If We Were Perfect - Ana Huang Page 0,1

also unabashedly drunk. For a six-foot-two, 190-pound specimen, he couldn’t hold his alcohol at all. He had, however, managed to climb onto a speechless Olivia’s lap before she shoved him off and excused herself to go to the restroom.

“You’re back!” Wesley exclaimed, like she’d just returned from a trip to Italy and not the toilet. “How was the bathroom?”

“Fine.” She pasted on a smile and flagged down a server. “Can we order dessert, please? Two caramelized apple and kuromoji ice creams. Thank you.”

She wasn’t sharing, and if Wesley didn’t like her dessert choice, too bad.

Olivia had put up with an unwilling near-lap-dance; he could put up with ice cream.

“Dessert already? You didn’t finish your food yet.” Wesley stared at the remaining sushi on Olivia’s side of the table.

“I will by the time they bring it out.”

He laughed. “No way—” He stopped when Olivia dug into her remaining food with the gusto of a starving thirteen-year-old boy who’d just come home from sports practice. Translation: she demolished the rest of her meal in two minutes flat. “Whoa. You eat faster than I do. That’s hot.”

Wesley got out of his chair.

Oh, no.

This was what she got for meeting up with a rando from a dating app. It wasn’t Olivia’s first time meeting with an online match, but it was her first time agreeing to dinner with someone whom she hadn’t properly screened. Usually, it took more than a day of messaging back and forth before she took things to the next level, but she’d needed to blow off steam after a grueling first year in her MBA program and an equally grueling summer dealing with her jerk-face colleagues.

Okay, fine, her last final had been five days ago, and she’d only worked with said jerk-faces for two days, but still. Olivia deserved hazard pay for dealing with their immature, sexist asses. People thought Wall Street in New York was bad? They never met the San Francisco branch of Pine Hill Capital, the prestigious private equity (PE) firm Olivia had worked for since she jumped ship from investment banking five years ago.

“Wesley, sit,” Olivia ordered, unconsciously using the same tone she used on dogs.

“I never finished showing you my moves earlier.”

“I don’t want to see your moves.” Olivia flashed a tight smile of thanks at the server, who returned with their ice cream and shot a strange look in Wesley’s direction but didn’t say anything.

The top two buttons of Wesley’s shirt were unbuttoned, revealing a sliver of muscled chest and spray-tanned skin. He wasn’t bad-looking, but if he didn’t sit down in the next two minutes, she couldn’t be held accountable for where she might lodge her shoe.

Olivia scooted her chair closer to the table so he couldn’t climb into her lap again. She spooned some ice cream into her mouth and—Oh. My. God.

All thoughts of sticking her heel where the sun didn’t shine flew out of her head as she focused on the cold, creamy mound of heaven in her bowl. It was amazing. Definitely worth thirty minutes of her life, but once she finished dessert, she was hightailing it out of here—Wesley could take care of the bill—and she’d never have to see him again.

Olivia wondered if she could eat Wesley’s portion of dessert, too. The poor ice cream was melting, and he didn’t seem like he would stop “showing off his moves” anytime soon. Saving that perfectly flavored scoop from dying a useless death was practically a moral imperative.

“Olivia, look,” Wesley said, sounding suspiciously whiney for a twenty-nine-year-old. “You’re not looking. This is my booty pop. Women love it.”

Someone kill me now.

At least they were in the back corner of the restaurant, away from the kitchen and most other guests. The nearest diners—a handsome couple in their mid-forties—shot Olivia and Wesley the same strange look their server had earlier, but Wesley hadn’t done anything too egregious yet, like take his shirt off. The couple soon got distracted by their food, while Wesley booty-popped to his heart’s content.

“Sit. Down,” Olivia repeated.

He didn’t.

Fuck it. She finished her ice cream and swapped her empty bowl with Wesley’s full one. He didn’t deserve dessert.

“I can’t believe you don’t like my moves,” Wesley slurred, sounding offended. He sidled closer, and she realized he’d unbuttoned several more buttons until half his chest was showing. If a restaurant staff member saw him, he’d be thrown out for public indecency. “I’m the star of The Cock Pit. Women specifically request me for their bachelorette parties. I make over a