Chapter Ten
Ten
EMMA DIDN’T KNOW WHAT TO DO WITH HER ARMS. Normally she was on her phone or holding client notes or gesticulating wildly as she told a story. But now that she was standing alone on a sidewalk waiting to meet Will, she felt the burden of having to look calm and casual. She didn’t want his first image of her to be her head buried in Instagram, because she didn’t want it to be extremely obvious that she needed constant stimulation to avoid an overwhelming sense of dread. He could learn that about her later.
Emma decided to try holding and stroking her own hand. It was a self-soothing technique that worked more often than she expected. As her right thumb caressed the stretch of skin between her left thumb and index finger, she felt the pounding in her chest start to calm down. Emma tried to remember that she was physically safe. Even if her body wanted her to flee and never go on a first date ever again.
“Laura?”
Emma turned and found a guy who looked exactly like Will staring at her. He was dressed in a fashionably understated light sweater and jeans. His combo of blond hair and blue eyes looked like it was right out of a J.Crew catalog.
“Are you Laura? Because I got this mysterious letter in the mail that said if I showed up here on this day and time and met a girl named Laura, I might be able to save the world.”
“No, sorry.” Emma smiled, catching on. “I’m actually here to destroy the world.”
“Just my luck! Have a good one. And please spare my family.” The guy took off down the street and for a very brief moment, Emma wondered if that actually was Will’s doppelg?nger on some sort of magical quest. But then Will spun around and grinned at her.
“I got you for a second.”
“No way. I was just going along with the bit.”
“If you say so,” he teased before putting his arms out. “Should we hug?”
Instead of answering his question, Emma instinctively stepped into his embrace. Unlike with Rob, there was nothing awkward about the way they folded into each other. Will was on the shorter side, around five-eight or so, which helped their bodies line up. He also smelled clean and freshly shaven, two things Emma loved in a man given her obsession with hygiene and her overly sensitive skin. She overrode her desire to keep nuzzling and pulled away.
“It’s so nice to finally meet you,” she admitted.
“I wasn’t sure this day would ever come. You certainly know how to give a guy the runaround.”
“We matched like two weeks ago!”
“It was at least three, Laura.” Will gestured for Emma to lead the way.
As she headed inside with Will right behind her, she wondered if this was the story she would get to tell her grandchildren. Probably not, her anxiety replied. Anxiety always liked to bet on the worst possible outcomes—and it was destructively easy for Emma to catastrophize given her brain’s faulty wiring. But instead of falling into her old habits, she urged herself to ignore the pessimistic voice in her head and instead focus on how cute Will looked in his jeans. The side view of his butt cheeks helped her stay present.
“Welcome to Color Me Mine,” a bubbly young woman or mature teen (Emma couldn’t tell) called out from the back of the store. Emma was finding it difficult to guess people’s ages now that she was officially over thirty. “Please select what you’d like to paint and then I’ll help get you all set up.”
“Thank you,” Emma and Will sang in unison. It was good to know they were equally polite. Shared values went a long way in forming a healthy relationship.
“So, is this how you separate the wheat from the chaff? By seeing who can paint within the lines?” Will asked as they perused the store’s ceramic offerings.
“This pottery doesn’t have lines. That’s how I can tell if someone does well under pressure.”
“Smart.” He held up a unicorn-shaped plate. “Think I can handle this bad boy?”
“Impossible to say. I barely know you,” Emma teased even though it didn’t feel true. She was having one of those rare experiences where it felt like she’d known Will far longer than she actually had. Which in this case meant more than six minutes.
After some excruciating decision-making and a brief tutorial on how to select and use the paints, Emma and Will were set up at a table for two. Emma had decided to tackle a practical tic-tac-toe set while Will had stuck with the unicorn plate.
“Should I be scared that you’re a therapist?” Will asked as he mixed hot pink and navy blue on his palette.
“Only if you have something to hide.”
“Nothing to worry about there. I’m what you professionals would call ‘incredibly normal.’”
“I find that hard to believe. This place has a selection of over forty colors and you immediately decided to try to create your own.” They both looked at the streaky mush of color that Will was trying to improve by swirling his brush.
“That was just me trying to impress you. You know, show off my creative and untamable spirit.”
“When do you think you’ll actually start painting?” Emma had already finished her first X . She’d gone with a light blue that reminded her of her favorite water bottle.
“In due time. I don’t want to rush and mess her up.” Will stroked the head of the unicorn plate in a way that would have been incredibly creepy if Emma hadn’t already found him so charming. That was the real law of attraction: if someone already liked you, you could pretty much get away with anything.
By the time Will put the finishing touches on what they now referred to as Laura the Unicorn, Emma had already been done with her project for thirty minutes. But the extra time allowed for more conversation. So far, Emma had learned that Will was a podcast producer for one of the bigger networks. He’d also hosted a few midlevel shows of his own and hoped to one day create an audio empire full of important information and relatable narrators, because good stories changed the world. Emma loved the way he talked about his work. She’d never thought about how podcasts were basically an extension of the oral story-telling tradition before; it was clear Will thought about his impact on the world as much as she considered hers.
“So what do you think?” Will held up his plate. His meticulousness had paid off.
“She’s beautiful.”
“She’s yours.” Will handed Laura to Emma, who was more shocked than she should have been considering the unicorn’s strong female energy. And the fact that Will had asked for her favorite colors while picking out the paint.
“Thank you so much. Do you want mine?”
Will considered the sloppily painted mess that was Emma’s tic-tac-toe set. She’d decided halfway through that she didn’t like the orange she’d picked for the O s and mistakenly thought she could just paint over it with a different, brighter orange. The result was pretty awful.
“That is so sweet, but I don’t want people to come to my home, see what you made and think I’m a serial killer.”
Emma shoved his shoulder in mock offense. She wanted to keep touching him but was socially aware enough to know now wasn’t the time.
“All done here?” The upbeat employee from earlier hovered over their table. Up close, Emma still had absolutely no idea if she was over eighteen or not. “I’ll take them in the back to get finished up and you can come get them any time after 4:00 p.m. on Monday.”
“That sounds great, thank you,” Will replied. He waited until the employee was safely out of earshot to whisper, “Is that a child? Or an adult?”
“I have no idea! I’ve been trying to figure it out this whole time.”
“Same. Her face is very young, but her essence—”
“Is like a forty-year-old’s.”
“Exactly.”
For a moment Emma and Will just sat there smiling at each other. It was wild how easy it was to connect with the right person. No uncomfortable silences. No second-guessing if she should make a certain joke or not. A second date felt like an inevitability—in the best way.
It reminded Emma of how simple it was those first few months she was with Ryan. Until everything went wrong.
“You okay?” Will had noticed the shift in Emma’s mood. Her anxiety was back and she wasn’t sure what to do about it. It felt like the fantasy of their potential relationship was crashing down around her even though nothing bad had actually happened.
“Yeah. Yes.” She let out a fake cough to try to recalibrate. “We should probably get going.” She gestured to the employee who was clearly cleaning up for the night. “Let her get back to her math homework.”
“Or her three kids.”
“Maybe both,” Emma joked, feeling a bit more grounded in the moment instead of spiraling about the possibility of Will one day proposing and then breaking her heart.
“Not to be too forward, but would you want to get some ice cream?” Will asked as he held the door open for her.
“Will—” Emma turned to him and looked deep into his ocean-blue eyes “—if I ever tell you that I don’t want to get ice cream, take me to the hospital. Because something is very wrong.”
“I knew I liked you,” Will said before bopping her on the nose in a move that seemed to surprise both of them. “Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.”
Emma laughed. It felt nice to not be the only flustered one for once.