“Oh,” her smile faltered but she caught herself and corrected it, “Of course. Will your guest be arriving shortly?”
“Water sounds lovely,” an airy voice said then, and they both turned to find a young woman dressed in a light green chiffon dress approaching them. “I’ll have one as well, thank you.”
Rabbit had been in the process of taking a seat but stood immediately.
The waitress glanced between the two of them and seemed to realize the woman was his guest. “Of course.”
“Bet that happens all the time, huh?” the woman asked, stepping up to the other side of the table and holding out a hand. “Hi, I’m Arlet.”
“Rabbit.” He took her hand and shook it before pulling back and motioning toward her chair. “Please.”
“Rumor is you’re cold and standoffish,” she told him as she sat, grinning when he followed suit and frowned at her. “I’m glad to see that rumors are wrong. But then, they so often are, aren’t they?”
“I try not to listen.” Rabbit had done his best to look into the types of things that were appropriate for a first date, and was at least happy to hear he hadn’t botched it from the very beginning.
“Me either,” she waved at him, “Besides, I totally get it. You’re an artist, right? We tend to be spacy and so caught up in our own worlds from the outside it seems like we’re arrogant when in reality, we’re space cadets.”
Rabbit chuckled and joked, “So it isn’t just me then?”
“Not at all.” She held her multi-slate beneath the holo-orb light hovering over their table and opened the menu. “Whenever I’m caught up in a piece I walk around like I’m a zombie. I’ve even been known to bump into walls now and again.”
There was that word again. Maybe it hadn’t been an insult after all.
“Really?” He tried to picture it. “That’s cute.”
“Tell that to the bruise I got the last time it happened.”
He gave her a once-over and activated the menu himself. “You seem unmarred at the moment.”
“I’m between projects,” she explained. “That’s why I asked my dad to set this up now, actually. I knew I would be present enough for it and I didn’t want to mess it up.” She stopped and covered her mouth suddenly, seeming to realize what she’d said. “I’m so sorry. That was so pathetic, wasn’t it?”
“No,” Rabbit shook his head. “No, I appreciate the honesty. I do have to ask though…I’m pretty sure we’ve never met before?”
“I saw you in Upcoming Magazine,” she told him. “The interview you gave was really interesting, and after that, I watched a couple clips of you playing online. You’re so charismatic when you’re speaking to reporters.”
Meaning she’d been physically attracted to him before she’d heard his music. It was stupid, and he didn’t really understand why that mattered to him, but it did. He already had one woman in his life who only saw him for the instrument he could play. Rabbit didn’t think he could handle having another, no matter how sweet and funny Arlet was turning out to be.
“But no pressure,” she held up a hand, the delicate golden bracelet she had around her wrist gleaming in the dim light, “I’m just glad you agreed to this date. If by the end of the night, one or both of us isn’t feeling it, at least we got a good meal out of it, right?”
“We haven’t tried the food yet,” he pointed out, but he laughed again.
It wasn’t that he struggled with conversing with people—he’d been called pleasant and polite by every interviewer he’d ever encountered—it was just he so rarely had time for it that when an opportunity presented itself, his anxiety tended to get the best of him. He’d panicked and eaten an entire snap bar in his hovercar before gathering enough courage to step into the club, but now that he was sitting here across from Arlet, all of that anxiety was gone.
“That’s fair,” she giggled at his comment and then glanced at the menu. “Do you have any dietary restrictions?”
“I don’t. What about you?”
“I can, and will, eat anything.” She tapped her finger on one of the dishes and a holographic image appeared, projected above her multi-slate. “This looks good. I’ve only been here one other time with my father and I was too nervous about an upcoming gallery showing to really taste the food.”
“I’m technically a member, but I’ve actually never eaten here,” he said.
“It’s sort of like it’s new for the both of us then,” she smiled. “Our first first together.”
Her assumption that things would continue going well between them and they’d make it to a second date didn’t bother him. Instead, Rabbit found himself nodding like it made all the sense in the world and he was eager to experience new things with her, a complete stranger.
Maybe he was. That’s how people stopped being strangers and became something more, wasn’t it?
The relief he felt intensified. He’d been so concerned this would be a flop and he’d have to call his mother later and inform her things weren’t going to work. If she’d really been banking on this family merger that would most likely be enough to get her on a spaceship home.
