13. Nora
CHAPTER 13
NORA
For our first practice date, West texts me to wait on the steps to Fairhaven at eight. I’ll pick you up.
I put on a pair of black pants and an asymmetric top that opens over one shoulder and down over my arm. I let my hair fall straight around my shoulders and add a bit of red tint on my lips.
I focus on that so I can’t focus on my nerves.
They’re not quite as hot and uncomfortable as when I’m going on a real date, when I know there’s a man sitting opposite me expecting something. Wanting me to laugh at his jokes, smile, hint, be interesting and interested. When I want to feel something for him but never, ever do.
How will all this work with West?
A few minutes before eight, I walk through the grand entrance and push open the front door, and there he is. Leaning against a car parked on the gravel courtyard, hands in his pockets, watching me. Like he’s been standing here just watching the door and waiting for me to arrive.
I pause on the steps.
West’s eyes dip down in a slow look over my body, all the way down to my feet and all the way back up to my face. He’s never looked at me like that before.
Like he’s savoring the sight.
“Hi,” I manage.
“You look beautiful tonight, Nora.”
I look at my feet as I take the stairs. It’s a welcome break from his eyes.
“You’re playing a part tonight?” I ask. One foot in front of the other.
“I remember your list,” he says. “You don’t like compliments.”
I look up at him, but there’s no judgment on his face. He opens the passenger door for me. “Ladies first.”
He gets into the driver’s seat, and it’s him I’m doing this with. Sitting here beside. Is this how he usually picks a woman up? Will I get to see West Calloway the way his dates do?
The nerves in my stomach tighten.
His right hand curves over the wheel, and I catch sight of the ring. The signet ring. Same one my brother wears and a good reminder of just who he is. He’s still the guy who turned me down years ago. Who told Alex that he would never date me.
My nerves settle a little, and it’s easier to breathe. I’ve been on first dates before. I’m good at first dates. It’s one of my skills. I shine, if I may say so myself. They always ask for a second date.
But my therapist Zeina tells me that’s not the point. You’re not yourself. You’re performing for them and you come home exhausted. You don’t leave any space for your own emotions.
She’s good at saying hard things and making them sound easy.
West pulls down the long driveway to the wrought-iron gates and reaches to turn on the radio. Dulcet tones spread in the car.
“Where are we going tonight?” I ask.
“You’ll find out,” he says, voice low. “But I think you’ll like it.”
Damn. I don’t like not knowing. “Oh. That’s fun.”
West glances at me once and then back at the road. “You don’t mean that. Push me on it. Make me tell you where we’re going.”
I cross my legs at the ankles. Right. “Can you tell me, please?”
“Better,” he says. “But too polite.”
“I am polite. Usually.”
His lips quirk. Like he knows the part I’m not adding. When I’m not with you.
“It’s a surprise,” he says, voice deepening again. “But you’ll like it. I promise you.”
“I’m not good with surprises,” I say. “Tell me.”
West chuckles, hand tightening around the wheel. “You’re so demanding, Nora. You have to learn to be patient.”
He’s not making this easy.
God, he’s so arrogant. And he doesn’t seem to mind when I push back. He just speaks his mind and expects the world to adjust to it, to shape to his wants and his needs. I hate him a little for that, and I envy him for it, too.
“I don’t like being kept in the dark. Tell me where we’re going.”
His scarred eyebrow lifts. “Or what?”
“Or I’ll get out of this car.”
His lips curve. “Well done,” he says. “Much better. We’re going to the movies.”
The praise rolls through me like a warm wave. Well done.
And then I realize what he’s said. The movies? I was expecting him to do something extravagant. A dinner, seated opposite him, forced to make polite conversation with him for hours. But the movies? I can handle that.
“Oh,” I say. “That’s really nice. Nearby?”
“Yeah, it’s a fifteen minute drive.” He looks at me again, and then back at the road. “Tell me about yourself. What’s it like to be a model?”
I answer his questions on the way to the cinema. They mirror ones I’ve gotten many times before, and I wonder if he knows that, too.
If this is also a facet of the part he’s playing.
I smile at him and do my best to answer truthfully, adding a little joke here and there. Like I usually do on dates. The talking is not the hard part. It’s everything else. The expectations beneath the sentences, the hope and want for something more. That we’re two single people constantly evaluating the other, and that I can never decide whether I even like them before they’ve already made up their mind.
