“I think you know it is,” she told him.
Levi grinned even more broadly. His afternoon might have started with disappointment, but it was looking up now. He hadn’t realized how much it had bothered him that he would begetting to know June under false pretenses until he was given the possible opportunity to do so as his full self. It felt alotbetter.
“Would you say that my charm is sufficient to get you to agree to dinner with me?” he asked. “Say, tomorrow night? There’s a local place… Captain’s Chest?”
“Do you maybe mean Captain’sCrest?” she corrected with a playful smile.
“I’m almost positive that that is definitely what I said,” he said with a sage nod. “For sure absolutely.”
“It must have been my ears,” she said. She was smiling back in earnest now, and she was even prettier when she smiled.
Levi was forced to admit another truth: he was a little bit smitten with this woman. It was still obviously very new, and by virtue of that newness, very casual. But for all that he kept trying to appeal to her, he was the one who was charmed.
“There had to be part of you that was imperfect,” he said, pleased when this made her blush as he had hoped. “Does that mean that you’ll let me take you to dinner?”
She thought for a second, and it was one of the longest seconds that Levi had experienced in recent memory.
“Yeah,” she said at last, and her smile was like the first warm day of spring. “I think I would like that.”
“Amazing,” he told her. “It’s a date.”
CHAPTER TEN
It had been a long, long,longtime since June had gone out on a date, but she found that she enjoyed the primping aspect of getting ready. It had been ages since she’d gone all out like this, with the whole hair, makeup, and outfit thing. She dressed up a little to go out to the open mic nights, of course, but a date was different.
It was thedatepart of going on a date that made her feel so nervous.
The last time June had gone on a first date, she’d been fifteen years old, and the sum total of “getting ready” that she’d done was swiping on a new coat of lip gloss in the girls’ room before walking to the donut shop that had been around the corner from their high school. She and Keith had bought a dozen donuts and shared them, something that gave her a stomachache just from thinking about it now. But at the time, it had been a pretty perfect first date.
Captain’s Crest was a great deal nicer than Denny’s Donut Hole, though, and June didn’t actually own strawberry lip gloss any longer. So her ritual did look a little different these days.
Her blonde hair didn’t hold a curl for very long, but with enough hairspray, her cute hairstyle would last through dinner,although she would have to forgo wearing a hat. She pinned back a few pieces with a sparkly clip that she’d purchased for a New Year’s party a few years before, which she’d had to skip when Benjamin had come down with a bout of the flu and which she hadn’t taken from the packaging in the years since. And she’d taken the short break between house cleanings today to dash over to Diana’s shop to find a dress that would suit both the occasion and the weather.
Diana had hooked her up with the perfect green sweater dress that was about two shades deeper in hue than her eyes, but only after pointing her finger threateningly at June.
“If you do not send me a photo of you all dolled up, June Caldwell,” she’d said menacingly, “we will be having words.”
June swiped on a coat of lipstick in a raspberry hue, blotted, and then dutifully sent a grinning selfie to Diana, hitting send on the picture without even looking at it, lest she start to scrutinize her appearance too much.
DIANA: Too gorgeous! Your country star isn’t going to know what hit him!
JUNE: He’s not *my* country star.
JUNE: But thank you.
Diana sent back a string of emojis that all had hearts for eyes.
June tucked her phone into the handbag that she’d borrowed from Diana’s well-stocked closet, rather than undertake the expense of purchasing a new one for herself, then took a deep breath to steady herself.
Putting herself out there in a romantic context was daunting, but there was something about Levi. She’d really liked the way he’d openly apologized to her when confronted with his teeny tiny lie. June knew, mostly from Diana’s tales of her experiences with online dating, that many men would have avoided taking responsibility.
But not Levi. He’d apologized, and then offered an explanation that contextualized his behavior enough that she didn’t worry that he would hide the truth again.
She was still nervous, but the way that he’d taken responsibility for his actions reassured her.
Even so, June was skilled at winding herself up into a proper freak-out, and she was getting started on another good one when her doorbell rang.
June jolted, then laughed a little at herself for getting so caught up in musing that she hadn’t even noticed the time slipping away. She grabbed her purse from the chair, the little impractical one that did not contain so much as a single kids’ snack, threw on her nicest woolen jacket, and opened the door.
