Chapter 20 #2
But before today, he’d been thinking about Valerie.
Thinking about asking her out. Or stuck in a loop about asking her out, really.
But it wasn’t unrealistic now, was it? He wasn’t some 21 year old kid with nerdy hobbies.
He was an almost 22 year old man who was being flown halfway across the country for a job interview.
Someone like that could totally ask out a law student, couldn’t he?
“I will. But I need to say something first. I was thinking about you over Christmas.”
She smiled, just as prettily as the first day they’d met.
“I’ve been thinking about you too. And today I thought—why don’t we grab dinner?
My treat. And we can tell each other everything we’ve been thinking about.
” She paused for a moment, which he was pretty sure was for dramatic effect.
“And, yes, I’m officially asking you out on a date, just so we’re both on the same page. ”
Nora , three hours later
“So I’ve got three interviews in two days. I’m heading down to Manhattan tomorrow. I’m glad we could get together beforehand.”
“So am I,” Nora said. It had been—nice. Not magical, not amazing.
But nice. Comfortable, mostly. Ben had talked more than she had, quite a bit more.
But he did have a lot to talk about and it was all interesting—the story with his brother and the yacht captain, and how Ben had snuck into a press conference at Gracie Mansion, and the ridiculous Christmas gifts his family gave each other.
She definitely knew him better now, and she wanted to keep knowing him—one new story at a time.
That could start right now; they were outside the front door of North Hall.
It was quiet out, and dark; only a handful of lights on in the windows of her dorm.
If ever there was a moment to seize with him, it was this one.
“Well, here you go. Home safely.” She could absolutely invite him upstairs; her roommate wasn’t back on campus yet. Or at least she could kiss him goodbye; maybe that would be enough for now.
Or not; she leaned in, and he turned his head so that all she could reach was his cheek. She kissed that, and he patted her on the arm.
“I’ll call you when I’m back. I had a great time, Nora. See you soon.”
And he was gone. What the heck had just happened? What had she done to turn him off? She’d thought he liked her—he was the one who’d asked for a date, out of the blue. And then he didn’t even want to kiss her?
Nora didn’t know what it meant, except that it definitely wasn’t good.
Daniel , the same time
They were at the Green Lantern Café. Daniel had made a point of not sitting at the same booth he and Nora had sat in for their first date. That felt disrespectful, somehow.
But other than that, he was completely focused on Valerie.
And she seemed to be equally focused on him.
She listened to him go on and on about the interview in Chicago.
He’d stopped himself several times to apologize for talking too much, until she finally said, “Daniel, I’m going to be a lawyer.
If there’s anything I’m good at, it’s speaking for myself.
If I didn’t want to hear what you’ve got to say, I’d tell you. ”
He blushed a little at that, but he couldn’t argue with her words, or the smile that went with them. “Okay. Objection sustained—is that right?”
She chuckled. “Close enough. Go on, counselor.”
“So, yeah. It’s next Wednesday. They’re flying me out, putting me up in a hotel, all expenses paid.
And then three interviews the next day. I think one is with human resources, and then one with the team I’d be working with and then just one on one with the guy—well, it could be a woman, I don’t know—anyway, the person I’d be reporting to. ”
“Three interviews in one day? Sounds to me like you’re a finalist.”
That’s what it sounded like to him, too, but he didn’t want to say it out loud, so he just nodded.
“How do you feel about all that?” Her smile faded a bit as she asked it.
“I lost my cool a little with my first serious interview. I know it’s hard to believe, but even I get nervous sometimes.
But part of that was, I wasn’t really prepared, and I tried to fake it and I could see they weren’t buying.
” The smile came back. “Never again, though. Every interview afterwards, I made sure I was ready for anything. I might make mistakes, but never the same one twice.”
It was hard for Daniel to picture her making the same mistake once .
“I am nervous, yeah. But I’ve been reading up, I think I’m ready. And I have this whole next week to make sure.”
She nodded. “You know what? I’m going to help you be absolutely sure. The next few days are kind of busy for me, but next Tuesday, you’ll come over to my apartment and we’ll do a practice interview. Deal?”
They weren’t even through their first date, and she was offering to do that? It was hard to believe; why would she go through all that trouble for him?
Because she liked him. Hadn’t he gone over all that yesterday? Why should it be so impossible to believe that Valerie could be interested in him, could want to spend time with him? Could want good things for him?
Maybe Nora wasn’t the only girl in the whole world who saw more to him than he saw himself in the mirror.
“Deal.”
They sat there for another hour, talking and laughing, and then he walked her to her car.