West’s expression doesn’t change. He nods as I speak, asks follow-up questions. But I don’t see that smile on his face. I don’t get another well done.
At the movies, West and I sit in silence beside one another. The lights dim, and darkness settles like a thick blanket over us. He’s taking up the entire armrest between us, and I wonder if that’s on purpose. If it’s another test for me to push back, like he told me in the car.
Maybe. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he’s the kind of man who takes up the space available because he’s used to doing it.
Because he always has and has always been rewarded for it.
The movie is okay. It’s some kind of buddy-cop movie. I can’t fathom why he chose it. He asked me before we went in if it was okay if we saw it, because he’d loved the first movie.
His face was blank when he said it, no facial cues other than his words. It’s one of my favorites.
So I nodded and said yes. I’d love to.
But my mind drifts off during the movie, and I’m making lists of all the fabric I still need to buy. I found a great new sewing machine the other day, so at least that’s sorted. But I need to find a really good stretch jersey…
By the time the end credits roll, I realize I missed the ending completely.
We walk out of the theater, me still clutching the giant bag of candy he bought me. I prefer chocolate, not gummy bears. But he said they were his favorite and asked me if I wanted to share, and I nodded and said yes.
Outside, the spring air is crisp. Perfect running weather.
He stops beneath the marquee. “So,” he says. “This is the part you like the least.”
“The end of a date?”
“Mhm. Pretty obvious from your list.”
“Yeah,” I admit. He looks nothing like the guys I usually meet for dates. A little nerdy, nice, some shy and some too talkative.
But West is the kind of guy I usually say no to right off the bat. Handsome, tall, smooth. They come with expectations, compliments and gifts.
He looks up and down the street like he’s surveying a kingdom. The guards are somewhere behind us, too, a shadow we can’t escape. I wonder what Sam and Madison think about what we’re doing.
“Let’s practice, then. We’re not West and Nora. You met me two hours ago, when I picked you up.”
“Right. And you’re… Paul.”
“Paul,” he repeats.
“It’s a normal name,” I say. “I’ve been on dates with at least one Paul before. I actually think my cousin is named Paul.”
West’s eyebrows lift. “Right. I don’t know how to interpret that, except that you’re nervous, so this is working.”
“I don’t babble when I’m nervous.”
“Yes,” he says, putting a hand at my elbow, “you do.”
We start walking down the sidewalk, and just like that, the familiarity is gone. He’s a stranger again, and I try my hardest to pretend he is indeed a Paul. Any Paul.
Except cousin Paul.
“I’m walking you to your taxi.” His voice is smooth in the darkness. He’s West and he’s not; a version of himself I’ve never seen until tonight.
“Thank you.” I fall into step beside him. This is always what the entire night hinges on. The goodbye. Men will look at me with those searching, wanting eyes. They’ll ask for another date. They’ll want to see when I’m free, if they can kiss me, if I want to follow them back home.
And I hate the awkwardness that happens when I say thanks but no thanks.
“The movie,” West says. “Did you like it?”
“Yeah, I thought it was pretty good. Did you?”
His hand brushes against mine, and heat rushes up my arm. “Yeah. But I was distracted by the beautiful woman beside me.”
I glance up at him. He’s smiling a bit, but he looks straight ahead. He’s playing a part. I have to remember that. He’s only pretending, and he’s laying the compliments on thick.
I usually feel like they increase expectations. Some guys use them like rain, when I haven’t even decided whether I like talking with them yet. It’s like they’re always five steps ahead of me.
“Thanks,” I say. “Um, I was distracted by the guy two rows in front of us who ate his M&M’s so loudly.”
“He was inhaling that bag, but it never seemed to end.”
I smile. “No. Do you think he had several?”
“At least a dozen.” West glances my way. We’re almost at the car. “Are you free this weekend?”
Oof. This is the moment I’m so bad at, where I feel awkward and tongue-tied and struggle with saying what I want. “I might be,” I say. “But I have some plans with friends, and I might be having dinner with family on Sunday. What are you up to?”
West turns so that my back is to the car door. “I’m not doing much,” he says. His voice is low, eyes locked on me. “I’d like to see you again, Nora.”
I’ve seen this expression on other men before, but never on West.
