“What if he doesn’t, though?” Xander presses. “What if he’sin lovewith her? Like, truly, madly, deeply head-over-heelsin lovewith her?”
I take Xander in for a moment. His slept-in stubble. The tattoos that snake around his arms and seem to pop against his white T-shirt. His curls. He’s wearing an intense look on his face.
“What are you talking about?”
“You need a crash course in love, too?” he asks, but the blank expression on my face is all he needs to go on. “Beinginlove with someone means you feel a strong, almost inexplicable desire for that person. It’s a yearning,” Xander says, eyes darting all over my face. “You think about them constantly. You crave spending time together whenever you’re apart. It’s such an intense feeling of joy that you can also feel a bit unsure because it feels so strong.”
I study him for a moment. And his big hazel eyes. Then I burst out laughing. “What the fuck was that, Romeo? Holy shit. Do you want to write the vows for this wedding?”
His face lights up before he snaps his fingers. “Actually, that’s a good idea.”
“What? I was joking.” I shake my head.
“Not that. But me, coming to your dad’s wedding, as yourdate,” he says, finally explaining his brain wave.
“No fucking way,” I say, choking on how ridiculous this sounds.
“Did you really think we’d be able to get through the sleep study on one date alone?” he says. This stops me in my tracks because obviously the answer is yes.
But every touch, tease, and taste we’ve had in said sleep study rushes to the surface.
Ugh. Xander’s right.
I repeat my new mantra:Dating is where lust and love to go die. And that’s when I find myself whispering, “Okay.”
“Okay,” Xander says, slowly, like he’s realizing that we have both agreed to date each other.
“For the sake of the sleep study,” I say, more to remind myself than to remind him.
“For the sake of the sleep study,” Xander repeats, raising his coffee up for a toast.
I clink his coffee cup with mine.
And he can barely hold back his smile. “This will be fun,” he says, a full-blown smile blooming across his face.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I didn’t say it was nice. I said it was bearable,” I correct Em, who’s been teasing me since I got home from the impromptu date with Xander.
“Bearable,” Em says, from her basically horizontal position on my couch. Then she smiles as she continues, “Allowable. Acceptable. Sustainable.”
“You and your thesaurus need to relax. This is not voluntary. It’s contractual,” I say in between scenes ofCocktail. The movie just happened to be on, and neither of us have bothered to make the effort to find something else.
“The biggest injustice of this film isn’t that Tom Cruise can’t pour a cocktail to save his life, or the misogynist speech he gives at the end. It’s the fact that ‘Kokomo’ plays for only three seconds in the entire movie,” I say, waving my hand at the TV.Aruba, Jamaica, ooh, I wanna take ya …
“No,” Em says, shaking her head.
“What?”
“You’re not changing the topic, even if your commentary is warranted. You just went on the first date you’ve ever been on in your entire life. You are giving me details,” Em says, while Tom gives Elisabeth (with an s—yes, I had to IMDB her) a tropical contact high.
I peel my eyes off the screen and steal a glance at Em. She’s trying to keep a casual face, but there’s a hint of a smile. Em—the ever romantic—is happy I went on a date. I guess that tracks after I promised her all the juicy details if she stopped texting me.
“Xander drinks lattes,” I say, starting with something easy, but Em cuts in.
“Boring.”
She’s right. “You can tell a lot by a person’s coffee order,” I say, grasping at straws.
