“That’s not true,” I say, looking at my hands. And I inhale because I don’t know what I’m doing, but I hate what’s swimming in my chest. “Do you want to go to dinner with me?”
Chapter 29
Stanley
She’s looking down at her hands, and she just asked me to dinner.
Minutes ago, she was dead certain that I’d sold her out and secretly planned this. And now that she has the truth, I feel a truce coming. I can’t read her. I don’t know what’s going on in that pretty head of hers. The old version of me cracks a joke here and says the thing that puts me back up on top of the moment where I’m comfortable. I don’t reach for it. I don’t want it to be like that with her.
“Yeah,” I say because there’s no way I’m saying no. “Yeah. Let’s — yeah.” And then, because I cannot stand in a hallway holding a moment this size without doing something with my hands, I reach for motion. “Now. Let’s go now, before the place downstairs closes. They stop seating at ten, I saw the sign on the way in.”
Her eyes meet mine for a flicker of a second, and then she nods in agreement. We use our cards and unlock our doors. I walk into my separate room, and I’m aware of the entire ten secondsI’m alone in mine, standing in the middle of a hotel room I haven’t even looked at, staring down a guy in the mirror who is now, apparently, going to dinner with Aspen Linwood.
I meet her back in the hall. She’s changed her sweater, but I keep that bit of information to myself. We walk to the elevator together, and the silence between us is killing me. I watch the numbers count down until we’re on the main floor. The doors open, so I let her walk out first, catching her perfume as she walks ahead.
The hotel restaurant is the kind of place that’s beautiful and empty this late — low light, white cloths, three other tables, a waiter visibly wanting to go home. We’re seated in a corner. We sit across from each other, and I have to swallow down my nerves.
I’m nervous. More nervous than I’ve been in this entire ridiculous arrangement — more than the lobby, more than the porch — because there’s no show to put on for anyone. Nobody here knows us. And apparently, my chest doesn’t know the difference between nervous and excited because the waiter comes by, and I start.
“Evening, folks. Can I start you off with something to drink?”
“Evening! Hi. Hello.” I have his eye, and I am not giving it back. “Big night for us, just so you’re aware. Huge night. You’re part of it now, which I realize is a lot to drop on a man at this hour, but here we are. What’s your name?”
“Channing.”
“Channing,” I say, staring right at him like I’ve been waiting my whole life to meet one. “Like Channing Tatum. I never met one of those before. Cool.” I look him in the eye. “Forget the menu for a second. I want to know what you’d eat — not what you’d sell me, what you’d actually order here. That’s what I’m having. Whatever you just thought of, that’s the one.”
Across the table, Aspen’s gone very still, water halfway to her mouth, watching me wind up.
“The fish,” I say, before Channing can get a syllable in. “Is the fish a good decision, or is the fish a thing that happens to a man and he spends the rest of the night regretting it?”
“The branzino’s really—”
“Branzino!” I point at him, then at Aspen. “Did you hear that? That is a man who stands behind his fish. I respect that more than I can tell you. Channing, I’d run through a wall for you.” I pick the menu back up and hold it out at arm’s length. “I’ll take the steak and veggies.”
Channing nods. “Okay.”
Aspen laughs.
And that’s the gasoline. That is the whole problem, right there, because the second I pull a laugh out of this woman, my entire body decides the only acceptable use of the rest of my life is getting another one, and I am gone. I keep ordering food. I order for the table like a man with four buddies about to join, which I do not. I ask Channing where he’s from and tell him I’d like to go there. I read him three things off the wine list in the voice of a nature documentary until he stops fighting the smile altogether and just lets me have it. The jokes are the walls, and I am laying them down brick on brick on brick fast as my mouth will build, and I cannot for the life of me put the trowel down.
And then, somewhere around when the waiter clears the menus, brings back Aspen a glass of wine. She takes a sip and sets her wine down. She gives me that look and calls me out gently. No knife in it at all, which is somehow worse.
“You don’t have to do that with me.”
I keep the grin bolted on. “Do what?”
“The show.” She tips her head, and there’s no meanness anywhere in it. “I’ve seen you with it off, Ermington. On the street. In the dark at my parents’ house. I know what’s under it.”She pauses, looking at her wine as she swirls it. “You can stop. There’s no one here to sell to.”
And it stops me dead.
Because that’s mine. That’s the exact thing I handed her on the sidewalk five days ago — run it again, who was I selling it to — and she’s picked it up off the ground where I left it and handed it right back to me. I have no counter, because she’s right, and because nobody does this. Nobody. Everybody lets me run the jokes. It works. It has worked my entire life. It has walked me out of every room I ever wanted out of. And she’s telling me that she doesn’t need it.
So I put it down.
And it turns out I have no idea what to do with myself. Without it –– the charm, the easy grin, the golden kid who walks into the room and makes it lighter –– I don’t know who I am. My father’s always been proud of the show. I’m drafted because of the show. Every room I’ve ever walked into wanted the show, and I gave it to them gladly, because the show is the thing I’m best at, and somewhere a long way down, I have never once been sure there’s anything underneath it worth keeping if I quit.
She doesn’t let me off the hook for the silence, either.
