“No?”
“Convincing,” I say with a laugh.
“Technically, we talk about me, which as I say it sounds selfish, but she reminds me of my grandmother, so it’s nice. She even has the same butterscotch candies too.”
“Oh, it’s an old lady? You hang out with an old lady on the weekends?”
“Hey, don’t talk about her that way,” he teases. “But yeah, I do. Doesn’t everyone have an older woman to talk to on the weekends?”
“No. They don’t.”
“Oh, yeah, then who do you talk to?”
“June and my brother and my parents. Why don’t you just talk to your friends?”
He shrugs. “I like having an outsider’s opinion.”
He doesn’t look at me when he answers, and the dip in his tone was enough for me to know that there is more to it, but now isn’t the time to ask. Besides, given our circumstances, I could guess why he doesn’t talk to them much.
I know we needed to talk. The list of topics is endless, but right now, I think we both just need to be in this moment right here.
“Think we can do this in less than an hour?” I ask.
“Easy.”
“We should do this again,” Mark says, walking me to my car a little more than an hour later.
“Ha, you make it sound like we were just on a date, and you liked it.”
He bumps my shoulder with his. “I did have fun.”
I sense abutcoming on.
“Sure, but—” Mark starts.
“But if you would have listened to me about the lamp, we would have solved it before the timer went off.”
“Yes, because you knew turning the lights off and carrying the lamp around the room to read black light writing was how we’d solve it. It’s so specific that, of course, I didn’t believe you.”
“It made perfect sense to me!”
“Then you should have ignored me and just done it.”
“I will next time. I just can’t believe you didn’t trust me.”
“You’re going to have to let this one go.”
He taps his chin and winks at me.
“I will, on one condition.”
“Oh boy, let’s hear it.”
“You let me take you to dinner tomorrow.”
I pause in the parking lot to study him. He probably wants to go to dinner to talk about moving in with him again. He tried to broach the subject again tonight, but I shut it down. We were having so much fun, and I can’t remember the last time I was just happy.
Yet I am curious as to why he wants to live together so badly. I know the obvious reason but living together isn’t the only option we have to make this work.
