Page 38 of Bad at Love
“I don’t know,” she says with a laugh. “Nights like this I just love this city. Where else can you go see a show like that at the last minute? Where else has these palm trees and this warmth and this feeling that you can be anything, do anything, the sky’s the limit. It’s a city of dreamers and I get to dream alongside every one of them.”
“And I’m just another dreamer, sweet girl.”
“Sweet girl?”
Yeah.
Where the hell did that come from?“It just happened. I can go back to calling you Bumble if you want.”
“You can call me anything tonight.”
“I know you’re high on adrenaline from laughing for hours and I don’t want to ruin that but are you okay with the fact that we haven’t really done anything in the, how did you call it again, the art of seduction?”
“I think I’ve learned enough for tonight,” she says, her brows knitting together. “There’s always date number two…if you think I’ve earned a second date.”
“It was always a given.”
“I mean, I stopped at two martinis and I didn’t mention bees once.”
“You’re practically a new woman.”
We reach the car in the parking lot and I pause beside the passenger door. “Need a ride home, blondie?”
“As long as you don’t try anything foolish,” she says.
“Foolish?” I say as I open the door for her and she gets in. I climb in the driver’s seat. “What would be foolish?”
“Trying to kiss me goodnight,” she says.
“My god, woman. You are a bloody challenge, aren’t you?”
She smiles, sarcastically sweet.
“How about this?” I say, leaning over and opening the glove compartment, bringing out a Magic 8 Ball. “I’ll ask the ball and see what it says I should do.”
“Oh my god!” she exclaims, taking the ball out of my hands and turning it around and around. “You really do have one!”
“I told you.”
“I thought you were joking. Who the hell carries around a Magic 8 Ball?”
“I don’t carry it around.” I snatch it out of her hands. “I have one in the car and one in my room.”
“Laz,” she says slowly, looking me over like I’ve suddenly morphed into a circus freak. “You know this makes you really weird, right?”
“I’m aware.”
“So, like, my whole obsession with bees, which by the way, is totally justifiable when you consider my career, seems kind of normal by comparison. I mean, you don’t have a career in…fortune telling.”
“You could have said professional billiards player.”
“Do you tell your dates about this?”
I give her a dry look. “What do you think?”
She sighs. “Oh what does it matter, I bet if they did know, they’d still sleep with you.”
“Maybe. I haven’t dared to show anyone.”
