I watch as he sips from the milky, sweetened cup, feeling guilty that I ended up with the coffee style we both prefer.
“Thank you.” I wrap my hands around the cup, grateful for the warmth. “This was really thoughtful.”
“I won’t let it happen again,” he says. I look at him in confusion, and he winks. “Bad boyfriend only from here on out.”
No other guy I know can get away with winking that way he does. I laugh and sip my coffee, strong and dark, just like I like it.
“So we both like black coffee,” he says. “I almost grabbed you a sandwich too, but I didn’t want to pick at random.”
“Anything without meat is good. I’m a vegetarian,” I tell him.
“No burgers. Noted. What else should we know about each other?”
He’s smart to ask. In all of our pre-trip conversations, we didn’t cover many of the boring details.
“I dunno,” I say. “Middle name?”
“Yawn. We can do better than that.” The setting sun hits us as we turn toward the highway that’ll take us to the ’burbs. “Sunglasses?”
He gestures to his glove box, and I pop it open to discover a tidy stack of registration paperwork, a few notebooks, the sunglasses, and nothing else.
“Okay, so you’re organized,” I say, handing them over. “What else? I’m talking basic bio, dating history, how we met, how long we’ve been together, that kind of thing.”
He slips on the sunnies. “Let’s see… I was born in Wiesbaden, Germany.” He anticipates my question and answers without me needing to ask. “My dad’s career Army. I was born on base. We moved around a lot and came to Beaucoeur as I was starting high school. My parents and younger brother moved my senior year when he was assigned to a new duty station, but I stayed behind.”
He’s glossing over the GED thing, but he didn’t want to talk about it last time, so I don’t pry. “Hobbies? Girlfriends? Bodies in your crawl space?”
“I like being outside and working with my hands. I like Marvel movies andJohn Wick. I don’t spend much time in libraries.”
“That’s how it always is with you Wiesbaden boys,” I say. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t answer about the bodies.”
He takes a long swallow of his coffee. “I have committed no murders, and I haven’t seriously dated anybody in a long time.”
“What’s a long time?”
He takes a hand off the steering wheel to rub his jaw. He hasn’t shaved, and his knuckles rasp along the stubble. “Not since shortly after I moved out on my own. So a couple of years.”
I try to follow his vague timeline and don’t like what I came up with. “Wait. Gabe, how old are you?”
“Twenty-six.”
My brain stalls out over the math, and then I moan. “Oh my God, I’m bringing home a baby.”
“How old areyou?” The sun finally vanishes, so he pulls off his sunglasses and peers at me.
“Thirty-four!”
“Pssht. Eight years is nothing.” He shrugs and turns back to the road, apparently unconcerned by my cradle-robbing.
“You were in kindergarten when I was getting boobs!”
“Awesome.” He looks at me again, but this time his attention’s on my chest. “Nice job with that, by the way.”
When I squawk in outrage, he just laughs. “What’s the big deal? Adults born in different decades can date. We both have jobs and bills and parents we’ve let down one way or another.”
I’m still stuck on the 365-times-eight days separating us. “So when you were a high school senior, I was—”
“You were starting a career as a badass librarian. That’s so hot.”
