18. The Date the Universe Planned #2
“Then say it.”
“No.”
Suspicious.
We park near the Inner Harbor, and Miles grabs his navy jacket from the trunk before we head to The Copper Heron.
It is exactly as awesome as the pictures I’ve seen.
And by “awesome,” I’m referring to the large, burnished-copper heron standing beside the entrance.
It’s nearly eight feet tall, has one leg raised, and its long beak angled toward the street with an expression of elegant judgment.
I stop beneath it. “It knows.”
Miles follows my gaze. “Knows what?”
“That I kicked you.”
“The heron doesn’t know anything.”
“It has already found me guilty. We have to get a picture.” I ask a man walking by to take a picture of us, and we pose like we’re feeling the heron’s judgement as he looks down at us.
Miles pulls open the restaurant door. It’s on the ground floor of a restored brick building near the waterfront with tall windows and warm pendant lights. Inside, the hostess smiles brightly when he gives his name.
Then her smile falters. “I’m sorry. I’m not finding that reservation.”
Miles’s expression remains pleasant. “I confirmed it yesterday. Five forty. Window table.”
“I’m so sorry,” the hostess says. “We don’t have a window table available, but we can seat you as soon as another table opens.”
“How soon?” Miles asks.
“Fifteen or twenty minutes.”
His eyes flick toward his watch, and his jaw tightens. Then he seems to regret tightening it.
The hostess’s eyes go wide as she pulls a paper out from a folder under her tablet. “Oh. We do have your reservation. Someone just…” She takes a deep breath. “We’ll make this right as quickly as we can.”
Ten minutes later, we are seated at a small table they brought out just to make it right for us.
But I guess the only place they could find to put it was crammed into the route servers use to reach the kitchen.
It does not have a waterfront view. It does, however, have an excellent view of swinging doors into the kitchen.
A server named Lucas appears and introduces himself.
His gaze lands briefly on Miles’s jaw, which is more swollen than it was when we left iFLY.
I know what Lucas is doing because it’s the exact same thing I would be doing if I were in his shoes— constructing a backstory about Miles’s still-forming bruise.
I lean closer to help him out. “I kicked him in the face while indoor skydiving, but only after he ignored a safety boundary in an attempt to rescue me.”
Lucas blinks.
“First date,” I add.
Miles closes his eyes.
A bit later, Lucas returns with water for us. As he reaches across the narrow table, another server comes through the swinging door and bumps him. The glass tips, and ice water pours directly into my lap.
I gasp.
Lucas makes a sound of absolute horror.
Miles is out of his chair before the empty glass reaches the table. “Are you okay?”
I give him a wink. “I’ve survived colder water before.”
Lucas brings an armful of towels while apologizing repeatedly.
“It’s fine,” I assure him. “Really.”
Lucas hurries away. I blot my jeans while Miles stands beside the table, looking as though he would like to interrogate the laws of probability.
When Lucas returns, it’s with a towel-wrapped bag of ice on a plate. “For you, sir. And your appetizers will be complimentary.”
We order. Miles chooses steak, which is optimistic considering he has begun chewing only on the right side of his mouth. I order seafood pasta because if the evening has decided to become a story, I want carbohydrates.
For a while, things get back to normal. We talk about flying. I accuse Miles of deliberately concealing his expertise. He points out that I know he has parachuted from aircraft.
“Knowing you’ve done it and watching you float around like you and gravity signed some secret agreement are two different things.”
At 6:40, Miles looks at his watch. Then again at 6:46. He’s trying not to be obvious, which is making it very obvious.
I nod. “There’s another part of the date.”
“There may be.”
“What time?”
His attention shifts toward the kitchen doors. “Soon.”
At 6:49, Lucas emerges with our entrees on a tray. Another server pushes through the swinging door carrying his own tray at precisely the wrong moment, and he collides with Lucas.
Both my pasta and Miles’s steak slide off the tray and crash to the floor.
The entire restaurant seems to hold its breath as plates break, sauce splatters across the base of the wall, and a roasted potato rolls beneath a neighboring table.
Lucas looks ready to resign from the food-service industry and begin a new life under an assumed name.
I bite the inside of my cheek. Not because any of this is funny, but because it is becoming extremely funny.
The manager says they’ll remake everything and have it to us within fifteen minutes. Miles’s jaw tightens again.
I reach across the table and take his hand, which kind of surprises us both. “We can leave, if you’d like.”
