The Cardigan in Question #2
Her gaze narrows, sizing me up. “Pretty hefty reward for”—she opens the cardigan, her fingers skimming my waist and lingering for a moment before she checks the tag on the inside seam—“something that’s mostly synthetic. What’s the sentimental attachment?”
“Are you going to sing a song?” I ask her, changing the subject. “Or do you just enjoy the humiliation of watching other people do karaoke?”
Her soft pillow lips split into a bemused smile as she shakes her head.
Today there’s no dark lipstick. Just a light gloss, and I think I like her like this better.
I’m not going to kiss her. Of course I’m not.
But I did spend an unnecessary amount of time wondering if kissing her with the lipstick she wore when we first met would cause a mess.
“I’ll sing you a song, Betty,” she leans in and whispers. “Any requests?”
“Surprise me,” I tell her, and she seems to like that answer.
I watch as she struts up to the sign-up sheet with confidence, scribbling her name and song on the clipboard without a second guess.
When she returns, I decide to give in to this whole date premise, because I fear if I don’t, she’ll just spend the evening peppering me with questions.
“Are you from around here?” I ask her.
“Connecticut,” she says. “Bridgeport.”
“Oh, wow,” I say, easily imagining the lush fall foliage curving over romantic two-lane roads.
She shakes her head. “Not that kind of Connecticut,” she tells me. “You know that show Family Guy? An episode once described Bridgeport as the land of abandoned buildings and gas stations without pumps, so probably not the Gilmore Girls fantasy you’re thinking of.”
“Well, it’s probably more interesting than going to school in the town you grew up in.”
“Ahhh, yeah, but at least this place is beautiful. You basically grew up inside a Twilight movie.”
I laugh. “Yeah, the Cullens wouldn’t have frequented the part of town I grew up in. There was a pothole in my apartment complex’s parking lot that turned into a sinkhole.”
“One of my biggest fears,” she says, eyes wide and serious. “Right after getting my shoelaces caught in an escalator.”
“Oh my god! When I was a kid, I refused to wear shoelaces for two whole years because I thought I would die on an escalator.”
“It’s a legitimate fear,” she says as she slides the plate over for me to claim the last Tater Tot.
“Next up,” the bartender calls, “we’ve got August singing ‘Call Me Maybe’ by Carly Rae Jepsen!”
I snort as she turns to me and taps her cheek. “Kiss for good luck?”
Being a Wednesday night, the place is relatively empty, but I can still feel too many people looking at me and I tell myself that’s why I oblige and definitely not because I am interested in her skin beneath my lips.
The kiss is quick and chaste enough to be shared by friends, but her cheek is soft and smells like almond frosting.
August darts off toward the tiny stage, and the waitress lets out an encouraging “Wooooo!” as she clears our empty plate. “I love this song.”
With absolute authority, August takes the mic and turns her back to the audience with her hip cocked. She bounces to the beat as she sings the opening few lines of the song, her free hand arcing up and down, fingers dancing.
The crowd absolutely roars when she spins around on the iconic line: “Hey! I just met you…”
I am jealous of her confidence and simultaneously embarrassed and warm at the thought of being the person here with her tonight.
It’s an introvert’s worst nightmare, and somehow, she feels like Jamie in some ways.
Like she’ll let me come along for the ride and will happily be the wall between me and the world when I need it most.
Or maybe all that is just wishful thinking, because when the chorus comes around again, she points right at me and skips through the tables to me.
“What are you doing?” I whisper, wishing the floor would just open up and consume me.
She holds the microphone away from her lips while the staff and a few others continue to sing. “I’m serenading you,” she says.
“This is so cringy,” I moan, hands shielding my face.
One of her long black manicured fingernails twirls around one of my auburn curls as she croons another line before holding the mic away again.
“Impossible. The cringe scale is calculated differently at a karaoke bar. In fact, here, I am very, very cool. Very slay of me, actually.” She pulls my hands away and tugs me by the wrist. “Dance with me!”
“No,” I shout, but she’s already pulling me to my feet.
“This is a date, Betty! That’s what people do on dates.”
I can feel my birthmark warming, but now that I’m standing, I just let her take me along, like she’s a riptide and the best thing I can do is swim alongside her.
Her hand slips around my waist and up my back, under my cardigan. Her touch penetrates the walls I find so familiar and comforting, as if she refuses any version of me except my most interior self. The me that has so happily hidden under this cardigan since the day Jamie left me.
