Chapter Twenty-Four
The Date
Sydney
“I came prepared,” he announces from the doorway, holding up the binder.
“Heimlich instructions for toddlers, what to do if someone has a febrile seizure, poison control number.” He steps inside and looks around.
“Also, do you have a fire extinguisher? And what’s the meeting point if we need to evacuate? ”
Archer stares at him. “The meeting point?”
“In case of fire. You need a designated meeting point. I’d suggest the mailbox. It’s far enough from the structure.”
Archer glances at the binder, then at me, and back at the binder. “Logan, it’s four hours.”
“Four hours is plenty of time for an emergency, Arch. I’m just being thorough.” He sets the binder on the coffee table and pulls out his phone. “Can you walk me through the floor plan? Where are the kids’ rooms relative to the exits?”
Then Archer looks at me. I press my lips together tightly, trying not to laugh; if I do, he’ll never forgive me.
Lily appears at the top of the stairs in her pajamas, surveys the scene—Logan on the couch, binder open—and walks down the stairs like she owns the place.
“Hi, Logan.” She stops in front of him, hands on her hips. “Are you the babysitter?”
“I am tonight.”
“Can you do braids?”
“I, uh—” Logan looks at me with genuine alarm. “I don’t think I can do braids.”
“Then what can you do?”
“I can make popcorn, and I know all the words to Frozen.”
Lily stares at him for three full seconds, running her internal calculations, and then nods once. “Okay. You can stay.”
Luke comes downstairs holding a book about beluga whales. He sits on the couch next to Logan and opens the book without acknowledging his existence, which is the highest form of acceptance Luke offers to strangers.
Archer goes over the routine—bedtime at eight, one story each.
Lily will try to negotiate for more; don’t let her.
Luke will want the hallway light on. Logan takes notes in the binder, writing by hand, and I watch Archer’s face cycle through about six different emotions, none of which he expresses out loud.
“We’ll be back by ten,” Archer says.
“Take your time.” Logan waves us off. “We’re going to have a great night. Right, guys?”
“RIGHT,” Lily yells.
Luke turns a page.
I guide Archer to the door before he changes his mind.
In the car, he grips the steering wheel and exhales slowly through his nose. “I just left my children with a man who made a babysitting binder.”
“He’s enthusiastic.”
“He’s insane.”
“He’s your teammate, and he volunteered. Winnie was busy, Tori had plans, and your other option was asking Bree, which—”
“Was not happening.”
Not for our first date. Holy awkward situation, Batman.
“Right. So Logan it is.” I pull down the visor mirror and check my lipstick, which I’ve applied three times and wiped off twice because I couldn’t decide how much was too much for dinner with a man who has already seen me in sleep shorts with no bra. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see.”
“I hate surprises.”
He glances at me, his eyes moving over my face, my hair, and the top I’m wearing—silky and a little low-cut, enough that he’s bound to glance at my collarbone at some point tonight and lose his train of thought.
“You look really good,” he says.
“Thanks.”
“I mean it. You look—” He turns back to the road. “Yeah. You look great.”
“Eloquent.”
“I’m a hockey player, Syd. You’ll have to lower the bar if you expect eloquence.”
I laugh, and something loosens in my chest, because this is us. We’ve had a thousand dinners, a thousand car rides, and a thousand conversations. The only thing different tonight is that he made a reservation and I’m wearing lipstick and uncomfortable underwear.
The restaurant is a small Italian place on a side street I’ve never been to. It’s not fancy—dim lighting, candles on the tables, a bar along one wall. The host knows Archer by name, which tells me he’s been here before, and she leads us to a corner booth in the back where nobody will bother us.
We sit down, and a waiter brings menus. The host knew his name at the door, and he orders a bottle of red without looking at the list.
“You’ve been here before,” I say.
“A few times.”
“With who?”
“Nobody. Just me.” He opens his menu casually, as if that’s not a loaded answer. “I come here after bad games sometimes. It’s quiet, and the food is great. You’ll like it.”
