Page 19 of Love at First Sighting
“It’s a uniform.” His brow furrows. There’s a small frayed spot along the brim of his hat and shoddy stitching holding it together.
“It can’t be.”
“Uh, it is.”
“Do your bosses know what year it is, Agent Carter?”
He responds with a noncommittal grunt. “Bold question, Ariel.”
“And you wear a fedora. Is it ironically or unironically?”
“It’snota fedora. It’s a trilby hat. It’s different. Fedoras typically have wider and flatter brims, and trilby hats are smaller, with a downward tilt in the front.” Carter recites this like a Wikipedia description, because I’m sure I’m not the first to ask. With a sprinkle of added flare, he tilts the hat downward slightly with a smirk and a wink. Oh no, I might be in trouble.
“Right. Okay.”
“Look, I don’t make the rules. But it’snota fedora.”
“Copy that, Agent Carter.”
As his car hits every single bump on the way down the hill, he flips on the AC. His AC mightwork, but it isn’t doing thestrongest job and there’s an odd smell coming from the vents. It smells like aging, and I hope my retinol serum is doingitsstrongest job. I ponder whether this is a company car or something he saved all his pennies for. If the latter, he might not have many pennies. I reach into my pocket and drop a penny it into his cupholder without him noticing. I am aphilanthropist.
After a few minutes of silence (aside from the scary sounds Agent Carter’s car makes), he clears his throat.
“Do you want to listen to music?”
“Does that thing even play music?”
“Sure it does—”
“From this century?”
“For a girl who kept me up all night, you are being kinda mean.”
“Is that the first time a girl’s kept you up late?” I realize after I’ve said it how it comes across. Maybe, subconsciously, I meant it.
Carter’s tongue darts out and runs along the inside of his lower lip, before he bites down on it. “No, it is not.”
He flips a switch on the dashboard, and music filters through the speakers. He gets normal radio stations—at least, I think. I haven’t listened to the actual radio in years. I sort of thought it went out of business. We ride in near silence until we approach the canyon roads and fear ratchets up my spine. I learn several things about Agent Carter in our time in the car together: He drives carefully and uses his blinker excessively, there are short catches of his breath whenever someone cuts him off, and his eyes never leave the road except at stoplights.
Then, sometimes, he looks over at me.
When he does, it takes everything in me to not look back.
I expected it to be easy to come back to the scene of the crime, but as we weave through the darkened mountains, I can’t help but think how different things would be if I’d picked any other place to take my pictures. I wouldn’t be declared the “breakdown of the week” on the internet. I wouldn’t be verging on getting kicked out of a place Ijustmoved into. I wouldn’t be in a clown car with my very hot Man in Black.
“How deep in the mountains were you?”
“Deep,” I mutter. “We’re going to have to hike a little bit.”
Carter’s brows raise. “Hike…in your Stagecoach sandals?”
“They haven’t let me down so far.” Carter rounds a bend past the closest outlook spot. I point. “Park over here. I can take you up the path.”
He pulls the car to the side of the road. I open the car door, a little too hard, and ding the guardrail.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t worry, both Betty and I can handle rough women,” Carter remarks.
