She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t exactly put myself in situations to meet anyone.”
“Except at a rooftop bar on a Friday night.”
Her lips pursed. “That wasnotmy idea.”
I wanted to reach across and take her hands, tell her I was glad she had approached me that night, but I fought the urge. The verdict was still out on her character.
The waitress stopped at our table with a credit card reader, a clue she wanted us to pay and get out. I glanced around and noticed the place had emptied. “Looks like they’re closing.”
It was still pretty early, and I wanted to keep talking, but the options for doing that crystallized into a pinpoint, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go back to her place tonight.
She scooted her way out of the booth and said, “Chelsea hasn’t replied to my texts which probably means she’s otherwise occupied. Why don’t we drive over and see where Bas parked his car?”
“Is it creepy to stalk our wayward friends?”
“Technically, we’re stalking a car, but if they didn’t want us speculating about them, they should have planned better. They could have textedus.”
We headed back out, into a haze of moisture hanging in the air like a cold-water steam bath. Still, it made us duck our heads and walk too quickly for conversation. Once we got to the car, it was a quick jog over to the street where Chelsea and Elizabeth lived. Discovering Bas had indeed parked at the curb, we had an answer of sorts. For all we knew, they were inside playing Mario Kart.
“Which way to Basil’s?” She continued on without once asking me if I wanted to come up to her place, which was a relief and a bit of a disappointment.
She’d talked about Chelsea’s actions not matching her words, and I understood that contradiction as my heart warred with my head. The truth was, I liked Elizabeth. She was easy-going, fun to talk to, and unbelievably cute. I’d never had such a casual, comfortable date, but maybe that was because it wasn’t one. Without that social pressure, I could be myself. It was weirdly freeing.
The streetlights smeared on the wet roads as I directed her at each turn, Elizabeth humming along to a song on the radio. It struck me that I’d never seen her in a bad mood, with one exception, when she saw me in the newsroom on Thursday. Granted, I hadn’t spent much time with her, but even when she’d been flustered during the broadcast, she’d squared her shoulders and made the best of it.
“Tell me a joke,” she said, as we turned onto Cherry Avenue. “I need to distract myself from thinking about what our best friends are likely up to.”
“Oh, God.” I scratched my chin while Elizabeth picked up speed, that image now planted in my brain. “Okay. What do you call a sad hurricane?”
“Oh, a weather-related joke. Why am I not surprised?” She tapped the steering wheel. “I give up.”
I sighed in advance of her disgust at the bad pun. “A tropical depression.”
She surprised me with a full body laugh. “God, I love corny jokes. My dad is the absolute worst, but they always make me laugh.”
I pointed at the upcoming light. “It’s right here, then the next left.”
She put on her blinker. “I can’t believe how close Bas has lived all this time. I keep telling Chelsea it’s weird they haven’t run into each other before. Though maybe they’d crossed paths.”
“Charlottesville’s bigger than you think.” As she navigated, I said, “So what’s your favorite dad joke?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “How do you think the unthinkable?”
“Is that like a white elephant thing?”
She grinned over at me, and I could tell she was bursting to tell me.
“That’s Bas’s place right there,” I said, pointing at his little bungalow. As she slowed along the curb, I said, “I’m never going to guess, am I? How do you think the unthinkable?”
“With an ithburg,” she said, eyebrow raised expectantly.
It took me a full five seconds to unwind that entire joke, to hear the lisp in the question, and then I coughed out a laugh. “Awful.”
“If you ever met my dad, your eyeballs would hurt from rolling.”
“You should love Bas, then.” Bas tormented me nonstop with dad jokes.
She exhaled, like realization dawning. “That’s right. He did seem quick with the corny pun.” She cackled a low, sinister, sexy laugh. “Oh, my God, what a perfectly ironic twist.”
