For the next three hours, Davis and I wandered around the museum together, sort of looking at the art and the artifacts, but mostly looking at each other and giggling softly as we talked. Even when we weren’t talking, I could feel him glancing at me—stealing opportunities to watch me as I took in Rembrandt’s Night Watch or Vermeer’s Milkmaid. When I caught him, he would look away like he was embarrassed, the blush rising in his cheeks.
Painfully adorable. That was the only way to put it. He was adorable for obvious reasons, but the painful part was from how all-consuming his nature was. It was endearing and almost incomprehensible at once, to the point where I had to wonder how he managed to navigate through life while being so freaking endearing. Other people had to see it. There was no way that anyone could look at this guy and not want to hug him and listen to him stumble over his words until he found the right one.
I had never been adorable or endearing. There was no room for hesitation or stuttering in the world I lived in, not when I was constantly trying to advocate for myself and for Charlie. Landlords. Financial aid offices. Teachers at Charlie’s school. Men who thought I owed them. A long interlude was a luxury that I had never been granted. I couldn’t afford to be taken advantage of. I couldn’t afford to be sweet or soft.
I wondered if people did that to Davis. At once, the thought pissed me off—the idea of anyone taking advantage of Davis’s kindness. He didn’t deserve that. He deserved to be around people who would appreciate that earnestness, not assholes who chuckled and laughed at him when he went to speak to a pretty girl in a nightclub.
Shit. I barely knew this guy and would likely never see him again after he left Amsterdam, but I already had it bad.
Reel it in, girl. Don’t get caught up in fairytales.
During our third hour at the museum, Davis’s stomach finally let out an audible growl, which we both took as a cue to call it a day after we finished laughing at it. After a couple minutes’ walk, we tracked down a cozy café a couple blocks away from the museum and Davis offered to buy me a coffee and a pastry. I knew I was supposed to coyly reject the offer, but the omnipresent threat of my dwindling bank account had me thinking logically. Instead of protesting emptily, I thanked him and offered to lock down a table for us to sit outside. Luckily, he looked thrilled when I accepted.
He arrived at the café table with two coffees and two croissants a few minutes later, as well as a small mountain of sugar packets that he pulled out of the pocket of his jeans and scattered onto the wooden tabletop along with a small mountain of change.
“I do two creams and two sugars,” he explained, noting my stare as he tore open a packet. “But in America though. Over here I feel like I have to do twice as much to get it sweet enough. What about you?”
“I drink it black.”
“Hardcore. Hey, there’s my two Euro coin,” he remarked as he poked into the pile of change between us. “I was trying to find this at the register and holding up the line, but I couldn’t figure out where I put it. I had to break a twenty instead.”
“Europe and their coins.”
“Their ridiculously valuable coins,” he agreed before he took a sip of his coffee.
I let out a sigh as I held my own coffee under my nose, indulging in it. “Is there any smell better?”
“New York bagels,” Davis answered immediately.
“You were so ready with that answer.”
“Have you never had one? We have to remedy that.” Davis tore open another packet of sugar and dumped it into his coffee. “They’re worth the trip.”
“I’ve never been to New York,” I admitted. “Or anywhere.”
“Amsterdam,” he pointed out, gesturing around us.
“True, although this trip was a bust up until now if we’re being honest. But what about you? Where are you headed after this?”
Davis let out an extended exhale like his next stop was a root canal. “Over to London, spending three days there before Gray goes off to Oxford, which isn’t in London, so I’m not sure why we’re even doing this…Hey, have you been to London?”
“My ex and I actually spent two days there before we came over to Amsterdam.”
“Did you like it?”
The truth was no, I did not like London. In fact, I hated it so much that I strongly considered feigning sick to get out of Professor Paul’s idea of a good time (“Olivia, you’re absolutely going to love having tea with my old friend from Cambridge!”(Who, for the record, was very old, and no, I did not love having tea with him)). But to tell Davis that would require me to talk more about Paul, which inevitably would lead to me either telling him that we matched on Seeking Sugar Daddies and that he had been my literature professor…or I could lie to him, which wasn’t my style.
“I’d go back.” Not a lie.
He slanted back in his seat, taking his cup with him as he reclined. He sipped quietly, looking every bit too big for his coffee cup. “And you’re headed back to Missouri afterwards?”
“Planning on it,” I responded, again not lying—just not being clear about the mountain of obstacles in between that included, but were not limited to, finding a thousand dollars, booking a plane ticket, and doing all of it in the next two weeks from another continent where I didn’t know anyone and probably couldn’t even suck dick for profit if I got that desperate because there were legitimate professionals here who could do it a hell of a lot better than I could. “What’s next for you after London?”
“Business school.”
“Where are you going?”
“Wharton.”
I paused with my hands breaking apart the croissant that he bought for me, which only served to amplify my surprise. “Wharton? Davis, you know that’s like the best…” I trailed off because of course he knew it was.
“I actually think Stanford might be better,” he muttered thoughtfully, glancing away as he tried to recall some list. When he looked back at me, both of his eyebrows shot up. “What, why are you looking at me like that?”
“Who are you?” I managed to say.
Davis let out a full laugh that sounded whole and warm before he said, “Don’t do that. I’m just a lucky kid with a good resume and last name. That’s it.”
Finally, I put down my croissant, flicking the flakes off of my fingertips. “Okay, I’ll be totally honest: I’ve resisted every temptation in the universe to Google you. Should I keep resisting?”
His expression switched in that moment. It went from jovial to apprehensive, and I could see his jaw tighten as he lingered in silence for a beat. “Whatever. Let’s get it over with,” he replied before he took his own phone out of his pocket, typed on it, and handed it to me.
Needless to say, I wasn’t expecting to see a Wikipedia article with his name as the title.
I glanced up and saw him observing me closely, his brown eyes fixated on my face and his lips pulled to the side as he waited for my reaction. I glanced back at the article again, and the name finally clicked.
“Oh,” I breathed out. “That’s why your name sounded familiar.”
“Yeah, that’s my dad,” he confirmed. “His company—Davenport-Ridgeway. Well, his and Gregory Davenport’s. That’s Gray and Peter’s dad, by the way.”
“So, you’re all…billionaires…” Saying that aloud made me feel like a complete moron, in part because I had failed to recognize it earlier, but mostly because being in the presence of a legitimate billionaire had always seemed less likely than adopting my own pink unicorn.
Somehow, he mustered the nonchalance to shake his head. “Not really. I mean, my dad definitely is. If he were to, you know, die, I would inherit enough that I think I would be a billionaire. I don’t know. I don’t think about my dad dying very often. That’s not exactly my favorite topic.”