Chapter 15
I haven’t been to this seafood house for at least five years.
It’s near Baltimore and has a laid-back atmosphere with nautical decor and a steady stream of customers from lunchtime on.
The seafood is better than average, and the restaurant’s reputation in the area is good.
It’s an excellent choice for my one public date with Wes this week.
Other than the occasional run-in at Rooster’s or in the garden, we haven’t seen much of each other in the week since the proposal.
I’ve been busy every day, dealing with the renewed influx of interest in Blossom Park and scheduling publicity with Natalie. But I haven’t hung out with Wes intentionally.
It was his idea.
I was all ready to make repeated appearances with him, but he suggested playing it cool. He said if we were a real couple, we wouldn’t want to live out our relationship in public, so it will be more believable if we schedule one date a week and otherwise avoid the cameras.
I’ve been talking myself out of being hurt by the suggestion.
It does make sense. And I can hardly blame him for not wanting to devote his whole life to this ridiculous farce.
Just because I’ve been looking forward to our time together doesn’t mean he is too.
After all, he was the one who wanted to halt our “chemistry.”
Maybe his chemistry with me isn’t as strong as mine with him.
Whatever.
It’s not a big deal.
I knew going into this that it wasn’t real. I knew it would be awkward and strange and unnatural.
I can hardly whine or begrudge Wes that it’s turning out to be exactly what I knew it would be.
This is all for Blossom Park, and no matter how upset I get when it’s clear Wes doesn’t want to spend a lot of time with me, I’m not going to let it drag me down.
Blossom Park is the most important thing.
Not my silly, bubbling feelings for Wes.
All that to say I’m a bit of an emotional mess on Saturday night in the seafood place as I sit in an intimate corner booth next to him.
We’re so close he’s had to drape his arm along the top of the booth behind me.
To the world, we must look like a very happy, newly engaged couple who can’t keep their hands off each other.
That’s the point. To be seen. To drive home the story of our whirlwind romance.
It doesn’t matter that the reality is I’m feeling uncomfortable and tongue-tied and unable to think of any good topic of conversation.
Wes must feel the same because he’s hardly said anything since we got into his SUV back at Blossom Park.
On the drive, I turned on music and sang along with my favorite songs to give the impression of breezy nonchalance.
But nonchalant is the last thing I’m feeling right now.
Wes is looking good in a pair of soft, faded jeans and a button-up shirt in a plaid of various shades of gray and turquoise. He must have showered and shaved right before we left because he still smells like soap, and he doesn’t have any of his normal late-in-the-day stubble.
I like looking at him. I’d do it more if I didn’t feel so awkward right now.
“Don’t get all uptight about it,” he says, soft and low. We’re sitting so close all he has to do is tilt his head down to speak right next to my ear.
I stiffen and say the most predictable thing. “I’m not uptight.”
“Yes, you are. Even if I didn’t have proof in the fact that you refuse to talk to me, I can feel the tension radiating off you.”
“Nothing is radiating off me.” I edge away from him slightly so I can glare.
Up go his eyebrows in the most obnoxious arch.
“I’m not the only one not talking. You’ve hardly been loquacious tonight.”
“Loquacious?”
“Use a dictionary if the vocabulary is beyond you. And don’t think you’ve distracted me that easily. If I’m slightly uncomfortable right now, obviously you are too.”
He looks like he’s about to argue but then stops the words, his shoulders slumping slightly. “You’re right. We both are.”
“So why am I the target of your particular brand of snideness?”
His mouth twitches slightly. “To tell you the truth, it was a last-ditch effort to break the tension with an argument. I figured if you’re mad at me, you won’t be so uptight.”
“I wasn’t uptight!” Despite the vehemence of my retort, I’m actually feeling a lot better. There’s something akin to laughter simmering right beneath the surface of my consciousness.
“Sure you weren’t.”
I make a face at him, but there’s not much heat in it. And we’re both trying not to smile when the server comes over with my white wine and Wes’s beer.
He’s a friendly guy, but he clearly doesn’t recognize us from social media.
Despite the way it feels sometimes, like everyone in the world is watching us, the full attention of social media is still a very small segment of the population.
