“Are you nervous?” Rob asked gently, reaching for her hand across the table. Chloe hesitated, only briefly, before placing her hand in his. As their fingers touched, she noticed something—both their watches now pulsed with a soft purple line.
She nodded, embarrassed.
“Don’t be,” he said, and when she looked up, she saw such kindness in his eyes, such genuine care.He wasn’t judging her. “Tell me more about the theater,” he said, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze, then letting go and leaning back in his chair. “I read Chekhov recently and I’m not sure I understood most of it.”
He read Chekhov? Men on Hinge did not read Chekhov.
“No one understands Chekhov,” she said, feeling herself relax a little. “I think it’s meant to invoke a feeling of doom. Which play did you read?”
“All of them.”
“All of them?” she asked, laughing. “Wow, you’re more of an expert than me then. Do you read a lot of plays?”
“I do,” he said, folding his hands in his lap. “Though I probably prefer novels.” Chloe let out a tiny squeak. The holy grail: a man who read fiction.“Give me an old leather armchair, a good cup of coffee, and a decent book,” he said with a soft smile, “and I am a happy man.”
“Oh, me too,” she said, enchanted. “Well, a happy woman.” She felt her shoulders relax.
“Anything you’ve read recently that you’d recommend?” he asked.
“I go through phases,” she said. “I’ll get obsessed with a time period, then just read everything from then. I’m currently deep in my Gilded Age era.”
“I’m the same, but with authors,” he said, leaning forward, his face lighting up. “I’ve just discovered Mary Shelley and I’m disappointed she didn’t write more.” He ran a hand through his hair, then his eyes found hers again. “When I read, I sometimes get nostalgic for a time I didn’t even live through.”
The skin on Chloe’s arms broke out in goose bumps. This was howshefelt. “That has a name,” she told him. “Anemoia—nostalgia for a time you’ve never experienced. I have itallthe time. I spent my twenties obsessed withBrideshead Revisited. I felt so sure that I should have been born then.”
“ ‘Sometimes I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there’s no room for the present at all,’ ” Rob said, and Chloe melted on the spot. He could quoteBrideshead Revisitedfrom memory? She knew only one other person who could do that: John Elton.
“That’s one of my favorite lines,” she said, her voice a reverential whisper.
Rob looked quietly pleased by her reaction. “So, Miss Fairway,” he said, the flirtatious tone back. “Where did your urge to create plays come from? Is it something you always wanted to do?”
“Yes, I wanted to be an actor for a while too,” she admitted, glancing down at her hands. “But that’s even more competitive. I think I was a big fish in a small pond at university, then I hit the ocean and met all these whales.”
“Whales?” he asked.
“I was going with the ‘big fish, small pond’ analogy,” she said, reaching up to unclip the rest of her hair and shaking it out around her shoulders, chip smell be damned.
“Well, little fish,” Rob said, smiling, “sometimes you have to let go of one dream to make way for a new one.”
She met his gaze, and the part of her she’d kept on ice began to thaw.
“But tell me more about you,” she said, catching herself. “What do you do, workwise?” She was suddenly conscious that the conversation had been focused on her and her interests.
“Computer programming, but don’t judge me on that. It’s not as boring as it sounds,” he said with a self-effacing grimace.
“Oh, no judgment here. I’m just a PA, which is probably much more dull.”
“I doubt you’re ‘just’ anything, Chloe,” he said.
She beamed, a flush of heat running up her neck.
The longer they talked, the more Chloe’s nerves dissipated. She learned that Rob would rather play sports than watch them (tick), that he loved to travel (tick), and that his best friends were his three brothers (tick, tick, tick). He came across as highly educated, but with a quiet modesty that only made him more appealing. No bravado, no boastfulness. Just calm confidence. As Chloe listened, a warm, contented glow settled over her.
This was it.
Her senses were on high alert, her body pulsed with a new energy. She became acutely aware of her own lips as his glance dropped, briefly, to them. When their eyes met again, she saw it—the attraction she was feeling mirrored. Then her watch gave a subtle vibration. She glanced down to see the pulsing line had turned pink again.
“Hey, twinsy,” he said, holding up his wrist, where his screen glowed the same color. They both laughed.
