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“I didn’t mean to make things awkward,” he says. “Although, I suppose that is our specialty.”
“Your specialty.” I smile at him. “Not mine.”
“Mmm. I won’t ask for examples.”
His palm is warm against my forefinger. And somehow, it’s simple to slide my fingers down his palm to his wrist and then trace them back.
“Actually,” I say, looking at him, dropping my voice and doing my best to imitate his accent, “have you noticed that we get along really well?”
He laughs. “Don’t remind me. That was…not me at my best.”
My fingers slide back to his wrist; his fingers curve up to tickle my palm, sending a shiver of anticipation up my arm. Our hands interlock.
“Oh?”
“Oh.” He half-smiles and looks at me. “Or I’ll remind you that two can play at that game.”
“Oh?”
“In fact,” he says, “let’s talk about my accent.”
I look at him.
“My pretentious, holier-than-thou, godforsaken British accent.” He tilts his head at me. “Did I miss an adjective?”
“Oooh.” I try to pull away, but he closes his hand around my wrist.
“I see how it is. It’s all fun and games until I start teasing you.” His forefinger is gentle, stroking my arm, and somehow, being able to smile about what we’ve said to each other… It doesn’t make it better. It just makes it more manageable.
“Fake,” I tell him. “Don’t forget that I called it fake.”
He looks at me. “Admit it. You love my accent.”
Heat builds in my inner core. “Maybe. I mean, sure. Everyone does. So explain. I know you went to Cambridge, but that’s rather late in life to develop an accent and have it stick.”
“It’s not from Cambridge.” His finger traces my wrist. “It’s simple, really. My mom went to a fancy-pants British school in Hong Kong when she was growing up. So she has something of an accent.”
“Okay.”
“Then when I was five, my mother was given charge of Cyclone’s European software localization team, headquartered in London. So I went to a fancy-pants British school, too.”
“Oh. I didn’t know that.”
“I lived in London until I was eleven, when Mom was put in charge of the entire programming and applications division. We came back here. By that time, my accent was firmly in place. I tried to lose it in high school, with mixed success.”
“Oh,” I say faintly. “I see. It’s all very simple.”
“Precisely.” He smiles. “It sounds put-on at this point because it’s a bit of posh London, a sprinkle of Silicon Valley, two summers in Thailand with my dad, a visit to India where my uncle lives, a month in Hong Kong—the usual.” He shrugs.
The usual. “I’ve left California exactly twice,” I admit. “Once was to go to Gabe’s hooding at Harvard. The other was for an interview a few weeks ago, where I learned I hate New York City. My parents are from California. My grandparents are from California. My great-great-great-great grandparents, at least the ones we know about, are from Mexico, but only in the sense that they’re from the part of California that used to be Mexico.”
“Now that is complicated.” His fingers tickle my palm, gently first and then with increasing pressure. “All those people, all coming from one place? What are the odds of that? Were they descended from the original Spanish settlers in California?”
I shake my head. “Who can actually trace their family back that far?”
“Uh.” He grimaces. “Me? On my dad’s side, at least, we’re descended from one of the long-lost branches that’s related to former Thai royalty.”
I blink at him. “Does that mean you’re in line for the throne?”
“Now you see why I never give out my name online. That’s not remotely how the succession works. Only in a novel does the nineteenth cousin of a long-ago king, fifteen times removed, who renounced Thai citizenship at eighteen—”
“Wait, how were you a Thai citizen?”
“My mom was born in Thailand, although she’s ethnically Chinese.”
“Right,” I say. “I should have known. The simplest possible answer.”
“It only looks complicated from the outside. This is what normal looks like in my family. I haven’t really delved into half of it. I should also mention that while my mother is Muslim, my father is Buddhist.”
“And you?”
He shrugs. “I’m flexible.”
I blow out my breath. “So what I’m hearing is that your mother is Cyclone royalty and your father is actual royalty. I’m a peasant by comparison.”
