Emma raised her water glass, her voice low and steady: “Just so we’re clear, I was promised this was a normal dinner too.”
I turned to her directly. “Looks like we were both targeted by liars.”
For a split second, a real smile actually threatened to break through her guarded expression.
Dinner moved forward, but the underlying tension never dissolved. The group kept hovering, waiting for the explosive moment they had clearly rehearsed in their heads before I even walked through the door.
Then, roughly twenty minutes in, one of the husbands leaned back, wearing a smug smirk that made the entire table lock up.
“So, Adam,” he drawled, his eyes gleaming. “Let’s be totally real here. Is Emma normally your type?”
Every single fork froze mid-air.
Emma’s knuckles turned white as she gripped her napkin.
Mark looked straight down at his plate.
Suddenly, the entire crowded restaurant seemed to vanish, shrinking down to the suffocating radius of our table.
They thought they had finally delivered the punchline.
They thought they were about to get the exact reaction they bought tickets for.
I deliberately set my glass down on the wood table.
Then I locked eyes with Emma, turned slowly back to him, and fired back with just one sentence.
Nobody laughed.
And the look Emma gave me after that…
Full in the first c0mment
My friends set me up on a blind date as a joke
