Page 54 of The Happiness Blueprint
I also tell myself to remember the statistics I face. Relationships attempted: eleven. Successful outcomes: zero. This means the likelihood for future success is a solid zero.
I put on some music, and ’90s rap blurts out in wonderful, soothing waves.
“Thank Christ we usually have separate vehicles,” Alex looks at me bemused.
“Yep,” I say, but I realize that I don’t mind Alex in my car, next to me, my ponytail sometimes swishing past and brushing his shoulder lightly when I turn to look around.
His hand is distracting me. I look at the traffic lights ahead to see if they have switched to green but end up glancing down at it again. The hand—winter pale and soft—just lies there resting on his thigh, and I feel the strongest urge to reach out and put my hand over it, or perhaps inside it.
“Alex, it’s green. Go.”
Is this what flirting is? Each person taking a turn to say something funny and intimate which makes you want to move closer? I’m not sure. Because I’ve never been really sure. My flirting is usually limited to applying techniques learned in girly magazines and later Google. Touching your foot to his underneath a table, for example. This is trickier than it seems when you have short legs. It requires me to slide down on the chair and reach with my toes, an action that is difficult to do while keeping a seductive face. It often results in aYou okay?which startles me so much I kick the man’s leg with my heel. I usually just settle for smiling.
“So my van will be ready tomorrow, all the repairs done, if you can give me a lift and then I’ll drive it back,” I share when we arrive at my dad’s at 6:19 p.m. No more sharing a van with Alex.Phew.
I wait for him to say something else; he looks like he’s about to, eyes fixed at me. I smooth my shirt. I want to ask him to stay a little longer. To come inside Dad’s house and sit on one of our kitchen chairs as I prep dinner. Maybe pet one of the ABBAs and talk about his eccentric parents or carpentry. I have no access to Google, no Phone a Friend option lifeline. Just me.Think, Klara.Would it be so wrong to have a glass of wine with a married man?
“If I were to open a bottle of wine and offer you a glass, to drink with me. Inside the house. There would be no harm in that, would there?”
“Harm in a glass of wine?” Alex says.
I laugh but nerves block it, and it comes out more like a snort.
“Glass of wine, as in singular—not the plural form—is generally harmless, yes?” I clarify.
“Right. So one glass of wine it is, then. The harmless type.”
When we get inside, we take our work boots off by the door, and I retrieve the bottle of red wine I opened a day ago from the shelf. We don’t even talk. I always talk to people. Babble. Making every effort to kill the silence and have those earrings dangle if at all possible. We just sit there, close together, and sip on our glasses, occasionally looking at each other. Then, way too soon, Alex has finished his drink.
“I was looking at your ears. Admiring them,” he says. Which is something I’ve never heard said before and therefore have no idea how to handle.
“I better start making dinner and check on Dad upstairs.”
“Right, I better get going. Thank you for the harmless wine,” he says, and I walk him to the door but keep the two-yard distance, which I seem to have forgotten lately.
Admiring your ears, he had said.I want to ask what he meant, but even to me, Queen of Overthinking Everything, there is only one possible answer now that I think about it, and that is not that Alex has a fetish for ears and goes around rating them in strangers and colleagues alike. No, it means that he likesmyears, he likes one of mybody parts. I’m hardly an expert at reading people, but this is where it leaves me: Alex admiresme.Likes me. But the ring on his hand means he shouldn’t, and I shouldn’t like him in return.
I notice that I’m on my tiptoes, a peculiar habit I have. People assume I walk around like that because I’m short and have a wish to be taller. I have noticed that it happens when I am experiencing confusion or stress, and so I don’t think people are entirely wrong—in those situations I do wish I were taller, a bigger person. I’m not, though. Because at the door I say, “Alex, what if there was something different about the grapes?” This makes him stop, turn around and come back toward me. I try to remember all the reasons why I decided on a personal-space requirement, but I can’t think of a single one.
“What do you mean?”
“In the harmless wine. You know, let’s say there was an unintended addition—of a mischievous grape, perhaps—that made its way into the harmless wine as it was being treaded. The wine might not be so harmless after all.”
“Okay. Let’s say that could totally happen. Let’s say the wine wasn’t harmless. What does that mean?”
“I’m not exactly sure yet.”
“Klara, when you figure out if you want it to be just a harmless glass of wine...or one that’s not so harmless, and you want to talk about it, then...let me know.”
And at that, he leaves.
ALEX
Personal Calendar
• NEW TASK:Not drink wine with Klara again. Ever
• EDITED TASK:Not drink wine with Klara unless there are people around