The song finishes, and she hands off the microphone without letting go of me. The next person sings a slightly slurred version of “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
August’s cheek presses against mine, her words tickling my ear as she whispers, “See? That wasn’t so bad after all.”
“This is giving me middle school PE flashbacks,” I mumble as August ties the neon green bib under my arm. Turns out that dating is a homebody’s worst nightmare, but I think tonight’s date of a campus-wide game of hide-and-seek has been calibrated to test my limits.
“Did your middle school gym teacher have you guys play games of hide-and-seek in the middle of the night?” she asks as she turns for me to tie her bib, which only just barely covers her chest. My breath hitches as my pinkie skims the bottom curve of her breast. With a grin, she says, “Excuse my obnoxiously huge tits. They tend to get in the way.”
My cheeks flush as I stutter, “Th-they’re nice.”
“Well, don’t you get straight to the point?”
“Shut up,” I bite back.
“No, thank you. I like it too much when you blush.”
My hand comes up to cover my cheek—the one with my birthmark—but her fingers circle my wrist and pull it away.
She doesn’t let go, either, as the senior explains the rules of the game over a bullhorn.
There are two seekers and thirteen teams of two.
We’re given a perimeter to stay inside of, and we are not allowed in any buildings.
As teams are found, they continue to play as seekers.
When twelve teams are found, a text will go out so that the thirteenth team can come out of hiding and claim their winnings—two twenty-dollar (and highly coveted) gift cards to Tikka Chance on Me, the highest-rated Indian restaurant in town that also happens to have a takeout window open until two in the morning.
The whistle blows, and August shrieks. “Where do we go?”
Her sudden panic is unexpected and a little bit charming, too. “Where do we go?” I repeat back to her. “You’re the one who dragged me here.”
The two seekers stand with their backs to the student union as they continue to count backward from one hundred.
Now it’s me who is tugging her across the courtyard.
“Has anyone ever told you how hot it is when you take the lead?”
I snort as we pass a team hiding in the temporarily drained founders’ fountain, then glance down at my phone.
It’s half past eleven, which means the fountain won’t be empty for long.
“Should I tell them the fountain automatically drains every Saturday night at ten p.m. and then refills again at midnight?”
“Definitely not. It’s every hider for themselves,” August says as she happily follows me.
Tonight, she’s wearing a black raincoat, a cropped purple sweater, and baggy jeans that show off a small belly button ring adorning her plump tummy.
Jamie would have loved her, once she got over the fact that August is as headstrong as she was.
“Aren’t we outside the perimeter?” August asks as I lead her up the steps behind the library.
“Yes, but not for long.”
She gasps. “Is Betty Connors cheating?”
“I would never cheat,” I whisper. “The rules said we had to hide within the designated area. But there was nothing that said we couldn’t leave the boundary of the game on our way to said hiding spot.”
The library is built into a hill, so we walk around the backside to the retaining wall, where a huge white oak is planted in the courtyard below. From this height, we can shimmy directly onto one of the tallest branches. “If we sit in this tree, then we’re technically in the clear.”
“And you didn’t just want to climb up the tree?” she asks as she tests how sturdy one of the branches is with one foot and then the other.
“Did you want to climb up the tree?”
“Fair point.”
It takes some maneuvering, but eventually the two of us are perched on a short, thick branch, our thighs touching from hip to knee. Because I’m not the one sitting closest to the trunk of the tree, I find myself intermittently using August as support.
“So, do we just sit here and wait?” I whisper.
“We are indeed in the hiding portion of the evening.”
“How long is this supposed to take?”
“I heard that a few games last year went until sunrise.”
I groan hard enough to lose my balance, and August immediately steadies me with an arm around my waist.
“I hate heights,” I whimper.
“You’re the one who chose a tree,” she reminds me. It’s too dark to make out each other’s features, but she must sense my escalating nerves, because her voice softens as she adds, “Don’t look down, okay?”
“Right.” I blink for a long moment and then turn to look at her. She’s just a shadow, but then she smiles, her teeth reflecting in the moonlight.
“Tell me about the cardigan,” she says.
“There’s nothing to tell.”
She sighs. “What is it? Some state secret? Okay. Let’s try this. I ask questions about the cardigan and piece together this little mystery for myself. You only have to tell the story a sentence at a time.”
“And what if I don’t want to answer?”