Picture Perfect

Chapter Eight: Elliot

Chapter Eight

I turn down Mr Perfect

"You're distracted tonight."

I looked up from my plate, having been zoned out for lord knew how long, and smiled ruefully. "Sorry. I've got a new student starting next week and I've never had a mid-year transfer before, so I've been thinking of ways to help her settle in."

"That's sweet," my sister's husband, Adam, smiled.

"That's absolute bullshit," Rowan added, snorting as she helped herself to more mashed potatoes. "You'll have already planned that entirely - plus you had your dreamy face on, so you were absolutely not thinking of work."

I glared at her. "You should go into working as a psychic if you think you know everything."

"Who's the guy?" she retorted.

Adam pointed his fork at his wife. "Down, girl. If he's met someone, he'll tell us when he's ready. Pushing him won't work." He then pointed his fork at me. "Stop getting defensive if you know she's right, it doesn't help."

Adam had a truly spectacular gift of being able to call people out very accurately for their behaviour, while having the absolute gall of behaving so well that he never needed calling out himself. Rowan and I exchanged grumpy looks.

"I haven't met someone, not really," I replied, and sighed. "The new student, Saskie - I met her father when he visited the school. He was nice. That's all."

'Nice' didn't really cover it, and I knew that Rowan could tell that. But she let it go and shrugged. "Okay."

I groaned. "Fine, he was more than nice. Very pretty. A very good dad. I got confirmation today that Saskie will be joining my class, and my first thought was about seeing her dad again, which is probably not appropriate."

Rowan smirked. "Sounds like the perfect opportunity to me."

Adam was looking embarrassed, and he exchanged a look with Rowan. "I, uh - if we'd known you were, uh, interested in someone..."

I frowned as he trailed off, and saw Rowan's smirk fade into a guilty expression. "Oh, God. What did you do?"

"We might have invited a friend to join us for board games," Adam confessed, and cringed under my expression. "Hey, you gave us strict instructions to only set you up with people if we met them and thought they'd be perfect for you, right?"

"Right," I replied, and then raised an eyebrow. "So you met someone perfect for me?"

"Perfect is a hard thing to reach for, but I think we got pretty damn close," Adam hedged. "He's very nice. And very pretty. We just didn't realise you'd gone and met someone all by yourself."

"I haven't met someone," I rolled my eyes. "Except in the literal sense that I met a man and he was very nice. Nothing more is going to happen there."

"So you'll meet Joshua?" Rowan asked, her eyes lighting up.

I took a moment to examine my appearance, just to check I hadn't run out of the apartment, late, wearing the first thing I grabbed from my wardrobe. For once, I hadn't. "Alright. I'll meet him. You could have warned me I'd be on a double date."

"You're not on a date," Rowan rolled her eyes, kicking me under the table. "You're meeting a friend of mine while we play board games, and if you then decide you want to ask him on a date, that's your problem."

We bickered amicably over the rest of dinner, with Adam interjecting every so often to inform both of us how ridiculous we were. I put thoughts of Tyler O'Connor firmly out of my mind. Mostly.