Back in a Spell (The Witches of Thistle Grove, #3)(11)
But as soon as he said it, I recoiled, unable to suppress a reflexive wince. It wasn’t that I didn’t swear myself, far from it. It had just been ingrained in me since early childhood that first meetings demanded an ironclad protocol in order to make a good impression. A very unforgiving code of conduct that deemed curse words to be coarse, uncouth, and completely unacceptable most of the time, but especially when meeting someone new.
“Sorry,” Morty said immediately, brow furrowing as he took a step back from me, palms out. He had a tattoo in the center of each palm: the blurry outline of a shamrock inside a black heart on one, an Eye of Horus in the other. “Was that . . . too forward?”
“No, not at all!” I assured him, feeling my cheeks heating. I was a terrible blusher, splotching with embarrassment at the slightest provocation, and once the ignition sequence fired up, I’d yet to discover an abort button. “Thank you. I, uh, I love this perfume, too. I just have this knee-jerk reaction to swearing, sometimes, it’s incredibly stupid. Should probably bring that up in therapy, right?”
He nodded a little warily, clearly torn between respectfully acknowledging my mental health journey and respectfully pretending I hadn’t brought it up within the first ten seconds of conversation with a near-total stranger like the world’s most unwieldy icebreaker. Then he rallied, flashing me a half smile.
“Okay, well, as long as I haven’t managed to fuck things up before we even sat down.” His eyes slid closed, crinkling at the corners. “Shit, sorry—I mean, damn. Honestly, I had no idea I cursed this much.”
“It’s really not a big deal!” I insisted, my cheeks now fully aflame, heat pooling down my neck. I could practically feel the chemistry evaporate between us, evanescing in a sad little womp womp cartoon poof. “I swear all the time myself, seriously. It’s just a whole thing in my family—they can be kind of sticklers about it—and sometimes it gets stuck in my head in an extremely unhelpful way when I’m meeting someone for the first time. But it’s fine if you do it. Completely fucking fine, even!”
He cocked his head, squinting, probably wondering what long line of perplexing killjoys had managed to spawn a neurotic mess such as myself. Well, Jessa had been right that picking someone unlikely would change the vibe. This was, in fact, notably more tragic than what usually transpired in the first few minutes of my dates. I was starting to feel unhinged, like a supremely awkward body-snatcher had hijacked my mouth and mental processes.
“You know what, why don’t we just . . . let’s just maybe have a drink?” I said a little pleadingly, draping my coat over the back of my chair.
“Absolutely, I’ll go grab some for us,” Morty said, springing into action with a tad too much zeal, like a trip to the bar might provide momentary refuge from me. To be fair, the hot bartender had seemed a lot more capable of normal human conversation than his date was turning out to be. “What’ll you have?”
“Gin martini, please,” I replied, flashing a mental middle finger to the Ghost of Sydney Past before she could admonish me for ordering my go-to drink, even on a night engineered to be freewheeling. Take that, you garbage ghost, I’m a grown woman and I drink what I want.
Morty paused, rocking his head back and forth and chewing on the inside of his cheek. “I don’t know that I’d recommend getting one of those here. My buddy Alisha over there and the rest of the Scythe crew are fantastic folks, but not what you might call mixologists.”
To my knowledge, gin martinis weren’t the bartending equivalent of quantum mechanics, but okay. “A glass of malbec, then,” I said, feeling proud of myself for adapting to this evolving situation.
Morty sucked air through his teeth, scrunching up his nose. “They really only do a house red, I think. Does that work?”
The idea of some hypersweet ambiguous red made my sprawling blush threaten to level up into hives.
“Mm, I’ll pass. Seems like you come here a lot, though,” I added, striving for a judgment-free tone, even though I was coming to loathe the Moon and Scythe more with every further moment it denied me palatable alcohols. “What would you recommend?”
“Their drafts never miss, if you’re into beer,” he said, brightening at the opportunity to not be a drink-choice downer. “If not, I’d stick to straight liquor, or your more basic mixed drinks—Jack and Coke, vodka tonic, Long Island iced tea if you’re feeling that kind of wild. You can always trust you’ll get that good and heavy pour here.”
A good and heavy pour was beginning to sound like such a medical necessity that my insurance would probably cover it.
“A gin and tonic would be perfect, thank you,” I said, combing my fingers through the curling ends of my hair, a nervous gesture that had the benefit of at least appearing flirty.
Before he turned toward the bar, I could see Morty’s gaze linger on the fall of “effortlessly” beachy waves that had taken me a solid twenty minutes to achieve; maybe all hope wasn’t yet lost. I watched him slide through the knot of people who’d gathered between us and the bar, my gaze snaring on the lithe way he moved even in a crowd. The fluid shift of his weight as he leaned against the bar top, resting his forearms against the edge and flicking his head to clear the hair from his eyes. There was a certain kind of seamless feminine elegance to it, almost like charisma in motion.