Chapter Eighteen
Evan
“Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Romeo and Juliet
“So are you nervous about Monday?” Elizabeth asked before popping the straw back into her mouth. I stared at her for a heartbeat, a memory of the first time we kissed superimposed over her lips. At the time, those lips had belonged to someone else—at least in my mind.
I wished I could trust her, but even our reason for going out tonight had been based in a lie. Several really, starting with Bas and Chelsea tricking me this morning. She’d only agreed to pretend to be friends for Chelsea’s sake. She’d only gone out with me to hold her friend’s feet to the fire.
I shook my head to focus on Elizabeth, the person in front of me, and not the avatar of my dysfunction. “A little bit.”
“But you’re an old pro at this by now, right?”
“It isn’t the newscast that makes me nervous. I used to worry about all the people watching me, but I’ve figured out how to pretend they don’t exist. I’m back in middle school speech class, showing twenty kids how to make pizza dough.”
She grimaced. “Horrible core memory unlocked, thanks.”
“But if everyday, you stood in front of the same twenty kids, showing them how to make a different variety of dough, you’d get over your anxiety, right?”
“I suppose. That’s a really good analogy.” She licked the ice cream off her lips. “I love a good analogy.”
“Well, I’m flattered. Coming from a word nerd such as yourself, that’s high praise.”
“Word nerd? What does that make you?” She narrowed one eye. “Blizzard wizard? Rain brain?”
“See?” With an apologetic glance at my phone, I said, “I should text Bas. Maybe they went to Chelsea’s place.”
Elizabeth snorted. “Not a chance.”
I flicked an eyebrow up. “Why not?”
“In the time she’s lived in that house, she’s never invited a guy over.”
“Never?”
“It’s been a week of firsts though. She gave Bas her phone number and then agreed to go out on a date, so maybe Bas has the key to her heart.”
“Bas has that effect on people. He woos in his sleep.”
“You know this from experience?”
I laughed. “I love the guy, but we would make very poor bedfellows.”
Her laughter melted. “He’s okay, right? I mean Chelsea’s likely to break his heart if he expects too much, but on the off-chance she lets down her guard, will he hurt her?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. He won’t mean to, but he tends to run headfirst into things without a lot of planning. I know he really likes Chelsea, right now. And from what I’ve gathered, that’s about all she’s open for anyway.”
“For now.”
“You think she’ll change her mind?”
She sighed. “Not to discount her experience, but her words and actions aren’t always aligned. If she ever falls in love, she’ll be the last to know.”
“And what about you? Do you feel the same way as her?”
“Not at all. I don’t believe in soul mates and one-true-pairings, but I still hope to find a partner I can share my life with. I want the happy-ever-after.”
That was good to know. Not that it changed anything, but I’d assumed she’d only used me for sex. I didn’t judge anyone for their own choices when it didn’t impact me, but I didn’t want to be a warm body. I craved something different, something real, something lasting. “You’re a romantic.”
“A pragmatic romantic. My parents taught me that love is an action. I appreciated their scientific approach, but at the end of the day, I’m an English student, and I want to believe in castles and deus ex machina and romance heroes.” A pretty flush crept up her cheek. “What about you?”
“Do I believe in romance heroes?”
“Do you believe in love?”
The question was so earnest, it took me by surprise. It sounded like a pop song or every cliché Hallmark movie, but she waited, her lip ever so slightly drawn between her teeth, the only sign this question mattered to her more than she let on. So I considered it just as earnestly.
“I think it would be impossible not to believe love is real. You see people getting struck with it, like lightning, every single day. My own parents still flirt with each other, and so I’ve seen it with my own eyes. I know it’s real.”
“But you’ve never experienced it?”
I shook my head. I’d dated a few women, but in the end, it had always been a chemical thing, never spiritual, never true love. “You?”
She shook her head. “To be honest, I don’t exactly put myself in situations to meet anyone.”
“Except at a rooftop bar on a Friday night.”
Her lips pursed. “That was not my idea.”
I wanted to reach across and take her hands, tell her I was glad she had approached me that night, but I fought the urge. The verdict was still out on her character.
The waitress stopped at our table with a credit card reader, a clue she wanted us to pay and get out. I glanced around and noticed the place had emptied. “Looks like they’re closing.”
It was still pretty early, and I wanted to keep talking, but the options for doing that crystallized into a pinpoint, and I didn’t think it would be a good idea to go back to her place tonight.
