He let the way to Mamoun’s Falafel on MacDougal Street, a staggeringly popular place with minimal seating where he’d regularly stopped for late-night eats when he was a student at NYU. They bought falafel sandwiches with hummus and took them to eat on a bench in the park facing the small replica of Paris’s Arc de Triomphe.
“Oh, m’gah.” Eva spoke through a bite of falafel. “These are ’mazing!”
“Uh-huh.” He couldn’t think of another woman he knew who could talk with her mouth full and be somehow adorable.
“This whole walk has been so much fun.”
“For me, too.”
“Oh, good!” She turned and grinned at him. “So you’ll ask me out again.”
“What do you mean again?” He pretended to be mystified. “I didn’t ask you out this time. You asked me.”
“Hmm, yeah, good point.” She looked perplexed for a second, then her expressive face cleared. “You can easily fix that by asking me out the first time and then again after that.”
He snorted, getting used to her sense of humor. Enjoying it, in fact. “Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind.”
They finished their sandwiches, commenting on the scenery, discussing more of the Village streets she should explore on her next trip. A pair of NYU students passed them, backpacks on their shoulders, in earnest discussion. After them, a gay couple walking a terrier of some kind.
“The energy here is really different from farther uptown.” Eva crumpled her sandwich paper.
“Yeah?” He refrained from rolling his eyes. The energy? This was New York, there was nothing but energy here. Who cared what kind it was?
“Funkier. Younger. More alternative. More like California.”
He bristled, as any good New Yorker would. “Eva?”
“Mmm?” She was watching a black-clad teenage couple making out. He liked the way her hummingbird clung intimately to the smooth skin of her neck.
“Let me tell you something if you want to survive your time here. Other places are like New York. New York is not like other places. Especially California.”
Eva turned to him, both eyebrows raised. He held her gaze, controlling any hint of a smile.
“Well, then. Only one thing to do.” She leaned up and kissed him full on the mouth.
His body froze. Her lips were soft and lingered longer than a brief peck, but not much.
Then she sat back, took the last bite of her sandwich and crumpled the paper while he sat there like a dork loser with a half boner. “So what do you want to do now, Ames?”
He stared at her. Who kissed someone for the first time then acted as if it hadn’t happened? How the heck did she keep catching him off balance like this? Just when he thought he’d reclaimed his terrain as Mr. Smooth?
What was he supposed to do now? Mention the kiss? Try to explain that he wasn’t looking for any kind of relationship or romance right now (the phrase with someone like you didn’t need to enter into it)? He’d look like a dork—again—making a big I’m-still-a-virgin deal over an innocent peck. Or not innocent. Didn’t matter.
But if he ignored it, he’d lose an opportunity to set her straight. In the meantime she’d asked him a question.
“Uh. We could... There’s...um... I don’t know what...”
Oh, good one, Ames. He wasn’t like this with women. Ever.
Eva sprang to her feet and held out her hand. “Let’s find a place to have dessert. Or a beer. Or in your case, wine. How’s that?”
He was surprised to find the idea appealing. “Okay, but on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“No more kissing.”
She looked astonished. “Why not?”
“Because...we’re not the kissing... We aren’t...” He broke off in utter frustration. “We’re not supposed to be doing that.”
Oh, God.
Dork!
“Ah.” She put her hands to her hips and stared down at him as if he had four heads. “I see. You are morally outraged.”
“No, no, I’m not.
“You didn’t like kissing me?”
“No, that’s not it. I mean...” He wanted to drop his head into his hands.
“Then...?”