I do love Italian food; it’s one of my favorites, and of course Archer knows this. “I’ve never been on a date with you,” I say, because the silence is starting to feel heavy, and someone has to name the absurdity of this situation.
“We’ve had dinner together hundreds of times.”
“Those weren’t dates. Those were two friends eating food. This is different.”
“How is it different?”
“You’re wearing a button-down.”
He looks down at his shirt as if he forgot what he was wearing. “Ollie told me to wear it.”
“You asked Ollie for fashion advice?”
“I asked Ollie if I should wear a suit, and he said, ‘It’s not prom, Arch,’ and told me to wear this.” He tugs the collar. “I feel like a real estate agent.”
“You look good.”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t fish.”
“I’m not fishing. I’m, uh—” He picks up his water glass, takes a sip, and sets it down. “I’m nervous.”
“You’re nervous.”
“Yeah.”
“Archer Lockwood, starting goalie for the New York Knights—a man who stands in front of ninety-mile-an-hour slap shots for a living—is nervous about dinner.”
“Those are pucks. This is you. You’re scarier than pucks.”
The wine arrives, and the waiter pours it.
We both take a sip at the same time, and I watch him over the rim of my glass.
He’s watching me back. We’re two people who know everything about each other, sitting in a dim restaurant, trying to figure out how to be on a first date when that first date is approximately a decade overdue.
“This is weird,” I say.
“It’s a little weird.”
“We should just be normal.”
“Agreed.”
“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
He thinks. “Can’t. I’m pretty sure you know everything about me.”
He smiles, and the weirdness melts away.
We order food—he gets the bolognese, I get the cacio e pepe—and we talk the way we’ve always talked, easy and winding, bouncing between serious and silly.
He tells me about a rookie hazing tradition involving duct tape that I’m fairly certain violates several labor laws.
I tell him about Maryann’s new move at the senior center, which involves a hip thrust that Gerald tried to copy and ended up throwing out his back.
His phone buzzes on the table. He flips it over.
Logan: Lily informed me that I’m doing bedtime wrong. She says the moon nightlight goes on BEFORE the overhead light goes off. I have been corrected.
He shows me the screen, and I laugh. Then another text comes through.
Logan: Also, Luke asked me if I know what the largest invertebrate is. I said a squid. He said “close” and then didn’t tell me the answer. Is he always like this?
Archer: Yes. The answer is the colossal squid. Don’t tell him I told you.
Logan: Too late. He’s disappointed in me.
I’m laughing hard enough that the couple at the next table glances over, and Archer is grinning. The candle flickers between us, our knees touching under the table. I don’t know when that happened, but neither of us is moving.
The food arrives. We eat. He steals a bite of my cacio e pepe, and I steal a bite of his bolognese.
Neither of us acknowledges that we’re sharing food because we’ve always shared food, except now his fork is in my pasta, and his eyes are on my mouth.
Sharing food means something different when you’ve had someone’s tongue in your mouth forty-eight hours ago.
“Can I ask you something?” he says, twirling spaghetti around his fork.
“You’re going to anyway.”
“When did you know? About, uh—about me. About how you felt.”
I set my fork down. “Freshman year. You came back to ballet class after Christmas break, and you’d grown like three inches over the holidays.
You couldn’t do any of the combinations because your legs were too long, and you were so frustrated.
I was showing you the tendu for the hundredth time when you looked at me and said, ‘I’m never going to get this.
’ I said, ‘Yes, you will,’ and you believed me.
” I take a sip of wine. “Your eyes met mine, and I felt this—I don’t know, zing.
That’s when I knew. Because you believed me when I said you could do something you thought you couldn’t, and I thought, this is the person I want to believe in me for the rest of my life. ”
He’s quiet. His fork is still, with pasta wound around it, forgotten.
“Your turn,” I say. “When did you know?”
“I’m still figuring that out.”
“That’s a terrible answer.”
