Caroline rounded her eyes at him, silently asking him to go on and tell her more about the university’s tennis options.
“I think they have doubles—” Adrian began to explain before her expression finally sunk in. “Oh. You’re fucking with me again, aren’t you?”
Caroline gave him a tight-lipped smile. “I did varsity tennis all through undergrad. BC actually offered me a partial scholarship four years ago.”
Her father hadn’t let her take it, not against the full ride at Central Texas Baptist, where she could live at home besides.
Adrian turned away and scrubbed both hands over his face. “You’re welcome to just tell me the next time I’m being an ass instead of waiting for me to catch on.”
“I’ll take that under advisement,” Caroline quoted him, wrestling his desk into place next to his narrow window.
Adrian put his hands on his narrow hips and turned back to her, expression annoyed. “I only thought you might be interested in better ways of spending your weekends than this. Do you not actually like tennis?”
Caroline stared at her feet in consternation. She couldn’t remember. It wasn’t something she’d chosen for herself—her father and sisters had played, so she’d played, and once she started getting good at it, her family had been so relieved to have something to occupy her that it became all she wasallowedto do.
Whether she had ever liked tennis was almost beside the point. The point was, she’d done tennis. She couldn’texpect it to bring anything new and good into her life when it hadn’t in the past.
“We haven’t even gone to the theater yet,” she pointed out, brushing Adrian’s comments away.
“What kind of theater?”
Caroline shrugged. She didn’t know what kind was best. That was what Adrian was for. “Whichever you think is the best.”
She wandered back into the living room, prepared to go back downstairs and finish unloading the Tahoe.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Adrian said, moving into the kitchen instead.
“Sure, what do you have?”
He opened a few cabinets, then the fridge. He closed the fridge.
“We have St-Germain and tap water. I recommend the tap water.”
“I’ll have a tap water.”
The over-sink cabinet was full of mismatched mason jars and coffee mugs. Adrian grabbed one at random and filled it from the tap. There were dishes in the sink. He glared at them, and she guessed he hadn’t left them there.
“You make adulthood look so glamorous,” Caroline said.
He exhaled like he was going to agree, but then the corner of his mouth quirked up, his smile crooked and self-deprecating. He wrapped a hand around the back of the mason jar and extended it toward her like he was displaying the label.
“This water is redolent with the distinctive terroir of north Brighton. The forward notes are chemical, with hints of Dawn and chlorine, but the finish is mineral, with a lingering nose of iron, copper, and—troublingly—lead.”
Caroline giggled and took the glass from him, taking a long sip like she’d seen people do on TV.
“Mmm,” she said, rolling the water over her tongue. “I can taste the chlorine.”
At his gesture, she took it to the gray canvas double sofa.
Adrian passed her a remote, nodding at the TV. “I think Tom has Hulu. Or, if you’d like, all my art books are in boxes over—”
“You don’t want to finish unloading?”
“I’m going to do that right now. Please. Just sit here. My masculine pride is hanging on by a thread.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” Caroline protested. “I’ll help.”
“I can’t let you pay me to help carry boxes into my apartment,” Adrian said firmly. “Let me finish up, and then we’ll see what’s on the scalper sites for tonight.”
