“Wow, the perks of working at a salon are paying off: How does your hair always look fantastic?” Emma whispered as Nadine pushed the hood from her head. “Is Mateo sharing all his styling secrets with you?”
“Thanks! He really is the best,” Nadine agreed, reaching into the Milk Duds and throwing a few in her mouth. “He showed me how to do this thing with a round brush where you kind of twist it as you blow dry it? But it’s hard to pay attention because he has this tattoo on his bicep that kind of flexes every time—”
“Shhh!”
Emma turned to look at the row behind her, where an older gentleman eating his own box of Milk Duds was glaring at the two of them. The theater was practically empty and the movie hadn’t started yet, but she still offered him an apologetic smile.
After a minute of silence, Emma leaned over to Nadine again. “So, have you had any matches on those dating apps yet?”
Her friend nodded, keeping her eyes down on the candy in her hand. “Yeah… got a couple of messages.”
“That’s amazing!” Emma said, her voice a little too loud, andshe made sure to soften it as she continued. “What did they say? Do you have pictures?”
“Well… I didn’t exactly write them back.”
Emma’s brow furrowed. “Why not?”
“I don’t know.” Nadine shrugged. “I was hoping to meet someone in a more… traditional way, you know?”
“What, like getting invited to a ball so you can sit in the corner and wait for someone to ask you to dance or something? There is no such thing as traditional anymore, Nadine. Everyone is online. Here, let me see your phone.”
Nadine handed it over and Emma quickly opened the app, expertly navigating it until she found the inbox.
“This first guy is hot,” she murmured, looking over his picture. Then she clicked on his profile. “Wait. Never mind. There’s something sketchy about his answers, and I don’t think that’s his actual job. Okay, let’s see the second one.” She deleted the first message and moved on to the next. “He’s cute, but…” She pulled up his profile picture, examining it closely. “There’s no way he’s twenty-five. It looks like this photo is from the nineties.”
Nadine looked deflated. “Oh.”
“Don’t worry, this is just the first two,” Emma said encouragingly. “Here, why don’t you let me go through them later and swipe on a few that I think could be great. Then we can go from there, okay?”
Nadine offered her a watery smile and nodded.
Emma smiled back. “We’re going to find you the perfect guy, I promise!”
“Shhh!” The man behind them leaned forward, his finger poised in front of his mouth.
Emma and Nadine stifled their laughs as the lights dimmed. A moment later, the screen lit up with the black-and-white opening credits. Emma had no idea how many times she’d seenIt’s a Wonderful Life, but she had every word, every expression, memorized.
Nadine, on the other hand, hadn’t seen it at all, so Emma was almost as excited to watch her reaction as she was to see the movie itself. But just as the credits faded into a snowy scene of Bedford Falls, she noticed her phone light up in her Balenciaga shoulder bag. She automatically reached for it, covertly shielding the screen so as not to distract Nadine, and looked down to see a text from Knightley.
KNIGHTLEY
If a business trip was all it took to avoid that movie I would have opened an LA office years ago.
She smiled and unlocked her phone to reply but noticed three dots, as if he were typing another text. They danced on her screen for a while, then disappeared only to reappear a moment later. She stared down at them, waiting for whatever was taking him ages to articulate. But then the dots disappeared again.
Huh. She started to respond but hesitated, not wanting to be that person who texts at the movies. Milk Dud man was already annoyed.
She turned her screen off and put her phone back in her bag.
Emma tried hard to focus on the movie, but her mind wouldn’t shut off. A text from Knightley was a rare occurrence, even more so when he was in LA. But that wasn’t the only reason it nagged at her.
To be honest, things had felt off between them ever since that night she snuck into his kitchen to steal ice cream after the whole Zane incident. She was surprised by how she had articulated all her thoughts to him like that, open and honest and… real. They had such an open relationship normally, but this conversation felt different. Two adults just trying to figure it out.
She had been afraid it would feel awkward the next day, but it never did. Well, at least not for her. Maybe for Knightley. Until now it felt like he was avoiding her like the plague, but she had to remind herself that not everything was about her. Work was busy for him right now, as evidenced by this trip. Everything would be back to normal soon.
Her mind dwelled on their conversation, though. No strings, not complicated… it sounded so easy. And suddenly images of the stranger who had given her his cab floated in her head. His smile, his confidence.
That man looked like someone who had his pick of women, and Emma realized she would have still given him her number if he’d asked. And maybe that was okay. Maybe she was going about this the wrong way, and Knightley was right: no strings was the way to go.
