“I’m out stalking,” I call. It doesn’t come out the way I’d intended. It’s not lighthearted or funny. It comes out like a warning. I’m one scary bitch right now. I hold my hands up to show I’m not armed. My heart is racing.
“Me too,” he replies. Another cab cruises past like a shark.
“Where are you actually going?” My voice rings down the empty street.
“I just told you. I’m going out stalking.”
“What, on foot?” I come closer by another six paces. “You were going to walk?”
“I was going to run down the middle of the street like the Terminator.”
The laugh blasts out of me like bah. I’m breaking one of my rules by grinning at him, but I can’t seem to stop.
“You’re on foot, after all. Stilts.” He gestures at my sky-high shoes.
“It gives me a few extra inches of height to look through your garbage.”
“Find anything of interest?” He strolls closer and stops until we have maybe ten paces between us. I can almost pick up the scent of his skin.
“Pretty much what I was expecting. Vegetable scraps, coffee grounds, adult diapers.”
He tips his head back and laughs at the tiny stars visible through the clouds. His amazing, exhilarating laugh is even better than I remembered. Every atom in my body trembles with the need for more. The space between us is vibrating with energy.
“You can smile.” It’s all I can say.
His smile is worth a thousand of anyone else’s. I need a photograph. I need something to hold on to. I need this entire bizarre planet to stop spinning so I can freeze this moment in time. What a disaster.
“What can I say? You’re funny tonight.” It fades off his face as I take a step back.
“So giving you my address was the only thing I needed to do to find you out here? Maybe I should have given it to you on our first day.”
“What, so you could run me over with your car?”
I creep a little closer until we meet under a streetlight. I’ve spent over eight hours looking at him today, but out of the office context, he looks brand-new and strange.
His hair is shiny and damp and there is a glow on his cheekbones. The cotton T-shirt he’s wearing is a washed-out navy, probably softer than a baby’s bedsheets, and the cold air is probably nipping his bare forearms. Those old jeans love his body and the button winks at me like a Roman coin. The laces on his sneakers are loose and nearly undone. He is an absolute pleasure to look at.
“Date didn’t go so well,” he surmises.
To his credit he doesn’t smirk. Those dark blue eyes watch me patiently. He lets me stand there and try to think of something. How can I get myself out of this situation? Embarrassment is starting to catch up with me again, now that the joking between us is fading away.
“It went okay.” I check my watch.
“But not great, if you’re outside my building. Or are you here to report good news?”
“Oh, shut up. I wanted to . . . I don’t know. See where you live. How could I resist? I was thinking about putting a dead fish in your mailbox one day. You saw where I live. It’s unfair and uneven.”
He won’t be distracted. “Did you kiss him like we agreed?”
I look at the streetlight. “Yes.”
“And?”
While I dither he puts his hands on his hips and looks down the street, apparently at his wit’s end. I wipe the back of my hand across my lips.
“The date itself went f
ine,” I begin, but he steps close and cradles my jaw in his hands. The tension is crackling like static.