Better The Devil You Know / Blind Date 7 of 31
Suzi needs a date. Well actually, based on the bet she just made with her two best friends, she needs thirty-one dates. Thirty one blind dates to be exact. Hoping this to be Lucky Number 7, Suzi heads o...
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Suzi Sparrow eyed the Italian restaurant from across the street, self-consciously adjusting the strap of her 1950's flea market-find polka dot dress.
The dress was a mistake. She'd known it before she'd even left the apartment. Tomato sauce and a white dress was never a story that was going to have a happy ending, and she couldn't work out why she'd ever thought it would be a good idea. In fact, this whole 31 Blind Dates in 31 Days thing suggested by her best friends was starting to feel like a very bad idea. Maybe even worse than passata and white Everglaze cotton.
Six dates down. Twenty-five to go.
"Lucky number seven, maybe?" Suzi muttered to herself, before taking a deep breath and stepping onto the crosswalk.
From outside, it was too difficult to spy through the window of the restaurant to try and see which diner might be her date. Maybe she wasn't even here yet? Maybe she was standing around somewhere, trying to spot Suzi, just as Suzi was trying to spot her? Suzi scanned the street, doing her best to glance surreptitiously around her, but could see no one hanging out giving highly suspicious side-eye like she was. Admitting defeat, she pulled her compact from inside her purse, checked her lipstick in the mirror one last time, and pushed open the door to the restaurant.
It was busy inside, bustling with diners and a buzz of waiters hovering by packed tables. The air vibrated with a constant thrum of chatter and the sound of lively Italian opera playing in the background. Usually, Suzi preferred quieter restaurants than this, but a blind date needed a surrounding crowd.
"Safety in numbers," her best friend Trystan had said, before giving her strict instructions to emergency call him if the date turned out to be "L.A's answer to Buffalo Bill with a desire to make a nice new suit out of your skin."
Waiting just inside the doorway, Suzi glanced around the restaurant to see if Buffalo Bill was indeed present and waiting patiently with Precious the Dog in one hand and a tape measure in the other. She was so preoccupied, she didn't notice the maître d' standing just in front of her until he cleared his throat, a little too dramatically, a flicker of impatience on his face.
Okay, calm down, Brenda, she thought, doing her best not to let her anxiety show too much and flashing him, what she hoped was a confident, unflustered grin.
"Can I help you?" he asked, his eyes drifting to the small X-Wing tattoo on her shoulder, his brows raising just a little, nostrils flaring briefly with visible derision.
Yeah, you can stop putting on that fake Italian accent, Suzi thought with some amusement, you're no more Italian than I am from Mos Eisley.
"Um... yeah, sure," she said. "I'm meeting... a friend. She's..." She stopped. How the Hell was she supposed to explain that she was meeting someone she only knew as Ms. Dante, who was wearing one gold crucifix earring and a button on her shirt that read I Survived the Upside Down? You would never announce a friend by their surname and she definitely didn't want the arrogant fake-Italian maître d' to know she was on a date with a complete stranger.
