Seven
Evan's eyebrows knit together; it had been twenty minutes, and he still had no idea what he was going to do at that point. The more that he put into it, the more that he wanted to win. There was something to that, he knew. Someone would probably call him a male chauvinist for it, or something. He would probably deserve it, he admitted.
Then again, his entire life he'd been acting like someone who people who used the phrase would call a 'male chauvinist' and so far, it hadn't led him all that far wrong. The only thing that was different now was the fact that he had more going on than his desire to get his dick wet.
He wasn't sure what he wanted, at that point. At first it had been talking to a pretty girl, and he'd been distracted by that little bit. Add the bet in, and it was practically all-consuming. But as time went on there was more and more going into the soup. If he hadn't been sure why he was interested to start, he was sure not certain now.
So instead he looked down at the book that sat in his passenger-side. Pulled into a diner. The sign said 'seat yourself' so he did. Then he cracked the spine, and flipped quickly through the book.
When they said 'unusual' he wasn't sure what that might have meant. As it went on though, he was quickly starting to realize precisely how unusual a book could be while still having pages, without popup pictures or noise boxes. It was just a book, but it was as unusual as anything he could imagine.
Then he turned back to the first page, and he started to read. He almost made it out of chapter two by the time he settled up his bill, and he was no closer to understanding what the fuck he was reading.
But it was her favorite, and if he was going to untie the knot of her life, and find a chink in that armor of hers, then it was going to be in this book. Over the past ten days he had spent almost twenty hours between trying to find her and trying to chat her up. The least he could do was settle in and do a little studying.
He dropped the book into his passenger seat again, marked with the receipt that they'd given him when he checked out.
He read the thing until late in the day. He'd always been a quick reader. This was no exception, but once things started to get wild, Evan knew that it was going to take some time. Still, he dug in. He dug in before classes in the morning, during breakfast. When he was cooling off from his morning run, he read the thing. And by God, he read it between classes, after classes, and when he was done, two weeks had barely passed since the bet started. He closed the book.
He pinched his lips together and closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose. He'd read the book to find the answer to questions he couldn't put into words. To understand Dana better, and maybe, if he was lucky, to figure out what she liked.
Well, he had a good idea what she liked, now. House of Leaves, as it turned out, was a very particular niche. It was a complicated little book, and it spoke volumes about someone who would claim it was their favorite.
But more than that, more than anything, it raised a thousand more questions. He'd hoped it would simplify things, in the way that abstractions so often do.
Instead, it had convinced him that there was plenty of complexity to cope with. Complexity that he didn't know how to address, and was certain to hold a thousand pitfalls.
It didn't make him want to sit down and try to re-read the book. At least that much, he was thankful for. He didn't have another four days of obsessing over the damn thing. He had to get moving on finishing up the bet, and he had to do it soon. But he wasn't sure how he was supposed to move forward from this.
There was one thing, though, that he knew he could do. Another way to move things forward with her. He had to return the book some time in the next week and a half, and he knew precisely where to find Dana when she wasn't drinking her whiskey and Dew.
So he hopped in the car. He drove it like an old man. A thousand people had told him so. Something about having all that power below the hood was nice. He guessed that the same people who thought that his attitude towards women was distasteful would find the thing to be an expression of masculinity.
Sure it was. Not as much as the weight training, of course, or the running, or the hair cut. Definitely not as much as the sex. But he liked the look of the car because it looked like a man's car. That didn't mean that he needed to be driving it around like some kind of NASCAR driver. He went as fast as he had to, and no faster. It was that simple.
So he got to Dana's library almost five minutes slower than if he'd gone ten over, but he wasn't interested in trying to test speed records, and he wasn't interested in getting a speeding ticket.
He slid into a spot near the front; the place seemed practically empty. He glanced at the flier board as he walked it, since it was posted so prominently. They had a movie night, like most libraries seemed to. It was nothing he wanted to see, and if her choice of books was any indication, it was nothing that Dana was excited about either.
So he walked past the counter, over to the little flag that read 'line forms here.' Dana had a stack of books in front of her and her head down. She scanned them, one after the other, not bothering to look up. Her hands moved automatically. The older woman was nowhere to be seen, though Evan guessed that she was in the back.
Finally, when the stack had shrunk down to a quarter of its original size, Dana did look up. If she was surprised to see him, she didn't show it this time.
"Decided it wasn't for you, huh?"
Evan shrugged. "I'm a fast reader," he countered.
"Yeah? What did you think?"
He looked at her a long moment, let his eyes glide down to the cover.
"You want my honest opinion?"
"Yeah. Since you read it, and all." She didn't need to use the word 'liar' to get the message across.
"Honestly? I thought it was pretentious as all hell. But that's just me."
She raised an eyebrow. "Yeah?"
"But I'm glad you told me you liked it," Evan followed through. "Because now I feel like I know a little bit about you."
"What's that? That I'm pretentious?"
Evan gave her his best smile. She didn't react to it, but she waited to hear his response, which was an improvement. "That you like thinking about stuff," he said finally. "I was wondering if you wanted to tell me what you liked about it so much over coffee."