Twenty-One #2
“Okay, I graduated,” he said. “Went to culinary school. Loved it. Became a chef at a fancy Portland restaurant. Burnt out
on restaurant culture.”
“I’ve seen The Bear, so I get it.”
“Exactly. I know chefs who couldn’t even watch that show because it retraumatized them.” He ate a bite of my ice cream. “Damn,
that’s good.”
“Salted caramel. The best.”
“So then, I became an air marshal. After a few years, I applied for the ATF. Don’t tell, but most flights go pretty smoothly.
I was ready for more action.”
“Like raiding bad guys with caches of weapons?”
“Exactly,” Nate said. “Though the ATF’s a uniquely unpopular branch. Liberals don’t like us because we’re law enforcement.
Conservatives don’t like us because we take people’s guns.”
Now was definitely my chance to segue the conversation. But it had been so long since I’d had fun on a date. I didn’t want
to spoil things yet. “So why’d you come back to Bumpkinville?”
“When the ATF accepted me, they had me pick and rate seven cities. Boise was my seventh pick, only because my sister and her
fam are here. The ATF offered me a job. They gave me twenty-four hours to decide whether or not to take it. My dream job.
But in Boise—where I never wanted to live again.” He shrugged. “Here I am.”
“While we’re on the subject of the ATF—” I began.
“Oh no,” he said. “Fair’s fair. You have to tell me about you.” He patted my thigh as if to say, Your turn. Even through my jeans his touch made a warmth spread up into my groin.
“I’m from here but I lived in LA for twenty-five years. Swore I’d never move back.”
“Never, ever, ever, ever,” he said. “I get it.”
It was nice to talk to someone who understood what it was like to be forced by purely practical reasons to leave a place that really spoke to your soul.
And Nate had a grounded, calm way about him that gave me the sense that, as long as I was with him, nothing really bad could happen to me.
The fact that we were hitting it off might make him more likely to believe me.
To help me. I was not a damsel in distress, but maybe he could fix this one giant mess I’d stumbled into.
“Little Sisssssster!” Phoebe called. The dog bounded to his feet and ran to the girls, trailing the leash.
“I had a sperm donor,” I said. People always wondered, so I figured it was better to just tell him. “I know that’s maybe more
like third-date talk, but there it is.”
“Good for you,” he said, and didn’t chime in with any stupid questions. “Well, if we’re doing third-date confessions about
sperm donation,” he said, looking suddenly nervous. “You know how I told you I don’t have kids?”
“Were you lying?” I joked.
But he didn’t laugh. “I donated sperm once when I was in college. I told my sister and she almost killed me—made me swear
I’d never do it again no matter how much I needed beer money. So you should know, I might open my email inbox at any time
to a message from a twenty-five-year-old writing to tell me they’re my biological kid.”
If you and I got married, your adult donor-baby would be shocked to find out they have such a hot bio-stepmom, I almost joked. What was wrong with me? But there was something eerie about this whole conversation. Because I could imagine
the twins’ sperm donor. Off somewhere on a date, making this same confession to some other woman. Only the twins’ donor would
be mid-twenties by now, likely still too young to drop such a full disclosure on a date. The impulse to not misrepresent oneself,
to immediately share the very facts that would most likely scare off a potential partner—it was the impulse of middle age,
not youth. On a first date, a twentysomething guy would never say, “I have herpes and 80K in student loans.” But a fortysomething
man—a good man, who was serious about a woman—was likely to lay it all out there right away. Did this mean Nate, who I’d just
met but felt I’d known all my life, was serious about me?
“Wow, and I worried I was going to scare you off with all my baggage,” I said, which made him laugh with relief.
“Do you have anything else you need to confess?” he said.
This was it. Now was the time to tell Nate the IDIOTs were planning an attack on the capitol in nineteen days. Surely he’d
want to know a woman would be at Burgdorf the day after tomorrow with grenades and plans for the attack. “Not a confession
exactly.” I paused, gulped, forced out the words. “But like does the ATF take tips from civilians?”
“Every day,” he said. “Though most of them are about Dua Lipa being held hostage at the Treasure Valley skating rink.”
“As if she’d darken the doors of that place.”
“Exactly. Charli XCX? Maybe. But not Dua Lipa. She’s too fancy.”
“You really know your pop divas,” I said.
“Don’t judge. I like a bop.”
I held up my palms. “Not judging, sir.” I paused. “But the civilians who give you real tips? Like, what happens to them? Do
they get immunity if they’re involved in the crime somehow? Like . . . accidentally?”
His eyes looked concerned, but he kept his tone light. “You asking for a friend?”
“Haha, no,” I said, suddenly feeling overheated despite the cold. “I’m reading this murder mystery—Dial AD for Arms Dealer—and it seems totally unrealistic. So I was just wondering how things work in real life.”
He looked relieved. “So what’s the situation?”
“The protagonist is trying to prove she didn’t murder this lowlife so she’s gathering evidence against his gang of . . . of
arms traffickers. She’s hoping to get immunity by being helpful to law enforcement and prosecutors and everything.”
His brow furrowed. “Well, if she did murder him she’d likely still get prison time.”
“It’s more like she didn’t murder him but in the process of trying to find out who did she committed some smaller crimes,” I said.
“Whether or not to grant immunity is up to the individual judge,” he said. “But I’ve never seen a judge deny immunity for
someone with evidence implicating a bigger fish. Especially if it was an arms-trafficking ring.”
A heady mix of relief and sexual attraction flooded me. “How come?”
“Even judges who are hardcore pro-gun hate weapons traffickers.”
As Nate delivered this fantastic news, I stared into his dark eyes, which were flecked with gold. I wanted to stare into them
for the rest of this lifetime—what was wrong with me! My headspace was like a Hallmark Valentine movie.
“Oh good. Because I was worried. About my protagonist,” I managed.
“This sounds like some book you’re reading.”
“It’s pretty harrowing,” I agreed.
“You know, I could see liking it here,” he said. “In Boise. If I knew the right people.”
By right people I could tell he meant me. I don’t know if I leaned in or he did. But our lips were about to touch when the twins and Little
Sister trotted up to us, laughing and breathing hard from chasing each other.
Nate and I pulled back. What in the holy hell was I doing? I was supposed to be convincing him the ATF needed to go to Burgdorf