I drop my menu and stare ahead, wide-eyed.
Sitting there at my table is a young man of twenty-something with a wide face and tiny features. My instinct is to say he’s cute, but his lips and nose are a pinch too small, and his eyes are farther apart by a hair than you want them to be. His eyebrows are thick, long, and wide, yet strangely proportionate to the spread of his facial features, and while technically he looks clean-cut and put-together, there’s something immediately off about his face, like it’s too stiff, or too groomed, or too something.
And then there’s the gelled-to-the-side dark hair, which has been touched by a professional stylist, no doubt. I can literally see the hours that went into fixing himself up for our date, though something tells me he’d put just as much effort into his looks to go to Wal-Mart at two in the morning. And that’s a far stretch, to assume he’d even deign to go to a place like Wal-Mart.
Yes, I get all of this in a split second just from a peek at his face from across the candlelit tabletop.
I can’t see what he’s wearing from the waist down, since he’s seated, but he’s got on a fitted black designer polo that’s so small, it reveals his bodyweight to be exactly ninety-three and a half pounds. I’d literally put money on that.
I feel like if I hugged him, he’d break.
He doesn’t look like a hugger, anyway.
“Hi,” I return tentatively.
He doesn’t smile. He simply tilts his head exactly one inch to the right, then extends a hand across the table. “Malcolm.”
Well, at least I’m saved from dating a Jim or an Elvis. Or myself. I reach for the handshake, which is a short and light-handed one on his account, and then we retract hands swiftly. “I’m Bobby.”
“Pleasure. Have you eaten here before?”
Seriously, his voice is so staggeringly, unexpectedly deep for that tiny frame of a body he’s got. It’s a complete disconnect. I’m having a lot of trouble believing that it’s his real voice at all and that there isn’t some high-tech Mission Impossible voice-changing device strapped underneath the table, or that his cojones aren’t the size of yoga balls. Seriously, should I check?
“Yes, long while ago,” I answer. “My best friend’s parents own the place. It’s named after his mother.”
“I know.”
He picks up his glass of water, takes a brief, calculated sip from it, then sets it back down perfectly in place. I have a sudden suspicion that Malcolm irons his underwear and matches them to his shoes. Just a suspicion. Totally unimportant.
“Well, it’s a pretty decent establishment,” says Malcolm as he flicks a finger near his cheek, as if to swat away a rogue eyelash. “I am never disappointed with the service, though I did get a steak medium-rare once when I ordered medium-well.”
Hmm, he’s one of those types. Hey, don’t judge him so quickly. “Well, I know Mrs. Strong personally, and that woman’s nothing if not committed to making people happy,” I assure him, then smile and add, “and that includes every person who walks in through those pretty doors.”
I notice my Texan twang is heavily buried far beneath this … weirdly stiff conversationalist I’m trying to be right now. I haven’t dropped a single “g” nor uttered a single “dang” since we started talking, for Pete’s sake.
I do this at South Wood sometimes, too. I notice it.
And Jimmy is physically incapable of losing the Texan twang.
“Well, aren’t you a walking Nadine’s commercial,” he teases.
His teasing intent, by the way, is revealed only by the slightest twitch of an eyebrow and nothing else. He neither smiles nor lilts his voice. His default state is a total deep-voiced deadpan.
I laugh, receiving his joke the way a polite person does. “Yeah, I guess I’m a big fan of the Strongs. I mean, you kinda have to be if you’re gonna be best friends with one of them.”
“Charming.” Malcolm helps himself to another rigid sip of his glass of water.
I stare at mine, not having realized it’s been sitting there the whole time. I go for it, taking a sip myself to wet my fast-drying tongue. It’s an awful side effect of my nerves; my mouth goes as dry as the Sahara.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I let it peek out just enough to read the message.
JIMMY
Make sure U don’t do that thing U do with UR hands. Also make sure U ask him some questions about himself cuz U don’t want to be just all about urself. Also
Thing with my hands? What thing with my hands?
I stare at my phone and his incomplete text, waiting for him to send another with the rest. He doesn’t. Also … what?
“Something wrong?”
I glance up at Malcolm. “Hmm?”
The tiniest trace of annoyance flickers over his face. “You’re checking your phone.”