Wes chuckles as I ask the server about the meal choices I’ve been considering, finally settling on grilled salmon since the lobster is so ridiculously expensive.
Then Wes goes right ahead and orders the lobster.
The nerve of him when I responsibly avoided the priciest thing on the menu.
He appears to be laughing at me when the server walks away.
I roll my eyes at him. “I guess we’re not uptight anymore.”
“I guess not.”
“What do you find so funny over there?”
I expect him to admit he’s laughing at me, so he surprises me when he drawls, “You remember Mitch from high school?”
“Yes.” Mitch was a classmate. He was one of those obnoxious people who never stop talking because they always have to be the center of attention.
Wes nods toward the far corner of the room. “That’ll be him when he gets old.”
Curious, I turn around far enough to see who he’s gesturing toward.
It’s an elderly man who is talking so enthusiastically he’s almost coming up off his chair. And I can see him as Mitch so clearly I let out a burst of amused sound.
When I turn back toward Wes, he looks ridiculously pleased with his own comparison.
Something about the picture of that old man as Mitch and the look on Wes’s face sends me into a ripple of helpless laughter. And once I start, I can’t stop.
I sit there laughing and trying to control myself and then laughing again and then once again trying to stop.
Wes looks more pleased with himself than ever.
When I was in third grade, the teacher made me sit next to the bad boy in class.
I was always a good girl. Quiet and responsible and diligent in doing everything I was told to do.
The worst thing I could imagine was getting in trouble with the teacher, so I never did.
Because of that, and because teachers always thought good girls would somehow be capable of reining in boys’ badness, getting stuck sitting next to the bad boys wasn’t unusual.
Third grade was the first time I didn’t really mind that annoying feature of my elementary school years.
The bad boy in class also happened to be the cute boy.
So I got to sit next to the boy all the girls liked.
Including me. I never admitted it because I never admitted such things, but I liked him too. I thought he was cute. And I really wanted him to like me.
But not enough to get in trouble with the teacher.
So for the first weeks, I did my normal thing, paying attention and only talking to him in breaks. But one day he snuck in clay to play with, and he was molding figurines out of it in the shapes of other kids in class.
I recognized all of them, so I kept getting diverted from the teacher talking in front of the classroom.
The boy must have realized I was watching because he kept it up. Then, in a happy accident, the boy he had just shaped happened to raise his hand, so he adjusted the clay to have the boy with his hand up.
The boy was an annoying one, and he went off in a long, self-aggrandizing ramble about something that happened to him over the weekend that barely related to the topic in hand. And the cute boy beside me took his hand and completely flattened the clay figure of the boy with his hand up.
For some reason, it tickled me. More than it probably deserved.
I started laughing and couldn’t stop.
As often happens, my laughter encouraged the boy to continue doing and saying things to make me laugh until I had trouble paying attention in class.
Eventually the teacher had to separate us because her grand scheme of using the good girls for classroom regulation had failed spectacularly.
Sitting in the seafood restaurant for the rest of the evening, I can’t help but think of that cute little bad boy who sat next to me for a month in third grade.
Because Wes seems to be doing the same thing.
After making me laugh so hysterically the one time, he keeps trying for the rest of our meal.
He makes dry comments about our fellow diners, all of them clever and astute and good-natured. I keep giggling, partly because they’re funny and partly because I’m so relieved to be over the awkwardness from earlier.
When the food arrives, I’m excited because my salmon, baked potato, and fried okra look delicious. But then it gets even better when Wes casually breaks apart his lobster and puts half of it on my plate.
“What is this for?” I ask, staring from my plate to his face and back.
“This is because you were afraid to order it and there’s no reason you shouldn’t have it.”
I gape at him, genuinely dumbfounded that he somehow realized that.
“What?” he asks after a minute. “You’re not going to deny it, are you?”
“How did you know that?”
“Because I’m pretty good at reading your face.”
“Are you?”
“Yes. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“Maybe.” I think it through and realize he’s given me plenty of evidence of that talent.
“In all truth, it isn’t very hard. You don’t exactly have a poker face.”
“I have a good poker face.”
“No, you really don’t.”
I scowl at him.
“Case in point,” he mutters with another twitch of his lips.
So there I go, spilling over into laughter again.