That's what I keep coming back to. Not the months of coffee and Ivy's commentary and the particular way Gemma says goodnight like she means it — those I'd catalogued and filed away under reasons not to do something stupid. The hand in the dark is different. The hand in the dark is the thing I can't put down.
So, naturally, I decide to do something about it.
The second mistake is asking for advice.
Aiden hears me out with the focused expression of a man who takes this kind of thing seriously, which is the part that should have warned me off. Derek leans against the apparatus bay wall with his arms crossed, boot heel hooked on the bumperof Engine 7, already wearing the look of someone who sees an opportunity for chaos.
"Okay," Aiden says. "First question. Have you told her you like her?"
"I'm asking her on a date," I say. "That's implied."
"Not always," Derek says.
"It's a date. It is, by definition, an expression of?—"
"Beck," Aiden says, patient as a man who has clearly thought hard about this before, "women like to hear the thing. Not infer the thing. Hear it."
"We're going on a date. She'll hear it."
Derek shakes his head slowly, like a doctor reviewing a difficult chart. "Where are you taking her?"
"Valentino's."
Both of them go quiet.
"What?" I ask.
"That's..." Derek starts.
"A lot," Aiden finishes.
"It's the nicest restaurant in town," I say. If you're going to do something, you do it properly.
"It's where people go to propose," Derek says. "Or to tell someone they have a terminal diagnosis and feel bad about it."
"It says something."
"It says 'I've been thinking about this for a long time and I may have feelings I don't know how to process,'" Aiden says, and then pauses. "Actually, for you, that might be accurate. Never mind, it's fine. Go to Valentino's."
"Valentino's," I say firmly, because I am a grown man with a plan and I am not crowdsourcing my romantic life from two men who once got lost on a training hike close enough to the station.
I knock on her door that evening. She opens it with Kevin tucked under one arm and a look that says she was in the middle of something.
"I'd like to take you to dinner," I say. "Out. A restaurant. Not here, not as—" I stop. Start again. "I'm asking you on a date. Tomorrow night. Seven o'clock."
She looks at me for a moment. Kevin is still under her arm. "A date," she says.
"That's what I said."
"Not just dinner."
"Correct."
She sets Kevin on the small table by her door and leans against the frame, and there's something in her expression I can't fully read — warmth, mostly, and something that might be the effort of not smiling too wide. "Okay," she says. "Yes."
"Good," I say. The tension I've been carrying in my shoulders since I raised my hand to knock releases all at once, which I am not going to think about.
She's still smiling when she closes the door.