“I know it is. But it’s the honest one. I think I’ve known for a long time without realizing it, and now I’m going back through everything and seeing it differently.
” He sets the fork down. “Like the tattoo. I told myself it was just a fun thing we did. But I drew that airplane because I was terrified of being away from you, and I wanted something on my body that meant you’d always be close.
That’s not what friends do, Syd. I just told myself it was. ”
My eyes sting. I pick up my wine, take a sip, and blink a few times because I am not going to cry in this restaurant over a stupid paper airplane.
“I want to kiss you right now,” he says quietly, leaning forward.
“We’re in public.”
“I don’t care.”
“You’re an NHL goalie. Someone will take a photo.”
“I still don’t care.”
“Archer.”
“Sydney.”
His hand finds mine under the table. He laces his fingers through mine, and his thumb traces a line across my knuckle. It’s not a kiss, but it’s still sweet.
His phone buzzes again.
Logan: Both kids asleep. Lily demanded I sing. I sang. She said I was “okay but not as good as Daddy.” I’ll take it.
Archer shows me the screen, and I’m laughing again.
His hand is still holding mine under the table, the candle is still flickering, and this is what a first date is supposed to feel like.
Not the nervous, will-he-call-me kind. The kind where you already know the person better than anyone, and you’re finally letting yourself have the thing you’ve wanted all along.
We split dessert—tiramisu, one plate, two forks.
His hand finds my knee under the table, and I feel pleasure zip through me at that simple contact.
He pays the check despite my objections, and when we stand up, he places his hand on the small of my back to guide me toward the door.
The warmth of his palm through my shirt settles into my spine and lingers there.
Outside, the air is cold, and the street is quiet. He opens the car door for me, which he has never done before, and I give him a look.
“Don’t make it weird,” he says.
“You opened my door.”
“I’m on a date. I’m doing date things.”
“You’ve never opened my door in your life.”
“I’ve never been on a date with you before. New rules.”
I get in the car. He closes the door and walks around to the driver’s side.
I watch him through the windshield—tall, broad, in a loosened button-down, the streetlight catching the side of his face—and I think about a boy at a ballet barre and a man at a restaurant who held my hand under the table.
Both of them are the same person, and I’ve loved both, with the only difference now being that he knows.
He gets in, starts the car, and looks over at me. “Good date?” he asks.
“Best first date I’ve ever been on.”
He grins and pulls away from the curb. I lean my head against the seat, watching the city slide past. His hand finds mine on the center console, easy and natural, and we drive home like that—his thumb moving across my knuckles, the radio on low, neither of us talking because we don’t need to.
When we walk in, Logan is on the couch with a binder open on his lap and a juice box in his hand.
“They’re asleep,” he whispers. “Both down by 8:15. Lily only tried to renegotiate twice, which I’m told is a personal best.”
“Thanks, Logan,” Archer says, and he means it.
“Anytime.” Logan gathers his backpack and binder and heads for the door, but then he stops, turns around, and looks at both of us—me in my date top, Archer in his button-down, our hands separating a second too late.
“For the record,” he says, “I’m happy for you guys. Whatever this is.”
He leaves before either of us can respond.
Archer locks the door. The house is quiet. We’re standing in the hallway, looking at each other, and this is the part of the date where normal people would kiss goodnight and go to their separate rooms.
He steps closer. His hand comes up to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers trailing along my jaw, and I tilt my face up toward his.
“I had a really good time,” I say.
“Me too.”
“Thank you for taking me to your place. I see why you like it.”
“It’s your place now too.”
He leans down and kisses me—soft, slow, his mouth warm and tasting of red wine and tiramisu. I rise up on my toes, placing my hand on his chest, feeling his heart race beneath my palm. He pulls back, pressing his forehead against mine, and we stand there in the hallway, breathing each other in.
“Goodnight, Syd.”
“Night, Arch.”
I head to the guest room while he goes to his. Two doors close in the quiet hallway, twenty feet apart. But for the first time, the distance between them doesn’t feel like an ocean.