Matched to Her Rival

She kept expecting him to casually take her hand, as he’d done Saturday night. Just two people holding hands, no big deal. But he didn’t.

No wonder her feelings were so mixed. She could never figure out what to expect. For a long time, she’d convinced herself he only came on to her so she’d lose the wager. Now she wasn’t so sure.

Dax indicated an unoccupied bench in the central area of the park, dappled by sunlight and perfectly situated to view a square block of office buildings. People streamed to and from the revolving doors, talking to each other, checking their phones, eyeing the traffic to dart across the street.

She’d opted to sit close, but not too close, to Dax. At least until she understood what this was all about. They might have bonded over the fact that neither of them trusted easily, but that didn’t mean she’d developed any better ability to do so.

“How does this people-watching deal go?” She nodded at the beehive of activity around them.

He shrugged. “Mostly I let my mind wander and impressions come to me. Like that couple.”

She followed his pointed finger to the youngish boy and girl engaged in a passionate kiss against the brick wall of a freestanding Starbucks.

“Eighteen to twenty-five,” he mused. “Likely attending the art school around the corner. They both own smartphones but not tablets, have cable TV but not the premium channels, read Yahoo news but not the financial pages, and can tell me the titles of at least five songs on Billboard’s Top 100, but not the names of any politicians currently in office except the president.”

Mouth slightly agape, she laughed. “You made all that up.”

Dax focused his smoky eyes on her instead of the couple and the temperature inside his jacket neared thermonuclear. “He has a bag with the art school logo and they both have phones in their back pockets. The rest is solid market research for that age group. The details might be slightly off, but not the entertainment habits.”

“Impressive. Do you ever try to find out if you’re right?”

He gave her a look and stretched his arm across the back of the bench, behind Elise’s shoulders. “I’m not wrong. But feel free to go ask them yourself.”

Carefully, she avoided accidentally leaning back against his arm. Because she wanted to. And didn’t have any clue how to navigate this unexpected interval with Dax, or what to think, what to feel.

“Uh...” The couple didn’t appear too interested in being interrupted and all at once, she longed to be that into someone, where the passing world faded from existence. “That’s okay.”

His answering smile relaxed her. Marginally.

Unfortunately, she had a strong suspicion she could get that into Dax.

“Your turn,” he said. “What do you see in those two?”

Without censor, she spit out thoughts as they came to her.

“They’re at an age where love is still exciting but has the potential to be that much more painful because they’re throwing themselves into it without reservation. They’re not living together yet, but headed in that direction. He’s met her parents but she hasn’t met his, because he’s from out of state, so it’s too expensive to go home with a girl unless it’s serious. Next Christmas he’ll invite her,” she allowed. “And he’ll propose on New Year’s because it’s less predictable than Christmas Eve.”

Dax’s lips pursed. “That’s entirely conjecture.”

He was going to make her work for it, just as she’d done to him.

“Is not. He has on a Choctaw Casino T-shirt, which is in Oklahoma, and if they lived together, they’d be at home, kissing each other in private. The rest is years of studying couples and what drives them to fall in love.” She recoiled at the smirk on his face. “So, you can cite research but I can’t?”

“Cite research all you want. Validated research.” As he talked, he grew more animated and angled toward her. “You can’t study how people fall in love. Emotions are not quantifiable.”

“Says the guy with a psychology degree. How did Skinner determine that mice responded more favorably to partial reinforcement? Not by asking them whether they prefer Yahoo or Google news.”

A grin flashed on his face and hit her with the force of a floodlight.

She fought a smile of her own and lost. “You study, you make a hypothesis, you test it and voilà. You have a certified conclusion.”

Only with Dax could she enjoy a heated argument about her first and only love, the science of the heart.