“Is the shop out of muffins?” I ask. “Because it would be much more polite for him to go get you a muffin. I guess if there’s some great muffin shortage and the second half of his muffin represents a huge sacrifice—”
“Fine,” she says. “Ruin my fantasy. Now I kind of hate Muffin Guy. I do deserve my own muffin.”
“Right?Trying to give you half a used muffin. If I pulled that, my mom would be like, ‘What’s the matter with you, Nate? Get the girl her own muffin!’”
She laughs, shaking her head. “I think I’d like your mom.”
“I think you would.” I grin. “She’d give you all the Dominican recipes her grandmother has passed down and she doesn’t have the patience to make.”
“Um, yes please.That sounds amazing.”
It does. And also, I realize, probably something I shouldn’t be going on about much longer. I don’t talk about girls meeting my family in general—though a few of my past girlfriends have. But Idefinitelyshouldn’t be doing so with a girl who may soon be falling head over heels for some dude in a prince costume.
But Becca steers the conversation back herself. “I like the gallantry when it comes to a woman’s muffin needs.” Her lips tease up. “You really are old-fashioned. I bet you open doors for girls and everything.”
“It’s not old-fashioned to be polite,” I tell her. “I am all for women’s rights, but they aren’t an excuse for men to be rude. So yeah, I hold open doors.Though I’m not one of those assholes who won’tleta woman open her own door, because that’s also rude.”
“It is,” she agrees. “But please tell me you don’t put up with the girls who just sit there in the car and make you walk all the way around it to open the door and let them out.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever had a woman wait for me to open her car door,” I say. “I’ll open her door when we’re getting in the car.”
“Sure. But the women who’ll sit there like they can’t just open it themselves? Watch out.”
“I don’t know that it would bother me all that much.”
“It should,” Becca insists. “It’s a red flag. With ‘I am super high-maintenance’ written on it. In bold.”
I’m sure whatever producer listens to her audio is going to salivate over this and do everything they can to get one of the other girls to wait for Prince Charming to open the car door so they can play this right over the top of it.
“I think it would only bother me if the woman was pretending to be helpless,” I say. “I hate it when girls do that—pretend not to know stuff or to need help doing things when really they don’t. Some women do that for attention, but it’s not attractive.”
“Yeah, totally. And men who only feel good about themselves when they’re proving they’re stronger or smarter are trouble.That’s a really bad sign.”
“Have you dated a lot of guys like that?”
“The question,” she says, “is whetherPrince Charmingis like that.”
I didn’t miss her dodge, but I let her have it. I don’t want to press her about things she’s uncomfortable saying. I hope she’ll tell me eventually, though, more for myself than for the job.
“I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe you’ll have to convince one of the girls to play helpless to find out.”
“I wonder if I’ll have to convince them, or if one of them will do it anyway.”
The carriage rolls up another slot. Becca was in the second half of the line, but we’re getting closer to the front. Maybe another five or six carriages to go.
I don’t want to get there, I realize. Because once I do, she’s going to meet Prince Charming, and then everything she has to say to me will be about him.
“Do you believe in soul mates?” I ask her. “Or love at first sight?
“Not love at first sight,” she says.
“So you don’t think you could fall in love with Prince Charming tonight?”
“Probably not.” She shrugs. “As for soul mates? I don’t believe in fate, but I like to think there’s a best person for everyone. What about you?”
Whataboutme? “I don’t believe in fate, either,” I say. “And I think there’s probably more than one person in the world with whom you could have, say, a ninety-nine percent match. And if you find one of those people, you’re lucky. And you can make them your soul mate by choosing them forever, if they choose you back.”
She smiles. “You’re probably right. I still like to think, though, that there’s someone for everyone who is yourbestmatch. One hundred percent. Not that that means it’s always easy or guaranteed—I don’t think life is supposed to be that way. You still have to keep choosing the person for it to work.”
