She pointed at his menu.
“Right. Right,” he said, and opened it. He even looked like he was seriously perusing it. And he did come up with something, even if the something sounded a little dubious. “I was thinking maybe just a really giant steak.”
“That sounds good. I mean, I don’t know if they do massive ones but—”
“Oh, they don’t? Oh okay. So maybe I’ll just get, like, a huge pancake.”
“Well, I guess you could do that. They could probably make that.”
“Or I could get a shrimp cocktail and a Caesar salad.”
She frowned, baffled. It was like he wasn’t even paying attention to what was there. Like he was thinking of something else entirely, something he’d seen somewhere else, maybe.
And then it dawned on her.
“Are you just listing food John Candy eats in various movies?”
“No, of course not. I don’t even know how you would guess that.”
“The giant pancake. That’s pretty famously fromUncle Buck.”
“He doesn’t even do that on a date. He makes it for the kids he’s looking after,” he protested. Though of course the second he admitted he knew what she was talking about, he’d already lost. His shoulders dropped, he palmed his face. “It was all that would come into my head.”
“But why? You can just pick something good from here.” She tapped the menu again, encouragingly.
Not that it helped, at all. He sat forward, voice dropping low, expression just a little sad and a lot exasperated. “I don’t know what good is, kid. Heck, I don’t even know whatnormalis. Last time I ordered in a restaurant the waitress looked at me like I’d grown three heads. And then when my food came it was brought by a completely different person who told me the other girl was never coming back.”
“Oh mygod. What did you get?” she asked, and knew she’d done it too salaciously. Like it just had to be something disgusting and weird—a boiled turnip, maybe. Or possibly something reallymacho, like raw bacon dipped in beer. And of course he clocked her wide eyes and breathless anticipation, even as she tried to smuggle it down and look as understanding as she wanted to be.
“I don’t want to tell you. Just tell me what I should say I want. Or tell me which dude from which book made the best choices when it came to something like this. I mean, was it Greg fromCompletely Bared? Because I think he orders something in chapter eleven,” he said, then before she could answer, he fished out his notepad. He flicked to the right page. He even got out a little pair of half-glasses and put them on before he read aloud.
No wonder he squinted the first time he did this, she thought.
Though she couldn’t giggle. She was too busy thinking about what it meant, that he hadn’t wanted to put on glasses before but did now. And feeling a lot of feelings about how he sounded when he read a passage from the book aloud. “‘He ordered a steak, bloody. Then a wine she had never heard of, the name of it rolling off his tongue deliciously. Soon he would taste her on the tip of it. They both knew it. They both reveled in it as the dinner went on,’” he said, all low and rumbly. Softer than she expected, too, and just a little embarrassed.
Though even that was sweet to her.
She could have listened to him do it all day.
So much so that she didn’t even realize what she was doing until he looked up. She had her chin in her hands and was leaning forward. As if waiting for more. As if waiting for someone to read to her, just as she’d longed for when she was a kid. Though of course she knew now that this longing wasn’t just about the act of it.
It was about knowing someone loved to read as much as her.
Who took her sharing her books with them and treasured it.
Because he clearly did. He looked up and saw her on the edge of her seat, and even though they’d been talking about somethingentirely different he said, “Do you want me to go on? I actually have the book in my back pocket. I kind of thought I might need it.”
And it actually pained her to shake her head.
“I would love that, I really would. But I feel like I have to stress—you should ask for whatyouwant. Be true to yourself. Be honest. Women like me love that, too. They love someone just being who they are, and especially when you’ve been accepting of whotheyare,” she said, and was pleased once she had. Because that standard of caring about someone that he had set was definitely trapping him now.
His jaw clenched; his eyes fluttered closed in a way that said he found this deeply irritating.
But he couldn’t get out of it.
“Okay. Fine,” he said, all withering acceptance and a hidden hint of relief. “I don’t really like savory food. Any savory food. The only thing I enjoy eating is desserts. Pudding, pies, cookies, donuts. Anything sweet and I’ll eat it. Anything salty I won’t. And I didn’t understand that this was weird, and so I ordered three whole cakes for my starter, entrée, and dessert.”
Then he sat back and spread his hands. As if now everything was explained. Instead of being even more puzzling than it had been before. “But you don’t even like sugar in your coffee. Theblackcoffee. That you always have. And get mad about when people offer you anything else,” she said, mystified.
