose that moment to turn her head to the left. Just a few inches, really, until she could see over Wesley’s shoulder. In the grand scheme of things, the small movement was nothing.

Or it would’ve been nothing, had her gaze not collided with a pair of familiar onyx eyes that sucked her in like a black hole. Nothing escaped—not light, not sound, not the painful beats of her heart. Just like that, everything disappeared except for the man her younger, naïve self had thought held her universe in the palms of his hands. Even Wesley ceased to exist, and he was practically on top of her.

Olivia’s breath rushed out in a shaky gust of exhilaration, embarrassment, and loathing.

“Olivia?” Her name fell off Sammy Yu’s perfect lips like a long-forgotten love song, evoking memories of golden days and beautiful nights.

Those dark eyes darted from her spoonful of ice cream—frozen halfway to her mouth—to Wesley’s bared chest before finally resting on her face. She spotted glints of confusion and amusement, and it was the latter that fueled her with the strength to level a glare at Wesley so menacing he immediately backed off.

“I’m going to the restroom,” Wesley announced, indignation oozing from every pore. “It’s clear my booty pops are not appreciated here.”

He stalked off, his half-open shirt flapping in the breeze. He didn’t spare Sammy a glance.

Sammy’s mouth twitched. “I wasn’t aware booty pops were on the menu.”

“Funny. We—I was just leaving,” Olivia said with as much dignity as she could muster. She set her spoon down. The ice cream had melted anyway, and there was none left in the bowl. She could bolt right now while Wesley was in the restroom.

Usually, Olivia would never do something so rude, but she was fed up with this day. It kept going from bad to worse—and running into your ex-boyfriend while on a terrible date definitely counted as “worse.”

“You mean you don’t want to go home with that fine, booty-popping specimen?” Sammy feigned shock. “Say it ain’t so.”

She glared at him. “Sarcasm doesn’t suit you.”

The Sammy she knew wasn’t sarcastic unless it was in a fun, playful way, but the man standing before her wasn’t the Sammy she knew.

He was still tall and handsome—so handsome the mere sight of him sent a pleasurable shiver through her body. Same eyes, same high cheekbones and strong jaw, same dark hair—though he wore it shorter now than in college. But his lean frame had filled out with more hard-hewn muscles, his eyes sparked with more cynicism, and he possessed a self-assurance one only gained with age.

With his camel coat, black dress shirt, and hard expression, Sammy couldn’t have looked more different from the good-natured, math-pun-loving, lived-in-a-T-shirt college boy she once knew. He was all man now, and not one that had any love lost for her.

“What are you doing here?” Olivia demanded. He hadn’t responded to her sarcasm dig, and the silence was bugging her. She almost wished Wesley were here so she’d have a buffer. What was taking him so long, anyway? Did he fall in the toilet?

Then again, Olivia had holed herself in the restroom for a good twenty minutes talking to Farrah, so she couldn’t throw stones.

Sammy’s eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “This is a restaurant. I’m here for dinner, same as the rest of the patrons. What are you doing here?”

“Uh, you answered your own question. Dinner.” The “duh” was implied.

“You don’t live in San Francisco.”

“I do this summer. I’m working at the SF branch of my company instead of going back to New York.” Olivia wasn’t sure why she was telling him all this. They weren’t friends anymore. Unfortunately, they had tons of mutual friends from their college study abroad program, and they were constantly forced into the same space thanks to said friends. Farrah’s wedding, Kris’s upcoming nuptials, group trips, and reunions...things Olivia couldn’t back out of because of either loyalty or a strong sense of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). Sammy’s thoughts must’ve run along the same lines, because he showed up at almost every event, too.

As a result, they’d settled into an uneasy, somewhat civil truce that consisted of them ignoring each other and parking themselves on opposite sides of whatever room or table they found themselves in.

“Hmm.” Sammy appeared displeased by the revelation that she would be in San Francisco for the