Page 93 of Never Alone
"Do you want to eat out for dinner?"
She marked her page with her finger.
"Are you asking me out?"
"I'm asking if you want to eat out for dinner."
She watched me. I hadn't been nervous about a question I'd asked someone in a long time. I was nervous now.
"Okay," she said. "Did you have anything in mind?"
I hadn't, in fact, had anything in mind. I hadn't had a thought in my head between turning off the shower and walking back into the living room.
"Anywhere you want."
"There's a place on King Street I've been meaning to try since I came back. I keep walking past it."
"King Street works."
"Okay." She closed the book.
"I'll go first," I said. "Just grabbing a shirt."
I went into the bedroom and put on a button-down. One of two I owned that didn't have a Station 33 patch on the sleeve. I rolled the cuffs and unrolled them and rolled them again.
I'd asked her on a date.
I left the cuffs rolled.
I came out. Tessa got up from the couch and went past me into the bedroom.
She came out fifteen minutes later in a simple navy dress. She had been beautiful in the kitchen with flour on her hands, and she was beautiful now in front of me, and the dress had nothing to do with it.
She had stopped dyeing her hair dark a few weeks back. The honey-blonde was coming back at the roots. The bathroom light was on behind her, and her hair caught it, and for a second, I was looking at the girl I had known at sixteen.
"Ready to go?"
"Yeah."
I stood up from the couch and got my keys.
I drove. She sat next to me with the window cracked an inch and her hair moving in the air. She was humming again. I kept my eyes on the road. I kept failing to keep my eyes on the road.
"Have you tried the food there before?" she said.
"No. I heard it's good."
"You don't eat out often, do you?"
"What makes you think that?"
"You don't go on dates. What reason do you have to eat out?"
"I could be too lazy to cook."
She looked over at me.
"Cole. The guy who's rebuilding his own house by himself has lazy days?"
