She should have known, though.
“Because people look at me and expect that. You try being someone who looks like this and then ordering a pumpkin spice latte. They look at you like you’re nuts. Sometimes they snigger behind their hands. And yeah, I know I shouldn’t let that bother me, but growing up it was always about not being—”
He caught himself, clearly thinking he was about to reveal too much.
It was okay, though. She already knew what it was. He’d said as much before, and even if he hadn’t she could almost feel it sometimes. The embarrassment over being gentle, the certainty that he didn’t know how to be, the sense that he was letting someone down constantly. “Your dad wanted you to be tough. Mean. Maybe even cruel, like he probably was,” she said, and he looked uncomfortable.
But he didn’t deny it.
“He was not a nice… person. And I guess that gets in your head.”
“Of course it does. You can see it did for me. And you understood, so let me do the same for you now. Let me tell you that I don’t care. I don’t need you to be anything—and if the girl you like is anything like me, she won’t either. So just focus on being yourself. Yourself is great, I promise. In fact, what you’d like to order sounds exactly like what I’ve always wanted to, too,” she said, just in time for the waitress to arrive and help her prove it. She asked for every dessert they had, including the one for sharing.
Then she looked at him when the waitress asked about drinks.
She watched him almost saywine. And almost saybeer.
Before he just went ahead and said what he really wanted. “I’ll take a glass of milk. A big one. Biggest you have. Put it in a stein with a giant handle,” he told her. And when it came he didn’t just take a sip. He took a long, greedy drink, like it somehow wasn’t just milk. It was a stiff alcoholic drink of the sort he sorely needed to take the edge off. He even added, breathlessly, on the end: “Oh yeah, that’s the stuff, that hits the spot.” Like he’d been waiting all his life to gulp something like that in a restaurant. Now, finally, he got to slake his thirst.
Then wipe his mouth on his sleeve afterward.
One big swipe, like a kid. Or more: the kid she suspected he’d never gotten to be.That’s why he wants these things, she thought to herself as he looked at her, sheepishly. And it made her reach for her glass and gulp it, too. She gave herself a milk mustache, and then did the same thing he had done to get rid of it.
And boy, did that seem to hit the spot for him, too.
He tried to just look at her witheringly, ruefully, but underneath it she could see the delight. She couldfeelthe delight. It hummed right out of him—and doubly so for the caramel mousses the waitress set down on the table. She’d never seen an expression as blissed out as the one that rolled across his face once he stuck his fork in and took a bite.
His eyes actually rolled up in his head. Immediately—like stopping himself from doing weird things he thought people would disapprove of was getting harder and harder. It was starting to sink in that they might be okay. “All right, so at this point I was gonna ask you what a normal topic of conversation would be. But now I’m starting to feel like maybe I should just go with what I really want to talk about,” he said, and she almost punched the air.
She was winning. His self-doubt was losing.
“You definitely should.”
“Even if it’s not the weather.”
“Especiallyif it’s not the weather.”
“And it doesn’t matter if it’s not about work, either.”
“It doesn’t. But, I mean, you could probably at least mention what you do, considering how fascinating and secretive it seems to be. My best guess is something do with cutting down trees, and mining, and chemicals.” She laughed over how silly that sounded. Shook her head. “You mine the chemicals that come out of trees.”
“Where did you getthatfrom?”
“The word on that hat. And the pen.”
“That doesn’t seem like a lot to go on.”
“Well, there’s also the money you secretly have. That you don’t ever spend on yourself. That you could use to make your life better, but you don’t. Like you don’t want people to know what you do. You just want people to think you have nothing.”
“So what are you imagining? The mined tree chemicals are dangerous? Illegal? Something I don’t dare tell you about?” he asked, trying to laugh as he did so. But she could hear the strain in his voice. It made it easy to let it go when he added, “Look, I wanted to talk more about you. Even if I’m not really supposed to.”
And not just because it was making him uncomfortable.
The very idea made her start in her seat. For a second she didn’t know what to say. She had to scramble to get ahold of herself, and not gaspplease do, simply because of the electrifying novelty of it. “Just being interested in a woman puts youmilesahead of most men, honestly.”
“Yeah, but if most men don’t then maybe that’ll seem really odd to her.”
“It won’t. I promise. If you really want to ask her, ask her. Forget what you’re supposed to go with, forget romance novels and old movies, forget small-talk rules and topics you feel you won’t mess up. Think about what you really want to know about her. Think about what you’ve maybe always wanted to know. She’s right there in front of you, finally you can ask. What question would you go with?” she asked, not really sure what she imagined him answering as she did so.
