“Just a desk and a few boxes. I think. But Tom and I can manage.”
“Are you sure?” she asked. “I have an SUV. And obviously, I’m not doing anything on Saturday.”
He stopped typing. “You’re driving around Boston in an SUV?”
She was a little needled by the judgment in his tone. “I didn’t buy it for Boston. But it’s a Tahoe.”
He was obviously reluctant. “Can you parallel park a Tahoe?”
“Well... ,” she admitted.
Adrian’s expression was a portrait of unhappiness. He hesitated, hands still on his phone screen.
“Can you afford to rent a truck?” she pressed. “I’d let you use my SUV for free.”
“I can’t impose.”
“Think about it in economic terms,” she insisted. “How many hand jobs do you have to give to break even on a U-Haul?”
Adrian’s chest heaved as he put a palm over his face.
“God,” he said, eyes cast heavenward. “A lot, I’m sure.” He propped his cheek onto his hand, looking across the table at her with resignation. “When you put it like that, I can’t say no,” he said, sounding as though he really did want to say no. “I mean yes, thank you.”
They stared at each other over their mostly untouchedspread of what was now room-temperature fish. Adrian’s face said he was back to vaguely mortified to be her sugar baby.
Maybe she’d been too pushy. But wasn’t she supposed to financially support him? It had seemed like such a simple transaction—his time for her money. But as with most things, there was some set of unwritten rules thatought to have been written down and provided to her, which she’d instead managed to transgress. That thought made her tired, for all that it wasn’t even eleven o’clock yet. She felt like she’d hyperextended an underused muscle.
“I’ll get the check,” Caroline said, waving at the server and then passing her a credit card without waiting for the tab.
Caroline confirmed the time and place for Saturday as they stood up and walked to the street. She’d taken a rideshare to the theater, having learned her lesson about driving downtown from their first meeting.
“Oh,” Caroline abruptly remembered as they waited for her car to arrive. “Here.”
She took a plain white envelope from her purse and passed it to Adrian. “Sorry that this still feels like a drug deal. I don’t know how to make it feel less like a drug deal. You should get Venmo or something.”
Adrian hesitantly took the envelope containing a thousand-dollar check from her.
“I really shouldn’t,” he said, more to himself than to her. His sharp jaw was set in a tense line.
“Why?” Caroline asked, surprised. “You did everything you said you would.”
He huffed out a little sound of disagreement. “No, I took you to a concert you didn’t like, then a dinner you didn’t eat. I think I failed pretty squarely at being a good date.”
Caroline looked away. “That’s not your fault,” she said. Someone who knew more about Bach and fish would have enjoyed the evening. She just wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate it yet.
Adrian stuck his hands in his pockets, looking like he disagreed with that too.
“We’ll get better at this,” she reassured him. “We’re going to see a movie tomorrow. And we’ll still go to the Haymarket sometime, right?”
He looked like he wanted to say more, but her car arrived then.
“Yes, whatever you want,” he agreed, opening her door. He hesitated, and Caroline had the fuzzy, ephemeral thought that if he actually had been her boyfriend, this was where he would have kissed her good night. Her gaze dipped to his mouth, and then the column of his throat, which moved as he swallowed. But then he stepped away, hands still in his pockets, and the evening was over.
Chapter Six
Saturday dawned overcast and still, with a flat gray slab of clouds smothering the horizon. Out on the curb in front of their apartment block in Brighton, Adrian dodged Tom’s questions as they waited for Caroline to arrive, burdened with rolls of Bubble Wrap and battered cardboard boxes from the initial move. Despite the leaden sky, the air was still and unseasonably warm. Adrian was already overheating in the battered sweatpants and long-sleeved thermal knit shirt he’d put on for moving the last of his things out of Nora’s house.
“Now tell me, what’s this girl like?” Tom asked, his expression too interested. Adrian had left most of the details vague, despite Tom’s attempts to pry.
