“You can run into a burning building, but you can’t spend one evening with a nice guy?”
“That’s different,” I said.
“I agree,” Diana said.
Josie added, “This is more fun.”
“That all depends on how you define ‘fun,’” I said.
It wasn’t a date, but it felt like a date. It was too many opposites. I wanted to go just as badly as I wished I’d never offered. I wanted the rookie to hurry up and get here just as badly as I wanted him to nevershow up at all. I wanted to wear a little flouncy dress for once in my life, but at the exact same time, I wanted to put on my sports bra and a sweat suit—with hood.
My fingers felt like they’d been refrigerated.
At last, a knock at the door—and I felt a visceral jolt of fear in my body. This felt like the scariest thing I’d ever done. How crazy was that? I’d extricated bodies from car accidents, and had guns pointed at me, and literally watched people take their final breaths—butthiswas the scariest thing I’d ever done.
I grabbed Diana’s arm. “Maybe I should wear my dress uniform.”
“Youruniform?”
I nodded. A blazer and some shoulder pads suddenly seemed very appealing.
My heart was glugging like a motor. Without deciding to, I half-hid behind one of the French doors.
But Josie was opening the door, and then Diana was joining in, all normal, as if people opened doors for visitors all the time.
Diana smiled and said, “Hello, rookie. You’re late.”
“I was early,” he said, his voice all apology, “but then I saw a kid wipe out on his bicycle, and I stopped to help.”
Of course he did.
Josie and Diana looked at each other, like,Adorable.
He’d gotten a haircut since that morning—shorter in back, but still longer in front. He wore a perfectly tailored dark gray suit and a baby blue tie.
He looked unfairly handsome.
And so it was happening. Whatever choices I’d made were playing themselves out. There was nothing left to do but step out and meet him.
Just as I did, he looked up and saw me.
Here was something I noticed: He dropped his smile for a second right then. It was like he forgot everything—what he was saying, what he was doing. He held very still.
Did I look that different? I wondered. Was I that shocking?
In my whole life, nobody had ever looked at me that way.
I guess I could have come up with some self-deprecating explanation for the shock of his expression: food in my teeth, a booger, a sudden nosebleed… But I didn’t.
I knew that stare. I knew it because I recognized it.
It was exactly the way I was staring at him.
Here’s something else I noticed: All my naked agony of anticipation? At the sight of him, it melted away. All my nervousness—gone. His presence in the room made everything okay.
Maybe I was doomed to regret everything later. But I couldn’t regret anything right now.
I took a step closer.
