I smile. “It’s very nice to meet you, as well. Where should we go?”
“You decide,” she says. “What’s your favorite place?”
I access Alexander, and the answer is right there. As if he’s handing it to me.
My smile grows wider.
“I know just the place,” I say. “But first we’ll need groceries.”
Because this is the first time we’ve met, I don’t have to tell her about Nathan or Poole or anything else that’s happened or about to happen. The past and future are what’s complicated. It’s the present that’s simple. And that simplicity is the sensation of it being just her and me.
Even though there are only a few things we need, we get a shopping cart and go down every aisle of the grocery store. It doesn’t take long before Rhiannon is standing on the front of it, I’m standing on the back of it, and we are riding as fast as we can.
We set down a rule: Every aisle has to have a story. So in the pet-food aisle, I learn more about Swizzle, the malevolent bunny rabbit. In the produce aisle, I tell her about the day I went to summer camp and had to be part of a greased-watermelon pull, and how I ended up with three stitches after the watermelon shot out of everyone’s arms and landed in my eye—the first case of watermelon abuse the hospital had ever seen. In the cereal aisle, we offer autobiographies in the form of the cereals we’ve eaten over the years, trying to pinpoint the year that the cereal turning the milk blue stopped being cool and started being gross.
Finally, we have enough food for a vegetarian feast.
“I should call my mom and tell her I’m eating at Rebecca’s,” Rhiannon says, taking out her phone.
“Tell her you’re staying over,” I suggest.
She pauses. “Really?”
“Really.”
But she doesn’t make a move to call.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.”
“Trust me,” I say. “I know what I’m doing.”
“You know how I feel.”
“I do. But still, I want you to trust me. I’m not going to hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
She calls her mother, tells her she’s at Rebecca’s. Then she calls Rebecca and makes sure the cover story will be intact. Rebecca asks her what’s going on. Rhiannon says she’ll tell her later.
“You’ll tell her you met a boy,” I say once she’s hung up.
“A boy I just met?”
“Yeah,” I say. “A boy you’ve just met.”
We go back to Alexander’s house. There’s barely enough room in the refrigerator for the groceries we’ve bought.
“Why did we bother?” Rhiannon asks.
“Because I didn’t notice what was in here this morning. And I wanted to make sure we had exactly what we desired.”
“Do you know how to cook?”
“Not really. You?”
“Not really.”
“I guess we’ll figure it out. But first, there’s something I want to show you.”
She likes Alexander’s bedroom as much as I do. I can tell. She loses herself in reading the Post-it notes, then runs her finger over the spines of the books. Her face is a picture of delight.