Page 45 of Just One Look
He laughed. “I wasn’t going there, but OK, I’ll throw myself into the breach. I’m guessing you could be sweet.”
“Not so much. Sweet would be my house. Did you notice the house? The signs? The dolls? I’m not sweet. I’m not soft. I cut into people for a living, and I love it. And if you say something about my body here,” she warned him, “that’ll be both cheesyandunappealing, and you’ll lose all the credit you’ve accumulated with the jacket and the tablecloths and all the rest of this.”
“I won’t, then,” he said, but he was smiling. Somebody who looked that tough shouldn’t have been able to smile like that, but he was.
The Chardonnay, when it came, made her sigh. Full-bodied and velvety, it tasted like a sun-ripened Georgia peach. It tasted like a whole Georgiasummer.She nibbled at her appetizer, a little piece of salmon so fresh and so bright, it was like a whole different fish, sipped her wine, and told Luka, “I’m relaxing too much.”
“No such thing,” he said. “Tell me about the dolls. And the dog. How did that happen?”
She explained about the house swap, and he smiled. She told him about opening the door to the sight of the roaring motorway and the creepy dolls and the horribly cheerful signs, and he laughed. She said, “Theystareat me with their glassy eyes. I’m a minimalist! I do not have dolls on shelves! I don’t even haveshelves.I’d pile them up and put them on the kid’s bed, but I’d never remember how they go back up, and besides, the house cleaner would probably report that I’m trashing the place. It feels rude to hate somebody else’s house this much. The guy’s a geophysicist. It can’t be his taste. I refuse to believe it.”
“He loves his wife, I’m guessing,” Luka said. “Turn them around instead, maybe. The dolls, and the signs. Let them face the wall.”
“Huh.” She considered. “That’s actually brilliant. They’d still be there, but not staring at me, telling me that love lives here or that it was always you, when it doesn’t and it wasn’t, unless you count Webster.” She smiled. “I’ll do that. Thank you.”
“No worries. What d’you reckon they’re thinking about your house back home?”
“I don’t know. They were very … polite, when we texted. I thought they’d love it. It’s totally New Zealand. Sterile.”
He raised an eyebrow. He could do that, it seemed. “Not sure that’s a compliment.”
The waiter brought their main courses, and she took a bite of flaky, sweet white fish and succulent lobster and sighed. Nobody had ever bought her a meal like this, period, let alone on the first date. She told him, “This is so good. I should offer you a bite, but I’m not going to. Two reasons. First, I want it all for myself, and second, you have no idea how many pathogens you share when you do that.”
He laughed out loud. “No worries. I hate to share. Women always want to share, though, and what’s a fella to do? Tell her, ‘Get your own?’ No. You have to share.”
“Not with me, you don’t.” Another bite of lobster, another sip of wine. He’d been right. This wine might have cost enough to make her have to shut her eyes and pretend she hadn’t noticed, but it was absolutely perfect.
Her life was all hurried cafeteria meals and packets of oatmeal dumped into a bowl and microwaved before the sun came up, but this meal and this wine? They were perfect.
“Tell me more about the sterile house,” he said.
“I’m supposed to be asking you questions, though. Rules of dating, at least I think so. I haven’t done this for a long time, this first-date thing.” Could you get drunk on one glass of wine? Or on two, because he was pouring her more. In any case, she was. Drunk, relaxed, and a little sleepy, in the very best way. It was having a day off, and another one coming up tomorrow. Probably dangerous to let go this much, and she couldn’t help it.
“And I’ve done enough first dates,” he said, “that I’m ready to throw the rule book out the window. I know about myself. I don’t know about you. Tell me about the sterile house.”
“The kitchen is white,” she said, running a finger around the edge of her wine glass, “and shiny. The walls are all white, too. No art, because I never got around to it, and no plants, because I don’t care. It has big windows, though, because it’s an old building. A brick building, which I love, because my house was brick, too, and I loved it. It’s very … large. The townhouse, I mean. For one person, which I am. Three and a half bathrooms, but it was a good investment. My father even agreed that it was a good investment. I didn’t have any furniture in the other two bedrooms, though, other than an elliptical machine. I had to buy some before I left, because they have a kid. He’s five. You can’t ask a five-year-old to sleep on the floor, I thought. If I’d known about the dolls, though—maybe.” He laughed, and she said, “Tell me you have a sterile house, too, and I’ll be happy.”
“I’ll let you judge for yourself,” he said. “I don’t think so, but I’m a bloke. Could be I just don’t know.”
“I’m extremely unlikely to be seeing it,” she informed him. “I’m not what you’d call a fast mover, no matter how good this wine is. I’m too slow for just about anybody, in fact. You’d be three models down the road before I’d even made up my mind. I’m also not that good at sex, though, so you wouldn’t be missing much.”
“Mm,” he said, and there was so much amusement on the crumpled face. “Shouldn’t throw out that kind of challenge to a sportsman. That’s hard to resist.”
“I didn’t sayyouweren’t. I saidIwasn’t.”
“This one’s a dilemma,” he said. “What Iwantto say …”
She was well into the second glass of wine now. He was only halfway through his first, so what he would say wasn’t worrying her. It was more whatshewould.
“What?” she said. “What do you want to say?”
“If I say that you haven’t been with the right man,” he said, “with a man who’s willing to take his time and do it right … doesn’t sound good, eh. I’m meant to say something about how women own their own pleasure, and they should take it.” Still some humor in his brown eyes, but so much intensity, too. “Sometimes, though, somehow, a woman can get the message that she can’t ask for what she wants, because what she wants doesn’t matter. Because she’s not good enough for it to matter, or she’s just not important enough. So she shouldn’t expect a man to think about the wine she might like, or to want to give it to her. She shouldn’t expect him to wait if she wants to take a bit longer to enjoy it, and she especially knows she can’t expect him towantto wait, because he enjoys bringing her that pleasure. After a while, maybe she thinks she doesn’t deserve that extra time, or that extra attention. She thinks that the things she wants, the things she needs … they reallydon’tmatter, because she’s wrong to want them.”
She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She was so tense, she was vibrating, and he was just looking at her. No humor anymore, just those eyes, seeing too much.
It wasn’t just that the ice had melted inside her, it was that the boundaries had melted, too. There was no protection here, no barrier between herself and her feelings. They were overrunning her, tearing her away from safety. Carrying her off into the flood.
It was terrifying.
He said, “Too much?”
“I need …” Her hand was so tight around the stem of her wineglass, it was nearly painful. She loosened it with an effort. “I think I need to go home.”
