I stare at it. Because I’m some kind of psycho, I put my hot chocolate in a cupholder and put my arm next to his, close but not touching, his stupid flexing forearm radiating a heat that’s almost magnetic. I’m already warm in the close quarters of the vehicle, so why I’m craving this closeness to him is beyond me.
On screen, a dead body appears with a message written on it in red. Professor Snape’s character is not pleased.
I scoot my arm a fraction of an inch toward Jay’s. When they touch, I stop breathing.What am I doing?
“Hollis?” he says.
I clear my throat, eyes glued to our single line of contact. “Yes?”
“You’re staring at our arms.”
“Oh.” An embarrassed heat consumes every square inch of me. “Am I? I was admiring this center console.” Being the idiot I am, I knock it like a door. “This is a nice design. Solid. Sturdy. Room for snacks. And trash bags. And baby wipes.” His lips press into a tight line. “Not that you have a baby.” My eyes ping around his virtually spotless SUV, a far cry from the crumb-covered minivan I drive. “Or trash.”
“It is a good center console,” he says, not bothering to hide his smile.
Dear Bruce Willis, please shoot me with your gun.
“You have an appeal,” I blurt, awkward. “Even though you’re opposed to marriage, I’m surprised you don’t have someone serious in your life. That’s why I was asking. About the mustache. And the dating.”
“I never said I was opposed to marriage,” Jay says, not looking at me as bullets blast across the screen. “I said I never got around to it. I had someone once. Years ago. Someone I thought I could see myself with long-term. Maybe marry.”
“What happened?” I ask.
“She couldn’t get over my career choices.” He finally looks at me. “And she married someone else.”
He’s not smug. Not amused. The look on his face is serious, vulnerable, and a little bit telling.
All I can find: “Oh.”
Marv taps on the window prompting Jay to roll it down.Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,blasts through the speakers before a loud boom rattles the whole vehicle.
“Found two dollars and forty-three cents, six bullets, and a wedding ring,” Marv says, eyes bouncing between Jay and I. “Why are you two serious?”
Jay glances at me before saying, “Hollis is looking for internet boyfriends.”
My jaw drops. Marv frowns.
“Don’t do it,” Marv says in an ominous tone. “That’s how the sleeper Soviets are gaining traction.” His eyebrows raise to his hairline. “They prey on the lonely and say all the right things before stealing your money and bugging your ballpoint pens.”
Wait—what?
With that, he’s gone, sweeping his metal detector across the ground as Jay rolls the window back up and looks at me.
“Why not date real men?” Jay asks, smug expression back in full effect.
“Real men?” I echo, annoyed. “Real men can be on the internet, first of all. But to shut you up, I’ll clarify: I am open to dating if I meet someone whom I connect with and is okay with dating someone like me. Internet or otherwise.”
Without breaking eye contact, he puts his drink in a cupholder and turns his head to fully face me, doing a villainesque stroke of his mustache with his thumb and index finger. I gift myself exactly three seconds of imagining what it would feel like dragging across my skin.
“Someone like you?”
My face heats. He does that. Takes one little piece out of a whole slew of things I say and clings to it like tinsel on a tree branch.
“I’m done talking about this,” I snap.
“Tell me,” he presses, leaning slightly into my space across the console. I back away but have nowhere to go. My head hits the passenger window. He’s close; I’m sweating.
On screen, large lights are getting shot out. I recognize one of the police officers as the dad from the show with Steve Urkel from the ’90s but keep the discovery to myself.
