I just stood there and watched her work it out.
She was thinking about whether she could ask me up, and what it would mean if she did, and what it would mean if she didn't, and whether she had clean dishes in the sink, and whether Geoff was home, and whether the man on the sidewalk wanted to be asked or didn't want to be asked, and whether—if she got it wrong in either direction—she'd be standing here later wishing she'd done the other thing.
It was a lot of thinking for one sidewalk.
I let her have it.
I'd already decided the answer for her, in the way I tended to decide things for women I was about to disappoint. I was notgoing up to that apartment. Not because I didn't want to. God, I wanted to. I wanted to take her up those stairs and through that door past the aggressively cheerful yellow curtains, and find out, slowly and patiently and at my leisure, what other things she'd been keeping under the shy. Because there were other things. The kiss had told me. The kiss she'd answered.
Half of me wanted to find out what was under all of it today.
The better half of me knew thattodaywas the wrong word, andquicklywas the wrong tempo, and a girl like this one was going to need to be unraveled, not unwrapped. She wasn't a thing for a quick afternoon. She was a thing for a long week and a longer weekend and, possibly, a calendar I didn't currently own.
The other matter was that I wasn't free this afternoon.
My phone buzzed against my hip.
I winced before I even looked.
"Sorry," I said. "One second."
A text from a number I didn't recognize and was probably not going to recognize again after today. Two lines.
An address and:Dominion Hall. ASAP.
I read it twice.
I read it out loud, because I'd already shown her enough that pretending to be a man with a normal job at a normal pace was an insult to both of us.
"Dominion Hall," I said.
"Dominion Hall? What is that?"
"Honest answer? I don't know."
She tipped her head, studying me.
"And you have to go."
"I have to go."
I watched her work to keep her face the way she wanted it. She did a respectable job. I caught the small flicker around the mouth where the disappointment leaked through, anyway.
It matched in my own chest. Which was a thing.
"Rebecca Lynn."
"Yeah."
"I'd like to see you again."
"Okay."
"That sounded too official." I tried again. "Do you make a habit of being at The Carolinian?"
Her mouth turned up.
"I'm there most days. Lunches and dinners. The schedule's not glamorous."
