Chapter Eight
Allie
After Curtis left, I didn’t get any more customers for the rest of the day, except for a thirty-something woman in a green sweater whose cat had been behaving in a paranoid manner. With the office empty but for me and Tomas, I turned on the news at half-volume and ran through our conversation in my head like I was rewinding a film. Had I been too awkward? Too dorky? If I had, he didn’t seem to have noticed.
At around closing time, I made myself a poncho out of a black trash bag I found in a box in the storage closet and ran to my car. Once safely inside, I called Lindsay.
“Hey,” she said. “How’s work?”
“So-so. Dave didn’t leave me a whole lot to do, so I’m mostly just sitting in a dark office watching the rain fall.”
“You seen the boy lately?”
“He has a name,” I said. “And yes, Curtis rolled in with the storm this morning and stayed for about an hour.”
“Sounds very Gothic and spooky,” said Lindsay. “Listen, I’d love to chat, but we’re about to start UIL practice. Are we still on for tomorrow night?”
“Yeah, let’s go to Tapas!”
“K. Meet you at six.” She hung up.
***
Because the next day was a half-day, I closed up the clinic at noon and spent the next couple of hours at home drinking kombucha and watching a series about haunted castles on Netflix. I tried to stay focused, but it was getting to the part where whenever I did anything, I wondered how he would react. Would he mind that I was sort of a nerd? That I liked listening to Enya and reading books with titles like The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society? Or would he think it was unbearably elitist and preppy?
Come to think of it, I didn’t have any idea what sort of things he was into. Just based on the way he dressed, I figured he probably liked listening to The Eagles and watching professional wrestling. Fairly low-brow entertainment, but I could put up with it when I had to. I had a roommate in college who listened to Queen nonstop. I hadn’t heard many Eagles songs, but I figured they couldn’t be that different.
Lindsay came bounding in right at six, just as I was finishing feeding the cats.
“Hey, Lindsay,” I said. “Do you ever have second thoughts about dating a guy?”
“Rarely,” said Lindsay. “We go out, we hopefully have a good time, and if that’s all we do, it’s no problem. I don’t feel obligated to call him in the morning.” She threw me a shrewd look. “Are you having second thoughts?”
I frowned at myself in the mirror as I struggled to pin up my hair. “No, I just wonder if we’re really compatible. Like, what if we don’t like the same things?”
Lindsay took me by the arms and spun me around. “Okay, your problem is you’re thinking way too hard about this. Just because he invited you over to his house doesn’t mean you’re getting married. You don’t have to start picking out curtains.”
“But what if this leads to something more serious? I think I’m really starting to like this guy.”
“You’ve hung out with him for a grand total of approximately two hours,” said Lindsay, motioning to the alarm clock on the nightstand. “You might spend more time together and realize he’s not The One. And that’s okay! In the meantime, you’ll have a good time together.”
I winced. It was hard to accept that you probably weren’t going to spend the rest of your life with the guy you really liked.
We went to Tapas. Over appetizers of sautéed asparagus and chicken wings with blue cheese dressing, I gave her the exciting news.
“The other really cool thing,” I said, trying not to sound too excited about it, “is that his mom might be renting out the tiny house on their property.”
“Oh?” said Lindsay, sipping some of the foam off of her mug of frothy ale. “Is that what you want?”
She didn’t sound all that enthused about it. It was disappointing. “Don’t you think that’s cool?” I couldn’t help asking.
“Sure, if you think that’s best,” said Lindsay. “I just don’t know if living with some dude’s mom is living your best life, especially if y’all just met.”
“I wouldn’t be living with his mom,” I said, starting to feel offended. “I would be living on her property. It’s different.”
“I don’t know, Allie.” She set down her mug and glanced thoughtfully down at the table, waving her thumbs nervously. “Living in a tiny house on some old lady’s farm, way out in the boons? I just think if you meet a guy and immediately move onto his mom’s property, you’re giving up all your power. And then what happens if you break up? Are you just going to go on living there?”
That was a fair point. I hadn’t thought of it like that. “I guess I’d have to look for a new place to live. Maybe that studio apartment you were talking about.”
“You ought to just go ahead and move there now,” said Lindsay, taking a swig of her glass. “Then when he comes over, he’ll have a nice place to visit.”
When she put it like that, it sounded like she didn’t approve of the place where I lived now, but I let it go.
Sensing my discomfort, Lindsay smiled. “I am excited for you, truly. You both sound adorably awkward, and I can’t wait to meet him in person.”
“We are quite awkward,” I said. “Or at least I am; I don’t know about him. I keep worrying that I’m going to say the wrong thing. I wish I was wearing an earpiece when we talked so you could feed me lines.”
“You don’t need an earpiece,” said Lindsay. “But when we get home in a few minutes, I’ll give you some pointers on being less awkward, just so you’re not freaking out on your next date.”
When we got back to the house, I straightened and brushed my hair while River curled up in my lap and Lindsay painted my nails. “Okay,” she said, “so you know that thing you do where someone asks you a question and you sit there for like a minute with your mouth open, going, ‘Uhhhh…?’”
“Do I do that?”
“You do. But don’t do that. Also, not everything I say needs to be met with a Friends reference. Leave Ross and Phoebe back in the ‘90s where they belong.”
“This is a lot to remember,” I said with a deep breath. “Somehow I feel even more panicky.”
Lindsay lowered herself to eye level and placed her hands on my shoulders. “Look, just be yourself, and you’ll be fine. And cover your mouth so I can’t see your uvula; it’s like a cave in there.”
I flung my hand over my mouth, blushing scarlet.
After she left, I lay in bed for a couple of hours stroking Phoenix and River and struggling to read one of the Phryne Fisher novels. But it was late, my eyes were too tired, and I was having trouble concentrating. After about twenty pages, I realized I had only the haziest notion of what was going on—I think there had been a jewelry robbery—and I set the book down on the nightstand.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” I said to the gently purring River, who was sprawled on my chest. “This guy seems great, and I really like him, but we just met, and I don’t actually know anything about him.”
When we went out riding, I’d have to think of some clever way to grill him on his favorite books and music and TV, but in a subtle way so he didn’t suspect. And what if he didn’t like reading? What if he only watched reality shows on MTV? That would be depressing, and probably a deal-breaker, but I promised myself I would wait before I passed judgment. Perhaps, I thought as I shoved the cats off and turned over, perhaps by some miracle he would turn out to be the most cultured person in east Texas.