One of his eyebrows goes up. But before he can say anything, the food comes.
I look at our hands, entwined on the table, my left hand locked with his right. We’re different. We’re so different, but our hands fit together. And they will, as long as we don’t have to eat.
“Em,” he says in a low voice, “it really is simple. I’m going to let go of your hand now because I have to eat. But I’m taking it again when I am done, and I’m not letting go until you tell me I have to.”
I want to believe it is that simple. That every complicated thing in our past can be wiped away with dinner and the look he gives me. I want to believe that this is a start.
I look into his eyes. He hurt me before, inch by inch, piece by piece. He didn’t see me. He pushed me away.
But I didn’t come here to nurse my hurt. I came here to be brave. I came here to admit what I want, and to take it. There’s no place for my fear except deeper inside me.
And so I push my worries into a little ball and let go of his hand.
* * *
MARIA
* * *
Jay helps me into my coat when we’re leaving, which—let’s face it—is basically an opportunity for him to put his hands all over me, and for me to discover that he is utterly confused by the concept of a structured coat with a belt.
I helpfully pop the lapels back into place, untwist the fabric strip of a belt, and let him pretend that he can actually tie it in something like a bow.
He takes my hand just outside the restaurant. If this weren’t the middle of winter, I’d be up for walking aimlessly. But my breath freezes with every exhalation, and three inches of my thigh—between my coat and my boots—are bare to the wind.
What would be a meander turns into a forced march. I’m not sure where we’re going, or what we’re doing. I’m shifting from foot to foot on a street corner, waiting for a light to change, when he finally speaks.
“What is the opposite of rose-colored glasses?”
I blink and look at him. The red from the signal paints his hair in stripes of burgundy. It gives his eyes a deep, heavy-set feel.
“You mean glasses of pessimism? Ones that make anything look worse? Why do you want to know?”
His hand is warm in mine even though it’s cold out. He looks at me. “Just trying to figure out what I was wearing before. Somehow, I knew you for months before I noticed you were the most beautiful woman in the world.”
I turn to him. The line should be cheesy. But he delivers it in a tone of confusion, as if he’s just coming to the realization. As if he didn’t know he believed it until he spoke out loud.
I laugh in response. It sounds fake. “Wow,” I say instead. “That was smooth. Nice setup. Great execution.”
His nose wrinkles and he looks away.
My emotions are like a knife in my stomach. They’re confused by the waft of pheromones, the tight, tingling physical awareness between my legs, and the sparkle of nerve endings coming to life in his presence.
My mental state feels like the afterimage of a hundred little jabs burned on my eyelids, assailing me every time I shut my eyes.
The light changes, and we start across the street. Our hands clench together tightly. He squeezes my fingers as if I might disappear.
I want him. I want him to make me laugh. I want him to interrupt me in the middle of my
day with a funny message. I want to not flinch when he tells me I’m beautiful. I want to trust him.
The thick branches of an oak tree hang over the sidewalk. It casts us into darkness when we pass under it.
I tug him to a halt.
His eyes catch the reflection of a passing car: bright one second, dark the next.
“What is it?”
I take my hand from his. “You have something on your chin.” His jaw is smooth and defined under my fingers.
“Oh.” He stands still under my exploration. His sigh warms my thumb.
“Here.” I reach up. I bracket his face with my hands.
“Oh,” he says. His voice drops a half-octave.
Before I lose my nerve, I lean in. His breath is warm. I hesitate—one tiny second—and he wraps his arm around me, fingers pressing into the small of my back, and kisses me.
My eyes flutter shut. Those searing afterimages—memories of what we’ve done to each other, every time we’ve hurt each other—skip across my vision.
I kiss them away. Nibble by nibble. Exhalation by exhalation. The tentative touch of our tongues is a burst of forgetfulness. We kiss with the lingering sweetness of the dessert we skipped at the restaurant.
“It’s not the rose-colored glasses,” I say when he pulls away slightly. “It’s the light source.”
