Page 14 of Below the Far Horizon
They stared at each other, then they each cracked a smile, and Gita had to admit that she was glad he had shown up. He had made her somewhat boring life all of a sudden a lot more interesting.
“All right. I think I better give you my phone number. And we can start texting. That’s what all the kids do nowadays, isn’t it?”
“Maybe I don’t want to be a modern woman. Maybe I am old-fashioned and I want you to write letters and send them by snail mail. And I want flowers and candy and serenades out by my porch.”
“Wow. I’d forgotten how much work courting really was. No wonder the kids are doing it differently nowadays. At least from the male perspective, I can say I understand.”
“I was kidding,” Gita said, although she really did love the old-fashioned courting much better than she liked the newfangled stuff of modern life. It was all about hookups and quick fixes and easy and fast. She kind of thought that maybe the older generation had it right.
Don looked at her like he was maybe thinking about what she said. “I suppose if I’m getting the lady to agree with me about being in a fake relationship, I ought to be willing to put some effort into it.”
“No. There’s no need for that at all. If you were in a real relationship, maybe.” She batted her eyes at him. And then she grew serious immediately. “But we should know a little bit about each other. I mean, we can learn as we spend more time together, that would be the way it would happen in a normal relationship. But we have to know enough that we know we like each other and want to court.”
“Good point. First thing we should know is our phone numbers.” He got up from his chair and came over. She grabbed her phone and rattled off her number. He punched it in and then sent her a text.
“All right. Step one is taken care of. I suppose step two is figuring out how we met.”
“At church? That’s the truth. We just didn’t hit it off like maybe someone might assume we did, since we’re now courting.”
She giggled a little. This was too fun and too funny. “All right. I think the truth is always better than a lie. So we’ll just tell the truth. And we’ll let people infer whatever they want to, even if it’s wrong.”
Their eyes twinkled at each other. She got the feeling that Don was having just as much fun as she was.
“My wife left five years ago, and I wasn’t really interested in dating anyone until you came along. In church,” he added with a wink.
“My husband passed away more than a decade ago, and I wasn’t interested in anyone until you came along. In church.” She winked back at him.
They giggled, almost like teenagers. She hadn’t had this much fun in ages.
“I’ll text you some of my hobbies. You can send me yours and any other info I should know, and I’ll start writing you a letter to send via snail mail. I’m not much for serenading, but I do have a guitar, and back in the day, I used to play. Maybe I can brush up on a love song.”
“Oh goodness. I wouldn’t want you to go out of your way like that for me.”
“I want to. Fake dating or no, I’m going to do right by the lady.”
“All right then. My favorite music is hymns. Maybe that’ll make it a little easier for you. You don’t have to sing me some kind of sappy rock ‘n’ roll garbage.”
“Hey, watch what you’re calling garbage,” he said, but she knew he was kidding because he was smiling.
“If you want to impress the lady, make it a hymn.” She blinked her eyes at him and tried to simper. She’d never been a simperer, and she had a feeling she failed miserably. But maybe he seemed to be a little bit affected by it, because his eyes dropped to her lips.
Maybe he was doing that on purpose. Maybe that was part of courting, even if they were doing it in a fake way.
Maybe she should admire his muscles. But he had a button-down on over a white T-shirt, and a vest over the top of that. She really couldn’t see any muscles.
But he did have nice facial hair.
“Your facial hair is outstanding,” she said, and then she rolled her eyes. “I think maybe I haven’t watched enough of those sappy movies. That was a pathetically terrible attempt at flirting.”
“I actually thought it was really good. So you admiremy beard, huh?”
“Oh, greatly.”
“And I admire your eyes,” he said with just the barest pause before the word “your,” like he was desperately trying to find something on her that he could admire. She almost thought that maybe he was going to say something inappropriate and saved it at the last moment.
But surely not. He was an upstanding, upright man and would not be tempted to ogle anything that he shouldn’t. Right?
Well, she didn’t know men very well, but if she knew them at all, he was probably more than tempted, and he was probably ogling when she wasn’t looking. But she certainly would not lay any blame at his feet, because she was doing a little looking herself. She just would not call it ogling.
