Page 5 of Letter for Two
“Over dinner?” he suggested, doing his best to keep the hopefulness out of his face and tone.
“My place this time,” she said.
“Sounds good.” But in his head, he was saying,That counts as a date, right?
Chapter Three
If Ethan could thaw out a frozen lasagna the night before and call itcooking dinnerthen Sophia felt confident she could order in Chinese and fulfill her obligation to feed him that night. She could cook okay, but even simple cooking required time, and she didn’t have any. She’d spent the day trying to get a server running again and had left work almost a full hour late, ordering dinner on her cellphone as she walked home.
Ethan was on the front porch when she got there.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said. “Work was complete chaos.”
“Yeah, for me, too.” His smile was quick and weak. He looked tired. Yesterday he’d said that today would be his third twelve-hour day.
“Dinner’s on the way.” She held up her cell. “Maybe we can do some searching while we wait.”
“Sounds good.”
She unlocked the door and stepped inside. Ethan came in behind her. She was very glad she’d cleaned up that morning.
“Make yourself at home.” Somehow she managed to make the offer without sounding like a teenager with a desperate crush.
Sophia moved quickly to her bedroom and dropped her bag on the bed. She took a minute to smooth out her hair and check her makeup. Of course, Ethan had seen her in all her glory when she first got home. Fixing herself up wouldn’t help much now.
She pulled off the walking shoes she always wore home. If only she’d had a chance to change them before running in to Ethan— walking shoes with a business skirt was not the most fashion-forward ensemble. She slipped on a pair of ballet flats, a better pick than the walking shoes, though not as fabulous as a pair of heels. But heels would make her look like she was trying too hard. She wanted to look like she wasn’t trying at all. Guys could smell desperation from three blocks away.
She pulled her laptop out of her bag and headed for the living room. Ethan was sitting on the sofa, his head tilted back, his eyes closed. Was he asleep already? That didn’t bode well for a fun, borderline romantic evening.
Sophia approached quietly and cautiously. Just as she reached the sofa, he opened a single eye.
“Hey.” It was all she could manage with him looking so mussed and casual and cute.
He sat up straighter, blinking a few times as if shaking off sleepiness. “Did I miss dinner?”
“It would have served you right if you had.” She dropped onto the couch by him. “You snooze, you lose.”
“‘You snooze, you lose?’” He chuckled low in his throat. “Man, I haven’t heard that since elementary school.”
Sophia laughed and set her laptop on the coffee table. “I spent elementary school desperately in love with One Direction. So ‘What Makes You Beautiful’ always takes me back.”
“One Direction?” Ethan shook his head. “I think I just lost all respect for you.”
"Oh, come on. One Direction was great."
He shrugged, but she could tell the show of dismissal was really just teasing.
“You weren’t into boy bands in your impressionable younger years?”
He made a noise that sounded very much like, “Puh-shaw.”
“You were too cool for that?” she guessed.
“Actually, probably too nerdy. I was one of those weird kids into retro before being into retro was a thing, you know? I was in middle school before I listened to anything more recent than Etta James or Frank Sinatra, and I stopped wearing a bow tie and fedora to school only after the gym teacher warned me I was probably going to get beat up for it.”
She could picture him walking around his elementary school playground in a zoot suit, snapping his fingers while singing “Come Fly with Me.”
“My sister refused to be seen with me in public,” Ethan said. “So I told her if she couldn’t be hip to my beat, she could just ice it. She hated when I used old-school slang.”
