“It happens every year.”
“I know, but we don’t say it like that. We are always surprised that it gets cold so early in Utah. Always.”
“I’m bored. Can you please just tell me why you have a tattoo on your foot?”
I froze, but before I could shut him down, he continued. “I want to know why the foot? Did that hurt? And what does it mean?”
Granted, if I wanted to not have people ask me about the tattoo, I should have gotten it on a more private part of my body, but that didn’t mean anyone was entitled to the real reason.
“How did you see that?”
At the pool, before you went down.”
Fair enough. Feeling a slight headache, probably from the late night, I massaged the tension in my eyebrows. “I got a tattoo because I wanted one. And the foot seemed like a great place.”
“Nope. Try again.”
I looked at him. “What?”
“You’re not the kind of person who wakes up and decides to get a tattoo. It doesn’t fit your MO.”
“My MO?”
“Your modus operandi. Your way of operating.” When I didn’t say anything, he said in a softer tone, “You don’t have to tell me if it’s personal. I just noticed it and got curious.”
“You’re forgetting something, though. You don’t really know me.” I made a show of checking my phone for the time. “It’s been exactly six hours since we first met.”
“Is it our six-hour anniversary already? I didn’t get you anything.”
The smile on my face came without warning.
He continued, “The way I see it, we’ve packed almost three and a half dates into those hours, so, technically, this is date three and a half…we’re getting pretty serious now.”
For one tiny millisecond, I had a pang of sadness that I was leaving for North Dakota. And before you go all elderly lady wisdom on me, I know I can’t stop love if it happens, which is why I had made it a habit to avoid relationships in general. At least until I had a career and could take care of myself. But Duke was on a whole different level of life than I was. No strings attached was now the most important rule of our night.
“I can change my question, if you want.” Duke’s soft voice filtered into my ears.
I was making it a bigger deal by hesitating. The actual reason wasn’t a hidden, dark secret, but it would open doors between us I wasn’t sure should be opened. I would be giving him a piece of myself, and I couldn’t help but wonder if it would be better for my heart to keep it all reined inside. Then again, this night had brought out a strange version of myself, so maybe it would be good to clue him in a bit more on the real Nora. Everything had gone to whack the moment he sat next to me at the game. I had a sudden urge to dip my toe in the water.
“It’s not random. It’s Latin. It means,Tothestarsthroughdifficulties. I got it when I turned sixteen and got my first real, tax-paying job to help my mom cover the rent.”
Okay, that was less like a toe and more like plunging my entire body into the water.
He seemed confused by this. “What do you mean your first tax-paying job?”
“My aunt’s boyfriend at the time owned a cafe by the freeway. He used to let me wash dishes there when I was thirteen.”
“All under the table?”
I nodded. “I didn’t understand any of the legal stuff at the time, but I had overheard my mom crying to my aunt about not being able to afford the rent that month. So I told my mom I wanted to help, and my Aunt Cathy got me a job at her boyfriend’s cafe.”
“So you’ve been working since you were thirteen?”
“Mostly. It depended on my mom’s boyfriends or husbands. Some of them had money and moved in with us for a while, and then I didn’t have to work. But they never lasted.”
“What about your mom? Does she work?”
I nodded. “After I turned sixteen, I’d go to work right after school until nine or ten at night, and then I’d be home while she went to work the night shift. By this time, we were both working at a cafe downtown by where we lived. She’d get home in the morning just as I was leaving to take me and my sisters to school.”
