Chapter Eleven
Marshall
“You don’t feel even a little bad about tricking a girl into going out with you?” asked Mr. Wood.
“No, why would I feel bad?”
We were seated in his office on Thursday morning. I had just left the bakery, flush with victory, and couldn’t resist crowing to someone about what I had just done. Outside in the yard, a light mist blanketed the white dogwood blossoms and the sea-green grass. Sean hadn’t come in yet, but he had texted his grandfather to let him know he was on his way.
In the meantime, he and I were playing chess.
“Because,” said Mr. Wood, picking up his one remaining rook and slowly turning it over, “some would say it’s wrong to force a girl into going on a date with you against her will.”
Naturally, I balked at this. “She’s not doing it against her will,” I said angrily. “No one’s holding a gun to her head and forcing her to go on a date with me. If she doesn’t want to, she doesn’t have to.”
“Does she know that?” he replied.
I was silent for a minute. I had felt so good about myself after leaving the bakery; I was Jason bringing home the Golden Fleece. And now this old man was calling my methods into question. It had never been my intention to pressure Lori into doing anything she didn’t want to do. I was almost tempted to text her and apologize.
My thoughts were interrupted by the screech of tires in the yard and the sound of a car door slamming. A second later the door opened, and Sean came running in.
“Hey, did you go by the store this morning?” he asked me.
It was clear from the grin on my face that I had big news. “I did, actually.”
“And?”
“And we are going on a date on Saturday night. I hope she likes Mexican food because I’m in the mood for some chicken flautas.”
Sean stared in disbelief. “I can’t believe that actually worked. She has to have known she was playing against a sleight-of-hand master. I hope she doesn’t call and cancel when she figures out what you did.”
I let out a loud sigh. Everyone was making it sound like I had committed a crime. “I tried to tell him nobody wants to go on a date that they feel they’ve been tricked into,” said Mr. Wood.
“She would have said yes eventually.” My frustration was reaching new heights. “It might have taken three weeks, or four, or five, but she would have relented when she saw my persistence. My trick just sped up the process.”
“If you say so.” He moved his rook five spaces to the left, threatening one of my knights. “But in the end, I think she would have appreciated your determination a lot more. Now she’s only going out of obligation.”
I looked to Sean for help. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt this bad for landing a date before.”
“Well, you probably landed your previous dates honestly,” Mr. Wood replied.
“Okay, but isn’t there an old saying about how ‘all is fair in love and war’?” said Sean. “It doesn’t really matter how he landed the date; the important thing is that he landed it. In ten years, they’ll be telling their kids the heartwarming story of how they met.”
“Yes, and Marshall will be explaining to his boy how you must never, ever do this thing, but here’s a story of how it worked this one time.”
I threw up my hands in frustration; Mr. Wood had made up his mind, and there was no convincing him that Lori might really want to go out with me. “How did she seem when you left?” asked Sean. “Worried? Upset? Secretly pleased but trying hard not to show it?”
“I’ll let you know on Saturday. If we go out, and she doesn’t absolutely have the time of her life, then I’ll never bother her again.”
“I guess we’ll know in a couple days,” said Mr. Wood. “Would you really tell us if she hated it?”
By that point, Sean had had enough—he and his grandfather exchanged some heated words—and within a few minutes, we had both been thrown out of his office.
Later, we discussed the conversation over beer and steaks at Sean’s house.
“You know, I don’t normally second-guess myself,” I told him as I layered the skillet with caramelized onions, “but your grandfather made me feel awful. Going into the store this morning, my only goal was to make her smile and get a date out of it. I laid down the terms of the bet, and she agreed to them. There was nothing coercive about it.”
“Don’t listen to Gramps,” said Sean. “He’s never met Lori, and he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
I fixed him with a serious look. “Okay, but are you just saying that because you’re my friend? If you really thought I had done something wrong, would you tell me?”
“If I thought you were being creepy, or manipulative, or underhanded, I would tell you. The thing you have to understand about Gramps is that he’s a contrarian. He loves to play devil’s advocate because he gets a kick out of being the only man in the room with his opinion. I can almost guarantee that if three or four of us went in there and tried to warn you that using a card trick to score a date with Lori was a bad idea, he would be all for it.”
I smiled, for the first time since leaving the bakery. “Maybe we should have done that from the beginning.”
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy, but the way he insists on arguing with everyone gets on my nerves. I don’t think he even really believes half the things he says; it just amuses him to be outnumbered. And then you wonder why I had to block him on Facebook.”
“Well, anyway,” I said with a sigh, “I have a date now, and there’s no backing out of it.”
“There had better not be,” said Sean. “If you text her and call off the date because of what my granddad said, I will break that phone over your head.”