Page 24 of Time for You
“And do all women work, regardless of social standing? Or are you and your friends an anomaly?”
“Mostly, yeah. There’s other reasons women don’t, but it’s not because it’s like, improper or whatever.”
“And are you ... ladies? By your standards?”
“That’s not a thing anymore. But we’re perfectly moral, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I wasn’t. You have been very kind,” he said, and then muttered something that sounded likeat least some of youunder his breath that she decided to magnanimously ignore. “Thank you for explaining that, my lady.”
“I said—”
“And I said I can’t undo years of habit overnight. In my time, calling you Daphne would imply an intimacy we haven’t earned. For now, I implore you to let me keep that, at least.”
His earnestness caught her off-guard. Daphne hadn’t really consideredwhyhe kept calling her that, just that it bugged her. But she gave him a nod and pointed to the hoodie clutched in his left hand. “Is there something wrong with the sweatshirt?”
“Is that what this is? I must confess I found it baffling.”
“What’s confusing about it?”
“The mechanism.” He held it up and pointed to the zipper. “How does this work?”
Daphne stared at him. “You don’t know how a zipper works?”
He sighed, a sound that was rapidly becoming familiar to her. “For now, let’s just assume that I do not understand anything about your world, yes?”
Daphne fought a losing battle with a grin. “You put it on like a jacket and then—I’ll show you.”
Henry shrugged into the hoodie and Daphne stepped closer, catching his scent, at once familiar and different. “You—here, is this okay?” she asked, motioning to the bottom of the zipper.
He made an affirmative noise and she hooked the two sides together, now acutely aware of how close they were standing. “You put this piece in here, and then just pull up,” she explained, focusing a lot harder on zipping it up than was warranted.
She reached the middle of his sternum and stopped, glancing up. There was a ring of brown around his pupils, making the blue surrounding it all the brighter. Her mouth went dry and she licked her lips. “And there you go. Easy-peasy.”Easy-peasy? When the fuck have I ever said that?
“Easy-peasy,” he repeated, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Is that a common saying here?”
Warning sirens sounded deep in the recesses of her brain, and Daphne stepped back, abruptly flustered. “Uh, yeah, uh, sometimes,” she stammered, and decided that if she had to learn everything there was about astrology in the next week, she would. Because Henry needed to go home, stat.
Chapter Nine
Brittany stood in front of the TV with her back straight, hands clasped in front of her. “Henry, are you ready?”
Henry nodded from the couch, although he looked uncertain. “Will the images be moving?”
“Not these, no,” Brittany said. “This is just a slideshow.”
“And this will help me?”
“That’s the plan,” Daphne said from the armchair in the corner. She was curled up with a crossword puzzle (in ink, of course) while Brittany took the lead on their new group project.
“Then let’s begin.” Brittany turned the TV on to display the first image, which was a title slide.
Get Henry Acclimated to the 21st Century So He Can Stop Freaking Out All The Time
By Brittany Spiers, MD
Henry had a notebook in his lap and looked for all the world like an earnest schoolboy, his arrogance for once set aside. Or maybe he was only like that with Daphne, since he seemed to challenge her more than anyone else.
The first slide was a picture of a crossover SUV, with the wordCarin all caps above it. “This is a car. It has an engine inside, and it runs on either gasoline or electricity,” Brittany explained, sounding like a collegeprofessor even though her topic was “basic facts about contemporary life for someone who doesn’t know anything.”