She scooted her way out of the booth and said, “Chelsea hasn’t replied to my texts which probably means she’s otherwise occupied. Why don’t we drive over and see where Bas parked his car?”
“Is it creepy to stalk our wayward friends?”
“Technically, we’re stalking a car, but if they didn’t want us speculating about them, they should have planned better. They could have texted us.”
We headed back out, into a haze of moisture hanging in the air like a cold-water steam bath.
Still, it made us duck our heads and walk too quickly for conversation.
Once we got to the car, it was a quick jog over to the street where Chelsea and Elizabeth lived.
Discovering Bas had indeed parked at the curb, we had an answer of sorts.
For all we knew, they were inside playing Mario Kart.
“Which way to Basil’s?” She continued on without once asking me if I wanted to come up to her place, which was a relief and a bit of a disappointment.
She’d talked about Chelsea’s actions not matching her words, and I understood that contradiction as my heart warred with my head.
The truth was, I liked Elizabeth. She was easy-going, fun to talk to, and unbelievably cute.
I’d never had such a casual, comfortable date, but maybe that was because it wasn’t one.
Without that social pressure, I could be myself. It was weirdly freeing.
The streetlights smeared on the wet roads as I directed her at each turn, Elizabeth humming along to a song on the radio.
It struck me that I’d never seen her in a bad mood, with one exception, when she saw me in the newsroom on Thursday.
Granted, I hadn’t spent much time with her, but even when she’d been flustered during the broadcast, she’d squared her shoulders and made the best of it.
“Tell me a joke,” she said, as we turned onto Cherry Avenue. “I need to distract myself from thinking about what our best friends are likely up to.”
“Oh, God.” I scratched my chin while Elizabeth picked up speed, that image now planted in my brain. “Okay. What do you call a sad hurricane?”
“Oh, a weather-related joke. Why am I not surprised?” She tapped the steering wheel. “I give up.”
I sighed in advance of her disgust at the bad pun. “A tropical depression.”
She surprised me with a full body laugh. “God, I love corny jokes. My dad is the absolute worst, but they always make me laugh.”
I pointed at the upcoming light. “It’s right here, then the next left.”
She put on her blinker. “I can’t believe how close Bas has lived all this time. I keep telling Chelsea it’s weird they haven’t run into each other before. Though maybe they’d crossed paths.”
“Charlottesville’s bigger than you think.” As she navigated, I said, “So what’s your favorite dad joke?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “How do you think the unthinkable?”
“Is that like a white elephant thing?”
She grinned over at me, and I could tell she was bursting to tell me.
“That’s Bas’s place right there,” I said, pointing at his little bungalow. As she slowed along the curb, I said, “I’m never going to guess, am I? How do you think the unthinkable?”
“With an ithburg,” she said, eyebrow raised expectantly.
It took me a full five seconds to unwind that entire joke, to hear the lisp in the question, and then I coughed out a laugh. “Awful.”
“If you ever met my dad, your eyeballs would hurt from rolling.”
“You should love Bas, then.” Bas tormented me nonstop with dad jokes.
She exhaled, like realization dawning. “That’s right. He did seem quick with the corny pun.” She cackled a low, sinister, sexy laugh. “Oh, my God, what a perfectly ironic twist.”
“What? Why?”
“Such a nightmare for Chelsea. Her sense of humor is a bit darker. I’m positively giddy imagining her fending off terrible one-liners.
” Her smile looked kind of demonic in the hazy glow of the dashboard lights.
I knew I should be getting out of the car, but I couldn’t find a break in the conversation, or maybe I didn’t want to.
“You two seem to get a kick out of each other’s misery.” I thought back to this morning, when Chelsea had sprung that picnic on Elizabeth. “You sure you’re actually friends and not frenemies?”
Her grin grew bigger. “I can’t believe you know that word.”
“Why wouldn’t I?” I shrugged. “Is that English major territory?”
“Hardly.” She tilted her head, and a wisp of hair fell across her forehead. “So what about you and Bas, is that a bromance?”
“More like a buddy comedy.”
She shifted a little in her seat, but she didn’t have a witty retort for once. The sudden silence read as an invitation to tell her goodnight and eject myself from her car.
I said, “You’re so…” right as she said, “I really…”
And we both froze. I held my breath waiting for her to finish that sentence. She waved for me to continue, but me finishing my sentence hung on knowing whether she was about to say, “I really should be going,” or “I really want to kiss you.”