Connor stops at a red light, keeping his eyes focused on the road ahead and his hands on the steering wheel. His grip on it is light. Relaxed. His car is spotlessly clean. There isn’t so much as an empty soda can under the seat or an errant receipt in the center console.
It’s freaky.
On top of that, like everything he touches, it’s permeated with his scent. Cypress with a hint of black pepper, like his shampoo. More than that, though, it smells like him. Like his skin. Like his smile and his laughter.
As he drives, he prattles on about plans of attack and the psychology of negotiating. “Don’t look too interested in anything. If you like something, just touch it when I’m looking at you, and I’ll take it from there. The price on the sticker isnotthe price we’re gonna pay.”
Hell. I’m definitely in hell.
I’m of the opinion—always have been, always will be—that everyone in the entire world should simply agree to put the right price on the sticker to start off with. Just tell us the price of whatever it is we’re looking at, and we can decide if we can afford it or not. It’s simple. I’m happy to pay a little more to avoid getting caught in the torture of a prolonged negotiation.
Connor keeps talking and talking, so enthusiastically that I start longing for sleep or a coma just to escape.
I watch his lips move as he talks. They form words with care, top lip not quite making contact with the bottom when he pauses before starting his next sentence. He smiles for no reason, and this close to him, I see a dimple I’ve never seen before. It’s not in the center of his cheek like it should be. It’s a little lower, and it seems to form when he’s thinking about smiling more than when he’s actually smiling.
I can only see one side of his face from where I’m sitting, and the longer he drives, the more it feels like a matter of urgency that he turns to face me so I can see whether he has a matching dimple on his other cheek.
I’m vaguely carsick by the time Connor puts the car into Park. Not because I couldn’t stop looking at him the entire way here, but because I’m someone who gets carsick easily.
From the outside, the first store looks exactly like what I expect from a thrift store. Faded gold lettering on the door and a profusion of mismatched items in the window. All of them are brightly colored. None of them my taste.
Connor opens the door and holds it for me, stepping back all gentlemanly and shit, and lets me go in first. It annoys me.
I pretend not to notice so he doesn’t get any ideas about doing it on a regular basis.
We amble through the store so slowly that I start feeling like I’m going to lose my balance. Connor makes it past the racks of clothes with what I now see is relative speed, but when he gets to the furniture and home goods, he really slows down and looks at every single thing.
If he likes something, or doesn’t like it, or thinks it’s interesting in any way, he stops and eyes it up and down. He moves his head from side to side, examining it from all angles, before moving on. It happens at least a hundred times.
I start sighing loudly.
“How ’bout this?” he asks, showing me a repulsive item I can only call a glittery pig hoof. “Anna said you needed something unique.”
His tone and expression are serious when he says it, but the dimple near his mouth dips and gives him away. He’s looking directly at me when it happens, so I can see that the dimple isn’t part of a set. There’s only one.
“So what are you thinking for the nightstands?” he asks as we continue to work our way through the store.
Before Anna barreled into my life, if I added up all the time I’d spent thinking about nightstands, I’d come up with exactly zero seconds. Nada. Not one. “I, uh, I don’t like timber with a red undertone. I like brown wood that looks like wood. And I like nightstands that you don’t really notice. I want people to be able to come into my room and leave without noticing that I own nightstands.”
“Gotcha,” he says, nodding as though all that makes a lot of sense. “Ashy tones and a classic-contemporary design.”
I stand in one spot, rapidly losing the will to live, as he continues the world’s slowest quest. By the time my eyes are crossing from boredom, he waves me over. There’s an excited gleam in his eyes. Thanks to the garish yellow paint on the wall behind him, his eyes look more green than blue. Pale green, but vivid all the same.
“What do you think?” he asks, gesturing surreptitiously to a couple of nightstands in the back corner of the store.
They’re made of a brown-gray wood and are neither modern nor old-fashioned. They aren’t too big or too small, and if I turned my back on them right now, I’d hardly be able to remember a thing about them. “Perfect,” I say.
Connor haggles and cajoles the sales assistant into giving us a thirty percent discount, and just when the poor guy thinks he has a deal, Connor asks him to throw in a couple of wicker storage baskets for free.
To my shock, the man agrees.
“Not bad, huh?” Connor says as we carry the nightstands and baskets to his car.
“Mmph,” I grunt as I put his back seat down and wrestle my purchases into the trunk.
When everything is in, he slams the trunk and locks the car. “One more store, please.” He clutches his hands together at his chest and gives me a look that’s meant to be straight up adorable. Sadly, it is. I hem and haw and make my displeasure known. “How ’bout this… If you come with me to one more store, I won’t tell Anna we didn’t get the baskets at the container store?”
I can tell he’s in a negotiating frenzy, and I have enough common sense to know when I’m beaten, so I give him an eyeroll and the slightest of nods.
