“Okay?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Okay.”
We bought tickets from a teenage girl wearing vampire teeth and a bored expression. Dylan paid cash. I tried to pay for mine. He looked offended.
“It’s a date,” he said.
“I’m employed.”
“I’m aware.”
“I can pay for myself.”
“Also aware.”
“And yet?”
“And yet I asked you out.”
“That logic is archaic.”
“I got shot recently. Let me have chivalry.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Weaponizing medical history already?”
“Absolutely.”
The ticket girl popped her gum. “You two want the wristbands or not?”
I bit my lip.
Dylan handed over the cash.
The girl slapped paper wristbands on us with the weary efficiency of someone who had witnessed too many first dates and had no faith in any of them.
I admired her.
We ate first because Dylan claimed a successful normal date required food before emotional damage. He bought us green chile cheeseburgers wrapped in foil, fries too hot to eat without pain, and lemonade so sweet it made my teeth question my life choices. We sat at a picnic table under a string of lights while a local band played a cover of something old and romantic badly enough to make it new.
Dylan ate slower than I remembered.
Careful bites.
Pain hidden, but not denied.
I pretended not to catalog it.
He pretended not to know I was cataloging it.
Romance, apparently.
At some point, mustard dripped onto his thumb.
Without thinking, I handed him a napkin.
Without thinking, he took it from me and smiled.
