“Okay, then I’ll go home.” Some small part of me hopes that if I call his bluff, he’ll drop the attitude. Maybe we can just go back to his place and reset. Even laugh about it. Maybe this is the jolt we need to spark the “what are we?” conversation.
All Hal says is “Great. Enjoy,” before walking away.
“So, was thatguy your ex?” Nick asks after I finish my closing tasks and clock out.
Lokahi is air-conditioned to the point of freezing, so it’s always a shock to push open the back door and step into the hot, humid air.
“No.” I pause, unsure how to qualify our relationship. “It’s…a whole thing.” Perhaps I should draw him Romily’s diagram with the quadrants.
“Okay.”
“Neither of us wants to be in a relationship at this point inour lives. And depending on where I get into grad school, it’s just easier not to have entanglements.”
Nick heads for the last vehicle in the customer side of the parking lot. “He seems a little territorial for someone without entanglements.”
“It’s only because bartending makes him cranky. I think he liked you,” I say, lying. “I’ve never seen him back down so quickly. He didn’t even bring up that U2 Spider-Man musical that kept sending actors to the hospital.”
“Or that album they forced onto everyone’s iPhones.” He presses a button on his key fob. “Or were you, like, four years old when that happened?”
“Very funny.” I nod at the car he just unlocked. “You drive a minivan.”
“No, a minivan has sliding doors,” he says. “This is a very manly sport utility vehicle with a third row of seats. Just give me a minute to clean it out.”
He opens the passenger door and picks up a huge bottle of wiper fluid off the floor. I glance around, investigating. Lots of discarded wrappers in the back seat—granola bars, fruit snacks—empty Gatorade bottles, evidence of chauffeuring a child around.
“You have a whole family of stuffed animals riding in the back,” I say, peering over his shoulder.
“They all have very elaborate backstories,” he replies.
I wait for him to move aside and let me climb up to the passenger seat, but he ducks his head and sits down there instead. Nick tosses me his key fob. “You’re gonna need to push the driver’s seat forward a bit.” I don’t budge and neither does he. “Get in.”
“To drive your car? Do you have a death wish? I don’t even have a learner’s permit.”
“We’ll practice here. There’s very limited property damage you can do driving around an empty parking lot for twenty minutes.”
I relent, but it’s mostly because his car has air conditioning and it’s so humid I’m convinced steam is rising from the asphalt.
“I genuinely loathe being forced to do things I suck at,” I whine.
“How do you know you suck?” he asks.
“Previous experiences behind the wheel.” I don’t care to relive the time my dad decided it was best for me to learn to drive stick shift “by doing.”
“It’s just practice. You don’t have to be a prodigy.”
With a little huff, I walk around to the other side of the car and plant myself in the driver’s seat. I do indeed need to raise the seat and push it forward.
“No one wants to teach another person how to drive,” I say. “It’s famously stressful.”
I have a quick flash of my dad yelling, “Don’t be so dramatic!” when I had a panic attack at the wheel.
“It’s stressful when it’s a close family member or someone you love. I figure ‘neighbors’ is exactly the right level for this. I’ll only yell if we’re about to careen into the side of the flaming statue,” he says. “Just don’t forget to check your mirrors. I’m a hard-ass about mirrors.”
“And yet my mom keeps telling me you’re such a nice man.”
I get the sense that he wants to ask a follow-up question, but instead he forges ahead.
“Okay, what’s the first thing you do?”
