“And make them fancy!” I called out after him.
“Oh, this will be the fanciest margarita you’ve ever had. By the time you’ve finished it, you’ll feel like a guest on theSerendipity.” He disappeared into the kitchen, then reappeared seconds later, hands on his hips. “Your provisions are disappointing. I need to run to my place.”
When Alex returned, he had his shirt stretched out in front of him, using it to carry items I couldn’t see but that clanged together with each step he took. I tried to ask about it, but Alex said a genius at work couldn’t stop for conversation, so I continued deciding which of my bras and underwear sparked joy and which did not. A few minutes later, I told Alex it was safe for him to return, and he walked into the living room with two margarita glasses, each with an upturned beer sticking out of it.
“Seriously? A beer margarita?” I said, laughing as I took the glass. “Wow, I really feel like a Florida heiress now.”
Alex clinked his glass to mine before sitting down. “The proper name is beergarita. And you’re welcome. Try it.”
I took a sip of the margarita and blinked in surprise. “What did you put in here?”
“If I told you, you’d have to make a blood oath,” he said.
“Honestly, this is so good, I might be willing to do that.” I took another sip. “Is that... Maggi seasoning?”
Alex tipped his head to the side. “Actually, yes. That’soneof the secret ingredients.”
“Don’t look so surprised,” I said. “Do you know how many drinks I make a year? Did you think I’d guess something ridiculous like nutmeg?”
Alex shook his head. “Why does everyone guess nutmeg as a secret ingredient?”
“Wait.” I pointed down into the glass. “Is there Worcestershire in here too?”
Alex made to take my drink from me, but I pulled it out of his reach. “You know too much. Now we have to do the blood oath.”
“I knew it!” I said, spilling some of the margarita on my shirt when I lowered my glass.
“Settle down, Heiress Jo. Shouldn’t you be getting back to work? We haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet.”
“What’s the good stuff?”
Alex shrugged. “Yearbook photos. Secret diaries. Love poems.”
“You’re about to be sorely disappointed.”
“No love poems?”
I shook my head and glanced at the two cardboard boxes.
Alex took out his phone, and Rihanna’s “Work” rang out in the condo. “This is my cleaning playlist,” he explained. He grabbed a garbage bag and danced along to the music, singing as he helped bag items, making me laugh so hard I had tears streaming down my face.
“That’s quite the Rihanna impression,” I said, handing him my copy ofNorthanger Abbeyfor the keep pile. “I thought you didn’t bust out the dance moves until the third date.”
“I saidchoreographeddance moves. This is pure improvised talent.”
“That’s one way to see it.”
“And this is not a date. If I took you on a date, you’d know it. We wouldn’t be decluttering. You sing the Drake part.”
I looked down at the book in my hands. It was a coffee table book of North Carolina Beth had sent a few months after I’d moved here. What Alex had said was a hypothetical, of course. He wouldn’treallythink of taking me on a date. Though I wondered what sort of date he’d take me on if he were interested in dating or in me. He didn’t seem like a dinner-and-drinks kind of guy. “No thanks. You can do both parts.”
“Be careful what you wish for,” he said.
Other than a brief slowdown when I paused to show Alex my father’s poetry collection, the decluttering continued uneventfully. At some point the girls came by to eat lasagna. Greyson complained about Alex’s dancing and singing, which only made him dance and sing more, and soon after they’d arrived, the girls left to watch something at Alex’s condo. It wasn’t until eleven o’clock that we’d gotten through everything but my two cardboard boxes. The only out-of-place items in my entire unit.
I knelt before the boxes and wiped the dust from the top of one with the hem of my shirt. This was the part of decluttering I’d been dreading. Clothes, books, papers, all the rest—it wasn’t hard to decide what to keep and what to trash. But I knew that looking into these boxes would be like looking into my own heart, and I wasn’t sure if I was ready for that, let alone with a guy I’d only met at the start of the summer.
Alex returned from taking the trash out to the dumpster. “Sorry that took so long. I ran into Sharon. You know, the retired hedge fund manager on the third floor? I’m pretty sure she just asked me out.”
