Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
Gavin
I know even before I pull into the gravel lot of the Peter Pan Mini Golf that I’m going to screw this up.
Let’s first pretend Zoey wasn’t completely awkward around me today.
I get it, at least a little bit. We still work together, and yet have crossed a line I don’t plan to uncross.
Still, I can’t say it didn’t make me second guess everything when she couldn’t even meet my eyes one time today.
There’s that. Then also, I’m overeager. Far too excited. And much too preoccupied with the fact that I’m forty-three, about to hang out with twentysomethings.
I’m also about twenty minutes early (see: overeager), so I call Thayden on video.
He looks like he’s at a park somewhere, which is odd.
Thayden is an indoor kind of guy. Any exercise he does is even limited to inside a gym, never outdoors.
I’ll ask about that later. Right now, I have something I never thought I’d ever have: a fashion emergency.
“Is this too much? Is it stupid?”
“Hello to you too,” he says, but I’m already tilting the phone to show my shirt. Thayden reads for a sec (the phone is probably showing it in reverse) and then starts to laugh. “Tell me you have a change of clothes.”
Dang it.
I knew it. And I didn’t trust my gut. I listened to my panic, which was telling me I need to appear youthful. Relevant. Or at least not grandfatherly. So, I stopped in a random trendy boutique on the way here and bought a graphic T-shirt. Nothing says youthful like a good old graphic tee, right?
Especially one that reads, OK BOOMER . It’s funny, right? Because I’m not a boomer. That’s the joke.
“Change,” Thayden says, still sputtering with laughter. “Now. What were you thinking?”
“There was that Saturday Night Live skit where—”
“No.”
“Did you see it though? Adam Driver was Kylo Ren on an Undercover Boss spoof and—”
“Stop.”
I sigh. “So, it’s a no on the shirt?”
“A definite no. It’s like when your parents try to use slang because they want to be hip .”
“It’s really that bad?”
Thayden raises an eyebrow. “Yes. It’s bad. Take it off.” He starts to laugh again.
I hang up on him, since he’s outlived his usefulness and is now just humiliating me. I search for the shirt I had on before. It was a light blue polo. Not fancy. My style of casual. Zoey is a classic girl. I should have gone with that.
Unless she’s hiding some inner wild child that I’ll be introduced to tonight. No. She’ll probably still have her hair pulled into a tight ponytail. I bet she wears a blouse. The thought makes me smile.
My original shirt is gone. I retrace my steps and remember it last crumpled on the dressing room floor. Didn’t I pick it up? That’s not like me to leave something on the floor of a dressing room.
But I’m feeling a little off. Okay, a lot off. Combine the nervousness of my first date in years—if this is even a date?—with how much I like Zoey, plus my fears about the age difference and the whole boss thing.
My head feels like a mini tornado has taken off, spiraling all my thoughts around. I’m feeling hot, too, and desperately hoping that I don’t start awkwardly sweating. Though it’s summer in Austin and we’re playing mini golf outside. There will be sweat.
I can’t change, but I can turn my shirt inside out. I’m in a mostly secluded part of the parking lot, so ignoring the cars zooming by at the nearby intersection, I lift the shirt over my head.
It’s covering my face when I hear Zoey’s voice. “Gavin?”
I should yank the shirt back down. Or yank it off. Quick decision. Easy. I’m a decisive person ninety-nine percent of the time.
This moment, apparently, is the rare one percent. I freeze, overthinking everything.
Not for long, just a few seconds, but when you’re a grown man caught in a parking lot with your shirt halfway over your head, seconds are decades. My hair will be totally gray by the time I make my choice.
Off. shirt off .
I whip the stupid graphic T over my head and attempt a casual smile. Don’t mind me, the parking lot stripper. Totally normal.
But it’s not just Zoey standing there. It’s a guy who I would have recognized anywhere as her brother.
Not just by their matching hair and eye color, but their height and the expression they’re both wearing, a mix of confusion and suspicion.
At least she’s looking at me now, unlike today in the office.
Next to her brother is a diminutive woman with blonde and turquoise-tipped hair who is barely holding in her laughter.
And she is wearing—I kid you not—the girl’s version of the shirt I’m holding in my hands. I’m not sure if that would have won me points or taken them away.
“Everything okay?” Zoey asks, slowly. Carefully.
“Sure.” I take off my shirt in parking lots all the time. Catch me here three days a week at seven o’clock, sharp, folks. “I just spilled coffee on my shirt.”
