Page 50 of Digging Up Love
“I think maybe you’re in the wrong discipline, Professor.” She twinkled at him, reaching a hand up over her head to brush her hair over her shoulder. “Are you sure you shouldn’t be in the humanities?”
“Feelings over facts?” Quentin grimaced. “No thanks.” Mercedes once told him he wouldn’t know romance if it hit him over the head with a book of sonnets. “Are those both for you?”
“Hey, you had your chance!” She clutched the bag to her chest in mock possessiveness. “Sundays are my heavy lifting days. This is fuel for my workout.” She crossed her arms and shrunk into herself, the posture she adopted whenever she talked about lifting weights.
Weird how someone so physically capable would act like her strength was a handicap.
“But hey, we can go back in if you’ve got buyer’s remorse. Joanne and Clint make these fresh every morning. You really ought to try one while you’re in town.”
“Maybe another time. I just thought you might be meeting someone. But since you’re not ... I, ah, actually ...” He blew out through his lips. “Do you want to sit and talk awhile?”
“Oh.” The word hung in the thick air between them.
Was it too soon to ask her out again? Probably way too soon. What was the cool thing, to wait a week? Two weeks? He should’ve checked with Tre. “Never mind. Sorry. I’m sure you have a whole plan for the day. Weight training, right?”
“Yeah.” She hesitated a second more; then the mask slipped from her face, and her eyes shone up at him. “Really, my day’s pretty open. I can lift later. But there’s nowhere to sit here.” She frowned at the dilapidated parking lot, grass growing in the cracks, muddy water trapped in dips in the pavement. “I have an idea. But it requires getting in my car.”
“That’s an issue?”
She gestured to the Geo. “I dunno, you tell me.”
He did, and grimaced. “I forgot. That’s not a car; that’s an abomination.”
“I thought you might say that.” Alisha smirked at him. “Being a car guy and all.”
“Hold up.” He pressed a hand to his chest. “Iam not a car guy. But I do come from a family of car guys. And let me set the record straight—that thing is not street legal. Did it even pass emissions?”
Fiddling with her purse, Alisha pulled her keys out. “In case you hadn’t noticed”—she spread her arms wide—“you’re not in Cook County anymore, hotshot. No emissions tests here. But Geos are the OG of fuel-economy cars. She may not be pretty, but she’s not a planet killer. At least, no more so than anything else running on fossil fuel,” she amended.
“Fossilfuel?”
“Unintentional, I swear.” She popped her lips. “But the next one might not be.”
In spite of the corniness, Quentin found himself smiling. She was quirky, and fantastic, and he couldn’t get enough. For better or for worse.
“So what’s it going to be, Dr.Harris? Your principles or your ...” She trailed off.
He gave her a huge grin over the roof of the car. “Definitely not my principles.”
A plume of dust settled around the car. Alisha shifted into park on the gravel embankment alongside the road and tugged out her keys.
“This is it,” she announced.
From what Quentin could tell,itwas a cornfield. Or, more accurately, two cornfields, one on either side, stretching out into the distance.
Clutching the coffee he hadn’t trusted to the sticky depths of the cup holder, he shifted on the torn fabric seat, wary. “You know, we could’ve just sat in your car at the gas station. Although this view is ... greener.”
A playful smile on her lips, she waggled her fingers at him. “Out.”
“Don’t have to tell me twice! This thing might spontaneously combust any second.” He shoved against the door and stumbled out like he couldn’t get away fast enough. Alisha stood by the hood with hands planted on her hips.
Eyeing him from under her brow, she cocked her head. “Are you done?”
“Almost.” He walked around the car bent double, arms out, giving it a wide berth. He came to a stop in front of her, straightening up with a smile. “Now I’m done.”
“Good. Prepare to be wowed,” she said.
“I’m mostly prepared to become a Child of the Korn.”