“This was—it was great, Valerie. I’d really like to see you again, and not just for interview practice.”
She gave him the big smile, the prettiest one. “I’d like that, too, Daniel.”
He leaned in, and kissed her then. On the lips, just for an instant. So quickly that it barely counted as a kiss at all.
Except it definitely counted.
Nora , January 15
Ben had said she wouldn’t hear from him for a few days, but after the way he hadn’t let her kiss him goodbye last week, she assumed he was just being polite.
She figured the next time she saw him would be at the Observer office—probably during a staff meeting, where he’d go out of his way not to look at her.
But to her shock, he called an hour ago and asked if she wanted to go to a movie with him. “ Home Alone is playing. I know it’s cheesy, and I’m sure you’ve seen it already, but it’s fun, and two hours in the dark with you and a bucket of popcorn sounds like a pretty good afternoon to me.”
She’d agreed, and now here they were, in the back row of Theater Three at the AMC Campus Hills. The popcorn was in her lap—she’d insisted—and his arm was around her. And at some point while Macaulay Culkin was torturing poor Joe Pesci, he leaned over and kissed her.
She’d wondered if he would do it. Honestly, it was all she was thinking about once they’d stopped talking when the movie started. She’d tried to kiss him last week. But now, after a week of thinking and mixed signals, she wasn’t sure if he wanted to—or if she wanted him to.
If she was being brutally honest, she was almost—maybe dreading wasn’t exactly the right word, but it was the closest she could come to it.
She hadn’t kissed anyone since Daniel. And she hadn’t realized until this moment how much that mattered.
It felt weird to even think about it, almost like she was cheating.
But how could you cheat on someone who you broke up with almost two years ago?
She didn’t respond when he kissed her—the first time.
But ten minutes later, the second time he did it, she kissed him back. And it wasn’t nearly as weird as she had feared it might be.
It was only later, sitting on her bed, with Mr. Fuzzles on the pillow next to her, that she realized how weird it was that it wasn’t weird.
Daniel , that same night
He was in Valerie’s apartment.
He’d been in Nora’s dorm room. And her aunt’s apartment. And back in high school, he’d been in Peggy’s house—even her bedroom once. With the door open and her parents ten feet away.
But he’d never been in the actual home that a woman actually lived in and paid for herself, alone with her.
Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like a big deal, but it did.
He was sitting on the futon she used for a couch, waiting for her to—he didn’t even know what. When they’d gotten there, after another long meal at the Green Lantern Café, she’d headed into her bedroom, saying, “I’ll be out in five minutes.”
“Mr. Keller,” she said in a cold voice, when she stepped out. She was wearing a suit—black blazer over a crisp white blouse, and slacks. “I hope you’re prepared. We spent a lot of money bringing you out to Chicago.”
She wasn’t smiling—or even looking at him. Just staring down at a clipboard.
She’d said she wanted to help him practice interviewing, hadn’t she? Clearly, she wanted to make it as realistic as possible.
Well, he was definitely off balance now, which he was pretty sure was how he was going to feel in Chicago. “Uh, yes, Ms. Vance. I’m ready.”
She started with vague questions—why was he interested in this particular job, what were his career goals, and so forth. He had decent answers for all of them. Then she got into more technical topics, which he had no trouble at all with, but he did wonder how she knew what to ask.
And then, half an hour into it, she asked, “Are fiber optic networks covered by the Telecommunications Act of 1934? And do the privacy provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1986 apply to signals transmitted over fiber optic lines? And how is all of that impacted by local cable operator monopoly contracts, Mr. Keller?”
“Uh—what?” What in the world did any of that even mean?
She suddenly broke character and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. But it was worth it to see your face just now.”
He laughed as well; it was kind of funny. “I can imagine. But I guess, if I got a question like that, I’d just say that I’d refer it to the corporate counsel, it’s their job to deal with all that.”
“Good answer.” She took off the blazer and came over to sit next to him on the futon. “I think you’re going to nail it, Daniel. You were ready for everything I threw at you. Not that I have any idea if you answered the tech stuff right or not, but you sounded very sure of yourself.”
“How did you even know what to ask?”
She put an arm around him. “Two hours in the engineering library at Albion. I’m really good at research.” She pulled herself closer to him. “And you’re worth the effort.”
And then she kissed him, for real.
And he kissed her back.
It wasn’t until half an hour later, after she drove him back to campus and dropped him off in front of West Hall, that he really thought about the kiss, and wondered if Nora could forgive him for cheating on her.
It wasn’t until the next morning that he was able to convince himself you couldn’t cheat on someone you broke up with exactly twenty months ago.