He pulled up his car in front of my rental apartment and got out to walk me to the door. We stood there for a moment. It felt like we had just been on a seven-hour date, and I didn’t want it to end yet. Except that it probably wasn’t a date, and he wasn’t going to kiss me.
“Serious question,” I said, “do you really not want me to come to improv practice? I won’t mind if you don’t.”
“Do you seriously want to come?”
“I kind of do.”
“Then I want you to be there.” He took a small step closer to me.
“Because I don’t have to come if you were just being polite,” I added.
“Thursday night, then. My place. 7:30 p.m.”
“Okay. Text me the address.”
“Give me your phone number.”
I did, and then on impulse I hugged him good-bye. He gave me a quick, surprised look and then wrapped his arms around me. He smelled like sea air and warmth, and I felt his thumb run across the top of my neck with one hand before he let me go.
“Hey, Abby?” His face looked surprisingly serious. “How long exactly are you planning to stay?”
Oh no. Did he think I was expecting to join his improv group forever? Did he think my intention was to weasel my way in?
“Don’t worry. I promise I won’t pull anAll About Evething and try to steal the group from under you.”
He frowned, not taking the bait. “But do you have a timeline of when you’re going back?”
I shrugged, forcing a little laugh. “Probably a month or two. At some point, my sister’s going to break up with her ex-husband and I’ll have to fly back home to deal with that drama, so don’t even worry. I’ll be out of your lives by the fall, for sure.”
For some reason, he didn’t look relieved.
“Sure,” he agreed. “I’ll see you Thursday.” He turned to go. Whatever was bothering him didn’t seem to have gone away.
That night, as I ate dinner alone, I fixated on certain details—his hand on my wrist, certain expressions he had when he looked at me, the feel of his thumb running across the back of my neck as we hugged. He’d had an opening to kiss me. Surely he knew that? It felt even more embarrassing because I’d expressly told him I was leaving, so this wasn’t going to be a long-term thing where I’d come into it with high expectations. I wasn’t even desirable enough for a quick fling, apparently. Maybe he was still too hung up on his ex-wife?
Then I went back to a piece of advice that my sister Laura had told me when I was overanalyzing the behavior of a high school crush.
It was my sophomore year, and we were sitting in my bedroom late one night when she was home from her freshman year at college. “I think this boy likes me,” I told Laura, “because he keeps walking really close to me, but he also walks close to Lily, so maybe he likes her, but then sometimes he talks to me about what he’s done over the weekend…” I went on like that for several minutes before Laura finally stopped me with five words.
“Has…he…asked…you…out?”
“No.”
“Are you going to ask him out?”
“Not if he likes Lily.”
“Then don’t spend any more time thinking about it.”
She was right about that guy (who did indeed end up asking out my best friend), and she had been right several times since then. Paul was a grown-up. If he was interested, he could ask me out. If he wasn’t interested, he would see me only when we were part of a group. Things would sort themselves out soon, I told myself.
The problem was that they didn’t.
5
“NO PRESSURE”
Lisetteand I had dinner together at my apartment on Tuesday night, exactly one week after she’d moved out of my place. I had managed a little food shopping over the weekend and managed to pull together a chicken tikka masala from one of those tasty but inauthentic jarred sauces that would make an actual chef weep into his apron.
