“Worried you’re about to lose our game?” I say as I take my seat.
Ollie pushes in my chair with a laugh before taking the seat across from me. “Not at all. Go ahead, try it.”
I look at the eggplant pasta dish before me, which seems perfectly normal. “I think you cheated. I don’t remember picking out a salad.”
“Never said I could useonlythe ingredients you chose, just that I had to use them.”
“Sneaky.”
“But most of what you picked is in that.” He nods to the pasta. “Even your damn Cap’n Crunch.”
I twirl a forkful of spaghetti and bring it to my mouth, then pause to eye him skeptically. “You didn’t poison this, did you?”
“Poison? No. Love potion? Yes.” Ollie crosses his arms over his chest and leans back in his chair. I want to laugh. How can he be so serious?
“I’ll risk it,” I say, then take a bite.
Ollie’s eyebrows raise as he watches me chew. I take my time. A thousand little bites before I swallow. I set down my fork and look at him, saying nothing.
“And?”
I sigh and look up at the ceiling and catch sight of the stars. I can’t help but smile. I haven’t smiled this much in ages. I’m unable to bite it back when I look at Ollie again. “I hate to admit it, Oliver, but, damn, you can cook.”
Ollie leans forward. His expression is all sunshine in the yellow light. “Just say the word, and I’ll cook for you every night.”
“The word.”
“Smartass.”
We eat in companionable silence. If this were any other first date, the bitchy voice in my head would say,Pass!I’d cause a diversion, stash every last breadstick in my purse, excuse myself to the restroom, then pay the bill up front before fleeing out the door.
But this silence is different. It’s not a we-have-nothing-to-talk-about silence. It’s a silence that says,I don’t need to fill this space because it’s already full. I don’t need to make this interesting because sitting with you is interesting enough.
When an instrumental version of “Feel Good Inc.” comes on, I finally put together the common thread between all the songs that have played.
I point my fork at him. “You didn’t,” I say.
“Table manners, Ms.Lejeune,” Ollie says. “I didn’t what now?”
“The music. All the songs are from my floor routines.”
Ollie grins. “Wondered how long it’d take you to notice.”
I laugh. “I don’t understand.”
“They’re part of you,” he says. “Couldn’t tell what you were feeling doing your routines, but I knew you were feeling something. Plus some of them are just fecking weird, you know. You just had to go and do Led Zeppelin, didn’t you? And not even ‘Stairway to Heaven’! I remember watching your routine to ‘Moby Dick’ and thinking,She fucking didn’t.”
“I fucking did,” I say.
“Dunno how they let you win a single competition.”
I shrug. “They can’t penalize you for song choice. As long as you’ve got a version without words, you can play whatever you like. Hell, you could do theSuper Mariotheme song if you wanted.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t.”
I press a hand over my heart. “I’m offended. I havesomeclass, you know. I can’t say the same for everyone here.”
Ollie narrows his eyes. I’m so distracted by his expression that I don’t notice the spaghetti noodle he twirls around his fork until it lands on my face.
