We kiss again. We kiss some more. We make out like teenagers who’ve just discovered tongue kissing. It’s dark now, the moon thin tonight, foliage waving overhead. His hands wander under my shirt and I wonder for several desperate moments whether we could just hop into the back of this truck and not get caught.
I don’t suggest it. I have at least that much dignity; not to mention the thought of getting caught bare-assed by Clarabelle Loveless is enough to keep my pants on.
“Okay,” I finally say, one hand on his chest.
“That’s all?” he says, the smile in his eyes evident even in starlight. “Okay?”
“What, it’s not good enough for you?” I tease.
“I was hoping that breaking my own rules after six years would at least get a great,” he says.
Right. There were six years between the first kiss and tonight.
Six years of friendship, of constant texting, of watching Rusty get bigger and learn to speak and ride a bike and read books, six years of Daniel surprising me with Chinese takeout and brownies when I’d had a bad day, six years of coming over after Rusty’s bedtime and pouring him whiskey and commiserating while he talked about Crystal.
Six years of forgetting our kiss and in its place, building something else entirely.
“We should talk,” I say, and Daniel nods.
“Tomorrow,” he says. “It’s Monday.”
“Ballet?”
“Can I come over?” he asks.
My breath catches in my throat, a rush suddenly swirling through me.
“To talk?”
We just look at each other for a long moment. Every Monday at five-thirty, Rusty has ballet lessons downtown, three blocks from my apartment, so Daniel has an hour to kill. Sometimes he comes over and we hang out. Sometimes we meet for coffee, or for beer, or just to walk around Sprucevale and talk about nothing.
If he comes over tomorrow, we’re not going to be talking, and we both know it.
“Come on,” he says. “This time I’ll actually walk you to your car.”Chapter FourteenCharlie“Rusty’s welcome, of course,” my mom says. “Just like any other dinner. I’ll make macaroni and cheese along with the roast.”
“I think she likes roast,” I say. “She’s not that picky.”
“Then I’ll make macaroni and cheese because I want to eat it,” my mom says, laughing. “You know, I always did think that mac and cheese was underrated as…”
It’s 5:05 on Monday and I’m not listening to my mom. Right now she could say aliens just landed in our back yard, could you go see if they prefer red or white wine? and I’d agree because one hundred thousand percent of my attention is focused on my five-forty-five-ish rendezvous with Daniel, a rendezvous for which I’m already running five minutes behind schedule.
I even wrote the schedule down, because I feel like a bucket full of ants and I can’t focus for shit. I swear I had to measure a plank five consecutive times today because I couldn’t remember how long it was for more than three seconds.
Daniel’s coming over. Daniel’s coming over. Daniel’s coming over.
Alone.
The schedule is on a post-it that’s currently scrunched in the pocket of my coveralls as I power walk to my car, in the parking lot out back. It reads:
5 p.m. in car
5:15 arrive at apartment
5:20 shower FAST
5:30 dry hair
5:40 BRUSH TEETH, get dressed
At 5:06, I actually get into my car, my mom still on the phone.
“I wanted to ask you something else,” she goes on. “Since Daniel gave you that gorgeous ring, we wanted to get him something as well, but we don’t know what. Sort of a ‘welcome to the family gift,’ even though he’s sort of already family, but I guess it’s official now? He doesn’t really seem like the jewelry type, so unless he secretly wears a lot of ankle bracelets that’s probably out…”
“Yeah, he’s not really into jewelry,” I agree, glancing at my speedometer, going precisely 5 mph over the limit, because that’s probably fast enough not to get pulled over. I mean, don’t cops have something better to do than pull me over for technically going over the speed limit?
“Do you have any other ideas?” my mom is saying. “Your father suggested a nice paperweight for his office, but I don’t know, a paperweight, and then he said a tie, but does Daniel ever wear ties?”
What do I do when he shows up? Should the lights be low? Should I offer him a drink? How do you seduce someone?
What if he decides he just wants to talk after all?
We texted some this morning, but they were totally normal texts: hey, how’s your day, come to dinner at my parents’ house on Wednesday, Rusty says she likes the mermaid book better than the wilderness survival book.
There’s a part of me that’s afraid Daniel’s going to back out. That, after having a chance to think about it, he’ll realize that this friendship is too much to risk, and he’ll want to go back.