There’s an intensity in his features, a focus I’ve never seen directed at me. It makes my throat dry.
He looks at me like he wants me.
It’s similar but it’s not the same as I’ve experienced before , because it’s West. The man I once had a little crush on before he crushed it beneath an arrogant boot.
“You want to see me again,” I repeat.
There’s a shift in his eyes. A brush of humor. “Yes, this weekend. I’ll come pick you up on Saturday. Same time.”
“Okay, yeah. That might work,” I hear myself saying.
He leans over and puts a hand on the car door beside me. Locking me in on one side. With only streetlights around, his face is cast in shadow. Broad shoulders turned to me, eyes on me, and dear god, is he leaning in?
He is.
His lips quirk, and there’s just a foot separating us. I catch the scent of the same cologne I caught the other day, when we were pretending in front of his mother. He smells good. And he’s looking at me. He just won’t look away. My heart is pounding?—
“Trouble,” he says. His lips are only inches from mine. “This is when you reject me.”
“Oh.”
“Push me away,” he murmurs, now only an inch from my lips. I feel his warm breath, and my eyes flutter closed on instinct.
I wonder what it would feel like, to be kissed by him. If he closed the distance, would I like it? All his focus, all his strength, directed at me. Maybe it would be ni?—
“ Damn it .” He pulls back. “What the hell was that?”
I blink a few times. “What?”
“You agreed to a second date when you didn’t want to, and you would have let me kiss you.” His brows are drawn low, and the smirk on his lips from a minute ago is gone. He’s dropped the role he was playing, and he’s West again, the West I know. Not the one who looked at me like I was everything he wanted. “Let’s get in the car.”
“Okay.” I get into the passenger seat and wait for him to walk around. I still feel out of sorts, my heart beating too fast. I’ve never seen West so close up before.
His amber eyes looked almost dark brown in the low lighting.
He pulls out onto the street without waiting for the guards to get into the car behind us. The silence is heady, a thing with teeth.
“Do you often do that?” he finally asks. He’s looking straight ahead, one hand on the steering wheel and the other in a fist on the console between us.
“Do what?”
“Freeze. You just froze when I gave you those eyes you mentioned and leaned in.”
My knee bounces. “It happens sometimes.”
“Do you let them kiss you even if you don’t want to? Like you were about to with me?” He blows out a breath. “Fucking hell, Nora. We need to keep practicing. Next time you’re going to push me away so hard I take a step back.”
“Next time?”
“Yes.” His hand tightens around the steering wheel. “We’re going to need more practice here.”
I close my eyes, only to see West’s face again, so close to my own. His arm braced against the side of the car. Is that how he always is on dates? Is that his real charm or something he turned on just for tonight?
Is that how he looks at women he actually dates?
I froze. But I’m not sure why.
“I think tonight went well. I just didn’t… do the last part. I’m going to push you away next time.”
“Good,” he says. “I asked you about this weekend. You should have told me you didn’t want to see me again.”
“I can’t just say that to someone’s face!”
“Of course you can,” West says. “ No, I would not like to see you again. There.”
“It’s easy for you to say that.”
“You must turn down guys all the time.”
“Yes, for a first date. But I struggle with the rest of it. Like once I’m seeing them, it just feels like…” I blow out a breath. “How do I tell them to slow down? That I might want to see them again, but I’m not sure yet? That I don’t want dinner, I want a walk in the park?”
“I’m not surprised by that.” He glances my way, and I can see his jaw working. “You were masking the entire night.”
“Masking?”
“Wearing a mask. Performing. You didn’t want the candy. And that movie? It was terrible, but you said yes because I stated a preference.”
I turn to him. “That was on purpose?”
He chuckles darkly. “Well, I wasn’t exactly enjoying myself. Of course it was on purpose.”
“You were testing me.”
“If you’d be honest about what you want? Leave halfway through? Do anything? Yes.” He shakes his head. “You’re too nice. You’re nice to everyone except me. I want you to show them the person I see.”
It’s something I’ve heard before. But it’s not an easy habit to break when making people happy feels so good in the moment.
“I’m not nice with you because I know you can take it,” I tell him.
“So can the others,” he says. “And when you’re being overly nice to them, Nora? You’re not showing them the real you. And the real you is someone with teeth.”
He’s right. And I didn’t push him away.
But I think that’s because I wanted him to kiss me.