Dye the gray out and ditch the forever disapproving expression and he’d pass for her age, easy. In fact, she’d always thought he kind of knew that. That he cultivated this ornery grandpa look on purpose. She had never thought it bothered him—but she could see it clearly did, somehow.
He shifted in his seat once he had said it.
Folded his arms. Unfolded them. Went to take a bite from his plate of boiled broccoli and equally boiled chicken. Then seemed to find the idea of taking a bite tiresome. He pushed his plate away and looked at her, frustrated now. Like he was waiting for her to just get confirmation of this over with.
She couldn’t give it, however. No matter how much she hated him, she couldn’t.
It was too preposterous. She just had to couch her denial in something other than kind terms.
“I do not look mid-twenties. I look my age, thirty-five. And you look yours, forty-two. So what was it you were really objecting to? The amount of smiling going on? All of them too cheery for you?”
“It’s nothing to do with cheeriness.”
“Well, it must be something bugging you.”
“Yes, it is, they’re all extremely thin,” he said. And this time, her brain didn’t just saywhat the fuck. It seemed to short-circuit altogether. She couldn’t say anything for the longest time—and in a way he obviously took as condemnation. He sighed, heavily. Leant forward, spread his hands, dropped his voice just a little. “Look, it’s not that I have anything against a woman being skinny. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it. I’m sure they’re all incredibly healthy and to many men very attractive. But it just isn’t what I am into, all right?”
It didn’t make anything make more sense, however.
More amusing, but not more full of sense.
“So what you’re into is big booties.”
“Don’t saybootiesto me.”
“That’s a yes if ever I heard one.”
“Can we just get on with this? I pick her, okay?”
He jabbed a finger at one of the pictures—Louisa Yates, she thought it looked like. The one who mainly did bit parts in soaps and advertised things you’d never heard of. Though the name and the résumé weren’t what struck her.
“So you like brunettes, then. With big dark eyes,” she said, before she could really think things through. Or imagine what that sounded like.You made it seem as if he picked a woman that resembles you, her mind calmly informed her. But when she tried to shrug it off, she realized.
He was staring at her.
And she was staring back at him.
And it was going on for a very, very long time.
Too long, really. So long, in fact, that she saw the second he stopped simply holding her gaze, and started searching it. Subtly, she thought, but it was definitely there. A shift in the sheen over them, a slight flicker of those too-dark eyes. A deep brown in some lights, ink black in others, now blacker even than that and ransacking her for something embarrassing.
A confession from her soul:I want you to want me.
Even though the idea had never once crossed her mind. The idea was so inexplicable to her, so buried beneath years of his seething hatred—it just wasn’t possible. He had to know it wasn’t.Tell him it’s not, she told herself, but of course couldn’t.
It would only make things worse.
And they were alreadyreallybad.
Suddenly everything seemed ten degrees warmer. As if their waitress had cranked the heat, just over their table specifically. She could feel it starting to suffocate her inside her sweater, to make her want to pull at the collar like a cartoon character. And any second it was going to cause a flush over her cheeks.
A guilty one, she thought.
Despite how silly that was.
After all, it was happening to him, too. He touched his collar, and her eyes flicked to the abrupt move, and she caught what he was trying to cover. The tiniest hint of pink at the base of his throat. Like he was starting to actually blush somehow. Caleb Miller, doing what people who had feelings did.
Must be the heating, she thought.Must be the sun coming through the windows all the way over there. Must be the too-hot coffee he just drank, must be, must be.