His fingers close around mine. “You haven’t eaten.”
“I’ve had bread and half an appetizer.”
“That isn’t dinner.”
“It is if you’re stranded at an airport.”
He cracks a little bit of a smile, then glances at his watch again before meeting my eyes. “We can wait.”
Our replacement meals arrive at 7:05. We eat quickly, although Miles pretends not to. And I keep catching him pressing his cold water glass against his jaw between bites.
By the time we pay, it is 7:27. Outside, the air is getting cooler, and honestly, so are my damp jeans. As we hurry down the sidewalk toward the traffic light, Miles takes my hand. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s done it.
I notice enough for both of us. His hand is so warm around mine, and when his thumb brushes once over my knuckles, every nerve ending in my arm fires up.
“What are we late for?” I ask as we’re waiting for the light to change so we can cross the street.
“That boat,” he says as he points across the street and grassy area to the Finger Piers.
The light seems to take forever. The moment it changes, we hurry across the wide intersection and toward the piers—but before we can reach them, the boat pulls away.
Miles’s shoulders slump as we slow to a walk. “I thought we could make it.” He sounds so disappointed.
“What were we going to do?”
“Watch the sunset from the open deck and see the skyline and harbor light up around us.”
“That sounds beautiful,” I say. Not generically beautiful. Miles beautiful. Carefully selected and timed and designed around giving me a memory he believed I would keep.
We keep walking, but more slowly now. Just meandering. Neither of us suggests going home. We pass restaurants, old brick buildings, and strings of lights reflected in the dark water.
Then a loud voice carries through the night.
“—and to this day, residents insist they hear her footsteps crossing an empty room on the anniversary of her death.”
I turn. A man in a long black coat stands beneath a streetlamp, addressing a group of about fifteen people. He has silver hair, a lantern in one hand, and the bearing of a man who has personally interviewed several ghosts. There’s a sign beside him.
Harbor Haunts Walking Tour
History. Mystery. Restless Spirits.
Scan to Join Tonight’s Tour
I grin, and my hand tightens around Miles’s. “It says we can join the tour.”
“We’re not dressed for a ninety-minute walking tour.”
“I’m wearing comfortable shoes.”
He looks down at my ankle boots. And my wet jeans. “Those don’t look comfortable.”
The guide raises his lantern and says, “We depart in six minutes.”
I scan the QR code. “We missed the boat, but the universe just handed us an alternative plan for the night. If we don’t take it, the universe will think we’re ungrateful and stop handing us golden opportunities like this. Ghosts, Miles.”
He gives me that smile of his that I know so well. I give him one right back and sign us up.
The tour begins on a narrow cobblestone street, and within twelve minutes, Miles is proven correct about my shoes. They were not made for cobblestone or long walks. I don’t say anything, but Miles notices anyway.
Our guide—Cornelius Blackwood, according to the dramatic name embroidered onto his coat—leads us past eighteenth-century buildings, shuttered taverns, hidden courtyards, and alleys where allegedly murdered sailors still search for the men who betrayed them.
I love every second of it, even if it means I won’t be able to walk again for days.
Cornelius tells us about a widow who waited thirty years for a ship that never returned.
I lean toward Miles. “She eventually discovered he’d opened a bakery in Portugal under another name.”
At the next stop, a woman in white supposedly appears in upper windows before storms. This time, Miles is the one to lean in and whisper. “She only wants you to think she’s a ghost. She’s actually conducting illegal meteorological experiments.”
A beagle belonging to an older couple in the group begins following Miles. At first, the dog only sniffs his shoe. Then it sits on Miles’s foot. When the group moves, it walks beside him instead of its owners.
“Winston,” the woman calls. “Leave that poor man alone.”
Winston refuses.
“He senses something,” Cornelius says gravely.
“He senses beef,” Miles says. “I had steak for dinner.”
Cornelius studies Miles’s swollen jaw, the Ziploc bag of ice our waiter insisted we take with us, and the way Miles keeps checking every alley we pass. “Animals are often drawn to those with heightened spiritual awareness.”
I cover my mouth to smother a laugh. Miles gives me a warning look.
A light rain begins twenty minutes later. No one on the tour leaves. Cornelius lifts his face to the sky as though the dead have personally arranged atmospheric effects. My wet jeans are cold. My feet hurt. My hair is expanding in the moisture. And I have never been happier on a date.