I finally reach the table but before I can say anything, Joe stands up like the gentleman he is and goes, “Hey, you’re back.”
I swivel my gaze over to him. “Yeah, hi. I?—”
Suddenly, a grin erupts on his face, a very boyish one at that, cutting my words off. “You didn’t tell me you knew him.”
My eyes snap back tohim,only to find him still staring at me. With the same dark and focused look. I want to tell him to cut it out. He can’t look at me like that when I’m on a date with someone else. Tearing my eyes away from him, I address Joe. “I don’t. I?—”
“Saw a flash of strawberry red from across the street and stopped in my tracks. There’s only one girl I know with that shade of red hair. My baby sister’s best friend. So I thought I’d come say hi.”
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t you do it, Jupiter.
I breathe in sharply and turn to him. “What were you doing across the street?”
“Watching you through the window,” he replies blithely.
“What were you doingbeforeyou were watching me through the window?”
“Parking my truck.”
“You—”
“I’m in town for a while,” he informs me.
“A while?”
“For the foreseeable future.” I open my mouth to say something when he continues, “I’m sure we’ll be running into each other a lot.”
He’s dropped his voice low, making the words sound so rough and deep. Carrying a certain weight of intimacy in them. Like wereallyknow each other. Like there’s a connection between us.
“We’re on a date,” I tell him firmly.
Danger flashes through his features, tightening his jaw, but before he can say anything Joe speaks. “Yeah, I’m sorry but I think that’s my fault. I invited him to sit with us. I just…” He turns back to him, totally starstruck. “I know I’ve said this before, but you’re fucking amazing. I’ve watched every single one of your games. And not only in the pros. I’ve followed your career ever since you played for the high school here.”
Joe goes on to say other wonderful things about him, but I tune it out as I watch him slip into his celebrity mode. He goes from being Shepard Thorne to the Wrecking Thorn in the blink of an eye. A gracious smile, relaxed but confident features. This is how he is in front of the cameras. Somehow both approachable and mysterious. Charming and arrogant. A celebrity through and through, who you think you know but want to know more about. That’s why the media love him, or rather love to talk about him.
“I’m so sorry about last season, man. That sucked balls,” Joe seems to be saying when I decide to pay attention, and I watch him go rigid. It’s a subtle change and I don’t think Joe notices, which is why he continues on the same topic, and Shepard grows more frozen by the second.
Until I can’t stand it anymore and I decide to interrupt Joe. “Joe, I think we should?—”
“Take a seat.”
Athisvoice, I fist my hands at my sides. Does he have to sound so commanding? Especially when he’s the one crashing my date. I turn to him to give him a piece of my mind, Joe be damned, but he doesn’t let me get in a word. “You don’t want poor Joe here to keep standing for you for the rest of the night, do you? Doesn’t make you look like a very good date.”
At which point I realize Joeisstill standing, and I immediately feel bad. I look over at Joe and apologize before taking a seat and declaring to the table in general, “Joe’s the proof chivalry isn’t dead. He’s a gentleman through and through. But not everyone can say the same these days, can they?”
Yes, I’m making a dig at him, given that he kept his seat the entire time I was standing. But it’s all true in Joe’s case. Joeisa gentleman. He’s always friendly and kind, open. He smiles at people. He makes them feel at ease. He doesn’t insult people to their face. He isn’t arrogant and condescending, holding a grudge for days. Joe is everythingheis not, and therefore, Joe is perfect. Despite the fact that he doesn’t like my freckles but again, I don’t like them either so I’m not going to let that bug me.
And neither am I going to let it bug me that Joe’s shoulders aren’t so broad that they dwarf the high-backed chair he’s sitting in. I don’t think he could ever pull off a dark t-shirt with the faded logo of a rock metal band that makes him look like he might be the lead singer of said band. No, his hair isn’t dark and isn’t perpetually mussed up, and no, his features aren’t sharp enough to give paper cuts to my heart just at the thought of their beauty.
But that doesn’t matter. What matters is, Joe is a good person. Joe would never let amusement and condescension drip from his words likehedoes when he says, “Definitely not. Although I don’t think you really know the kind of assholes walking around these days. If you did, you wouldn’t leave the house looking like that.”
At this, I snap my eyes over to him once again. “Looking like what?”
And to my dismay, that intimacy I spied in his eyes before only grows. He lets his stare—intimate and intense—wander over my face, my hair. He looks at the pulse fluttering in my neck and my heaving chest, the lacy neck of my emerald dress. Then, coming back to my eyes, “Dazzling.”
See? Joeisa good person. Joe would never do what he just did. Put a strange emphasis on ‘dazzling.’ The kind you do when you’re cursing. Like the word dazzle is a bad word and he meant something entirely different by it.
Asshole.