“You don’t drink regular coffee after one,” Zoey says, a fact she’s picked up from working with me for two years. And man, does that fact about coffee make me sound like an old guy.
“It was decaf.”
“Your shirt is black,” Zoey’s friend says. Abby, I remember. Abby and Zane. She’s smirking, like she can smell the lie coming off me in waves.
“Happy birthday,” I say, desperate for a deflection.
Zoey grins and dips her chin, like she’s suddenly a shy version of herself. And, I note, that she is wearing a blouse and a ponytail. The khaki shorts are a surprise. I do my best not to ogle her legs.
“Is this her present?” Abby asks, pointing to my bare torso.
And now they’re all staring at my naked top half. Not that I have anything to be embarrassed about. I’m in great shape. For your age , a tiny, critical voice in my head says. For any age , I tell it.
But whether I look good or not, there’s a difference between being shirtless at a pool or one of the lakes or rivers around Austin and being shirtless in the parking lot of a mini golf place.
I watch as a family walks by, the mother throwing me a glowering look as she puts a hand over her daughter’s eyes.
Being shirtless here is like being a circus pony on a ranch. Or an old pervert in a parking lot.
“No, it’s not.”
Zoey’s present is in the car. Well, her presents , because I couldn’t decide if buying her a necklace was too much.
I have two gift bags stowed under the passenger seat.
One with a necklace and the other with a book and a gift certificate to Mozart’s, a coffee shop I know she frequents.
Because I’ve seen the logo on her coffee cups, not because I’ve stalked her there.
I jerk the shirt (now inside out) over my head. Of course it’s on backwards now. I do the awkward shuffle where you pull your arms in and turn it around on yourself neck.
Only, I bought the shirt a size smaller than usual. Because you’re supposed to wear this kind of shirt a little tight. And maybe I thought it might hint at my defined chest and my broad shoulders, always hidden in my suits from Zoey. She was going to see a whole new Gavin tonight.
And now she has. A shirtless, parking-lot-pervert version of me, now stuck inside of a too-tight, inside-out shirt designed for people in a totally different generation than me.
“Let me help,” Zoey says.
I’ve gone from being too old to being a toddler who needs adult help getting his clothes on.
“We’ll go pay,” Zane says, giving me a disapproving look. Abby giggles as they walk away, whispering.
I consider bolting. But as odd as Austin is, I still think I’d attract too much attention running while my arms are trapped inside a T-shirt. Like a man escaped from an asylum in a 100% organic cotton straight jacket.
Zoey tugs at the bunched shirt, which seems to grow tighter, like one of those Chinese finger torture things.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. I’m not fine. Not my shirt, not my image, and least of all, not my pride.
“You look fine,” she says, and then immediately blushes. Her face does this thing when she's embarrassed, where two distinct red spots appear in her cheeks, like her blush has been painted on. It’s adorable.
Maybe I need to look at the bright side of this.
Zoey has seen my abs. Girls love abs, right?
Especially the kind that come in a six- or eight-pack.
(I’ve got eight, thank you very much.) She’s standing near enough that I can smell her, a combination I would label as vanilla shampoo and some kind of spicy, not-too sweet perfume.
And she’s touching me. So, maybe this isn’t as much of a disaster as I thought.
Honestly, I’m so relieved she’s gotten over the stilted awkwardness from today that I could leave happy now.
Just kidding. I’m not going anywhere. But I am relieved.
“How badly will it affect my mini golf game, do you think, if I can’t use my arms?”
She giggles— giggles —and it’s a sound I want to hear every single day. If I could record it, I would make it my alarm, my phone ring, and my feel-good playlist.
“How good is your game to begin with?” she asks.
“I play golf a few times a month. My short game is pretty solid.”
I realize too late that this probably is another one of those old-guy facts I could have kept under wraps. Does her dad play golf? Have we ever shared a green? Let’s hope not.
She doesn’t seem bothered by my dorky golf confession, but only hums as she manages to get my shirt spun around. “I think you’ll do better now.”
“Thank you.” Then we stand there, grinning stupidly at each other, like this really is a first date and she’s just as nervous as I am. I can work with that.
I offer her my arm, and she places her hand on the crook of my elbow as we climb the steps to meet Abby and Zane by the first hole.
“I apologize in advance,” Zoey says, just before we reach the top, distracting me from my focus on the feel of her hand on my elbow. Like she’s been doing it for years. Like we’re co-conspirators somehow. A team. A couple .
“For what? I think I’m the one who needs to apologize.”