She goes quiet. I keep my eyes on the road and let her have the second.
“That is the stupidest thing anyone has ever done for me,” she says finally, and I can hear that she means it as the highest compliment she could ever give.
She got dressed up for this. Not gala dressed up, like the night she walked into a ballroom and stopped my heart, but a quieter version. She’s wearing a casual little black dress that hangs off one of her shoulders and skims her curves, and she’s wearing her hair down with a little pink lip gloss on her lips. The way she looks so fucking sexy without trying half as hard as some of these other girls is incredible. I told her three times in the truck that she looks amazing. She told me three times to keep my eyes on the road.
The steakhouse is exactly the kind of place I can never normally afford, because I send any extra money I have home to my siblings, but tonight I’ve decided not to think about that.
We’re dining in low light and the good kind of quiet where the tables are far enough apart that nobody's noise lands on anybody else. A guy in a vest pulls her chair out, and she lets him, and I watch her shoulders come down, because for once we are just two people at a dinner and not a crime waiting to be photographed.
“I already called ahead about the food,” I tell her, once the vest guy leaves. “Nothing on your plate touches anything else on your plate. The kitchen knows. You don't have to negotiate it with a stranger.”
“You called a steakhouse to pre-negotiate my plate?”
“I'm Mr. Paperclip. I take my responsibilities seriously.”
She looks at me across the candle for a second too long, and then she picks up the menu so she doesn't have to keep doing it. “Order me the most expensive thing,” she says, and I think it’s her attempt at a joke.
“Joke's on you. I left my wallet at home. We're doing dishes.”
“I'd help. I'm very organized. I'd run the whole dish pit.”
“I know you would. It's the hottest thing about you.”
And for about forty minutes, it's perfect. It's the most normal night I have ever had in my life. We order too much. She tells me the entire plot of a season of her show with hand gestures. I tell her about the time I caught a puck with my face in juniors and tried to play it cool with blood in my teeth. She laughs a whole real laugh, twice, in public, where anybody could see, and I love it. I think this is the thing normal people have, and I’m considering whether I’m being greedy for wanting more of it.
Then she goes still.
Not the good king of still, but the other one. The one where her whole body decides at once that a room has turned dangerous.
“Don't turn around,” she says, very quietly, behind a sip of water. “Do not turn around.”
“Oh, I’m definitely going to turn around.”
“Caleb Adams.”
“Tell me what I'm not turning around at, then.”
“Four o'clock. By the window. Blue blouse.” Her voice has gone flat and fast. “That's Wendy.”
I do the thing where you look without looking, the old skill, the one you learn reading rooms your whole life. Blue shirt. Window table. Reading glasses pushed up in her hair, laughing at something a heavyset man in a Polo shirt is saying across a plate of shrimp.
“Holy shit. It’s your father’s assistant?” I say, and my stomach drops to my balls. “The one who runs the rink front desk and his damn office? The one who sees both of us every single day.”
“The very same.” Jasmine sets her water down with the exact care of a Marine defusing a bomb. “I think she may actually live out this way. That's her husband, and it's their anniversary. I saw it on the calendar and didn’t retain it as relevant information. Of course, now it’s the most relevant information in the world.”
“Okay.” My brain's already moving, which it's good at when it's a game and useless at when it's her. “Do you think she’s seen us?”
“No. Her back was to the door when we came in. If it hadn't been, we'd already be in trouble.” She doesn't look at Wendy again. She's too smart to look twice. “Caleb, if she spots us, she will not simply see a player having dinner with VCU staff. She will see Coach Dixon's daughter, in a dress, on a date, with the problem transfer she's assigned to. By Monday, it isn't a rumor. It's a meeting. It’s you out on your ass and maybe mine too.”
“Then we don't let her see us.”
“We are forty feet from her. There is one door. The path to the one door goes directly past her table.” She lays it out with the precision of a blueprint. “I have already mapped it. There is no version of standing up and walking out that she doesn't clock. I run escape scenarios in every room I enter. I should have run this one. I got comfortable.”
“Hey.” I catch her eye across the candle. “You got comfortable because I thought I made you a night where you could. What are the chances that we’d see Wendy of all people an hour outside of campus? That's not a screw-up. That's just some fucked up luck. Now let me get us out of it, because getting out of rooms is my actual specialty. I’ve got a bad reputation if you remember. I have left a lot of buildings I wasn't supposed to be in.”
She almost smiles. It's thin, but it's there. “What's the play?”
“The play is I flag our server, I tell him we got a call, a family thing, and can he grab the check and point me at the back way out. Guys who work in casinos understand leaving fast. I’ll give him a twenty.”
