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“So, I found a list online,” I blurt out while turning away. If I look at him, I won’t get through this. I’m alreadyembarrassed enough, out here feeling like I’m unzipping my meat suit and showing off the goodies, which sounds as horrific as it feels. “Questions to get to know someone.”
There’s no list.
It’s a trick I picked up in college.
At first, I started with fun icebreakers, like those old online quizzes, but I soon found abstract probing questions to be far more insightful. Asking someone when they last cried wouldn’t win me friends, but even when the answer is innocuous, it reveals something. It’s important to know how open a person is to being vulnerable before we start, so I learned what to ask. Getting to know people became addicting, and there’s no one I want to know more than Sebastian.
“You don’t need a quiz to get to know me, Bee. You only need to ask. Or is there something specific you want from me?”
I shrug, feigning nonchalance. I’ve never been nonchalant a day in my life. I was born chalant. Might as well call me the surface of the sun, because there is no chill here.
The washing machine gives one last harrowing groan, stealing our attention. I busy myself with pulling the—thankfully clean—clothes out, while Sebastian calls a repairman.
13
SEBASTIAN
At twenty-one,if someone had told me that one day, I’d find grocery shopping more romantic than any date I’d ever been on, I would have told them to jump in their DeLorean and go back to 1955, but I’m eating my words now. Bee manages to turn every mundane task into a trip I want to repeat as often as possible.
I’ve always been more of a “whatever I can afford and doesn’t kill me” kind of guy, but Bee is more sensible. Some decisions are made because they are frugal (the staple items), some for comfort (“If you ever buy two-ply toilet paper, I will use it to TP our house.”) and some just because (“Don’t underestimate the power of a two p.m. brown sugar cinnamon Pop-Tart. Many books would never have been finished without them.”). There’s a verbal tussle when we can’t agree on which cereal to buy, but I negotiate Bee down to alternate weeks. Little does she know she could have talked me down to nothing. She looks so sexy in a faded camp T-shirt and bike shorts that I would agree to eat cardboard out of a shoe.
“Would you rather be loved, respected, or admired?”
One thing is for sure. I’m ready to write a strongly worded email to whoever wrote this damn questionnaire. A very strongly worded email.
I contemplate it while I reach for hot sauce. It’s on special, half-off, so I get a second as well. There’s no such thing as too much when it comes to spice. “Loved.”
“I’m shocked you still have tastebuds considering how much of that you use. Couldn’t you get more if you went with the store brand?”
I stare, speechless. Store brand? It’s blasphemy.
“The same could be said of your degreaser.” When Bee’s mouth drops, I know I’ve won, but I follow the urge to brush her hair over her shoulder and add, “And we both know I have a taste for the finer things in life.”
She ducks and clears her throat, rushing ahead of me to add a box of dry spaghetti to our cart.
It takes two more aisles for her blush to fade.
“What’s something you used to believe about relationships but no longer do?”
“I don’t know.” I’d like to say it’s too early in the day for a question like that, but it’s eight p.m. on a Tuesday. “I guess I used to think they weren’t something I ever wanted.”
“But you do now?”
“Yes.” We turn into a new aisle, and I remember we need more coffee. I grab an extra bag, even though it’ll stretch my weekly budget, but cataloging the little moans of joy Bee lets out around her second cup in the morning is worth more than a skipped lunch or two. “I didn’t exactly have the perfect example of wedded bliss growing up, so Ialways told myself I would never get married. The last thing I wanted was to repeat my parents’ history.”
“That’s fair.” Bee’s contemplating the selection of hot chocolate. She stepped out of the shower just before we left, and the strands that didn’t make it into her messy bun are curling at the base of her neck, brushing her skin where the oversized tee bares her shoulder. It’s incredibly enticing.
“But the truth is, I want to get married someday. Kids too, I hope.”
I’m trying desperately not to picture this future with the kind, capable woman currently debating between mint- and cinnamon-flavored syrups and fail miserably.
She chooses mint. “Let me ask you this, then. When you think about the future, what do you see?”
You.
“You said you want to settle down now. That you want something of your own, but apart from the house, what do you see? Don’t you have a goal in mind?”
“Honestly? Between work and the club, I don’t have enough left over to think beyond this week’s paycheck.” I wish I could. Bram’s question has been replaying itself every night with no answer.
