Chapter 5 #2
Those words hit me straight in the heart. I really wanted to know who had hurt him in the past. I had the feeling it was someone other than Paul. More than that, I wanted to heal all those wounds.
“I think you’re a lot more open than you give yourself credit for,” I told him, reaching across the table to touch his hand. “You got up and sang in front of an entire room of people. Someone who can do that is not hopelessly closed up.”
“I guess.”
“And you were brave enough to come back to Common Grounds the next day to apologize to me.”
“I couldn’t not come back,” he said. His mouth twitched at the corner. “Not coming back would have meant breaking my routine, and you know by now that I can’t ever break my routine.”
I grinned at him, my heart feeling so light that I didn’t know how I was going to concentrate on eating. “We’ll just have to make some new routines for you, then,” I said, gazing deeply at him.
Theo smiled back, and I felt like the whole world was filled with promise.
Our server returned with supper a few minutes later. The restaurant might have had a weird name, but the food was delicious. Theo and I gushed over it, even trying a bite or two of each other’s dishes, as we talked about random things.
I loved getting to know him better with blunt questions about the things he liked.
Neither of us were sporty, but we both admitted to being willing to play on a pick-up baseball team if we were asked.
His parents had recently moved to Arizona to be closer to his oldest sister and her new, growing family, and mine were in Florida.
He’d figured out he was gay because his middle school friends had played a lot of Final Fantasy and he liked the games “for the graphics”, and I’d figured things out for myself because of a love of anime.
We really did have so much more in common than I could have hoped for.
“But you were never interested in going to college?” Theo asked me after our long and lingering dinner was over, as we walked back down to the heart of Glenside, where we both lived, in the darkening twilight.
“I got an associate’s degree,” I said, just a teensy bit wary at his shock at my lack of formal education. “I don’t really need anything more than that to help run the café.”
“And that’s what you want to do?” Theo asked, swaying slightly closer to me as we passed someone coming the other direction, then staying there longer than he needed to.
“It’s absolutely what I want to do,” I said. “I love my family and I love the community we’ve built together with Common Grounds. It’s the kind of place where people meet up to have a good time, or to work all day when their office is ruined.”
Theo laughed at that. The sound was beautiful, and the evening light made him practically glow with warmth.
“I guess you don’t really need a four-year degree if you already know everything about what you’re doing with a business like that,” he said.
“I’ve been working there since I was in high school,” I told him.
“I’m never going to be a millionaire, but Sam, Gilbert, and I have talked about expanding the business to another location.
Gilbert, who is the most business-y of the three of us, has his eye on a property in Jenkintown.
We’ve talked about shifting over to open something there while Sam and our sister, Galadriel, who actually is getting a four-year degree in marketing at Temple, stay with the Glenside location. ”
“Wait, Galadriel?” Theo asked, his smile growing. “Your sister is named Galadriel?”
“We’re all named after fictional characters,” I explained with a laugh. “Mom was a librarian. Galadriel is obviously Tolkien, and so is Sam, full name Samwise.”
“Your parents named one of their kids Samwise?” Theo laughed.
“Hey! Samwise was a good and noble character.”
“I’ll give you that,” Theo chuckled.
“And Diccon, of course, is from The Secret Garden,” I went on.
“Oh, yeah! I guess it is.” Theo smiled.
“Gilbert is obviously Anne of Green Gables,” I continued, “and Ramona, who actually came first and is married with a couple kids of her own now, is after all the Beverly Cleary books.”
“Well, your mom did a good job of giving you all interesting and memorable names,” Theo said with a smile, slowing down as we reached Glenside Ave and the moment when we’d have to split and go our own ways…or not.
“I’ll tell her you said so next time I talk to her,” I said.
“Thanks,” Theo said with a smirk.
We continued to stand there. I definitely had the sense that neither of us really wanted to part ways, but the more I stared at Theo and the way the light made his red hair look like it was burnished copper, the less I felt capable of saying anything sensible to either end the night or move it on.
“Hey, it’s nice out,” Theo finally broke the silence. “Do you want to walk around a bit more?”
“Absolutely,” I breathed out, glad he’d said something.
“Great.”
We turned onto Glenside Ave and kept walking, right past the row of shops that ended with Common Grounds and the empty lot beside it, which was actually looking marginally tidier. That probably had something to do with the guy who had come into the café earlier in the week and spoken to Gilbert.
I didn’t want to be reminded that something was about to happen with that lot, though. I got anxious just thinking about any potential construction. I wanted to give my full focus to Theo and see where our date might lead.
Because I had the feeling as we continued down the street toward some of the old, early twentieth-century houses that I knew had been converted into apartments that Theo knew exactly where he was going.
My suspicions were confirmed when he slowed down in front of one of those houses.
“Um, this is where I live,” he said, the last light of sunset making his features seem softer and somehow more beautiful. “You wouldn’t by any chance want to, maybe, I don’t know, come up?”
I sucked in a quick breath, excited that things were actually going the way I’d hoped they’d go. “I’d love to,” I said, breathing out again and reaching for his hand.
“Cool. Great,” Theo said, blushing up a storm. “Right this way, then.”
He took my hand and led me around the side of the house to a back entrance that I guessed would take us to an upstairs apartment. Everything was falling into place, and I couldn’t have been happier.