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He makes an odd face. “My dad’s. I was planning to change it when I turned eighteen. My mom’s maiden name is Perlman. But then I… didn’t.” His voice falls flat.
“Oh,” I say, sensing some awkwardness there but unsure how to deal with it. “So… I do have to go home for this.” But it doesn’t feel right to split up yet, not when an entire army of seniors is out there plotting our demise.
He glances at his watch and then back at me. “Would it be okay if I stopped by for a minute? Just to like… say hi to your parents and tell them that I think they’re literary geniuses?” With his teeth, he tugs on his lower lip. “No, that would be weird. It would be weird, right? You’ve already done a hundred nice things for me today. You don’t have to,” he adds quickly. He’s babbling, oh my God.
It’s such a relief to hear he doesn’t want to split up—or at least that he doesn’t mention it—that I have to force my face not to react. And then I’m wondering why I’m feeling relief, of all things. I would have assumed I’d be desperate for a break by now, but I guess my McNair tolerance levels are higher than I thought.
“Do you… um… want to have dinner with us?” I ask. “You can meet them if you promise to be normal.”
I just asked Neil McNair to Shabbat dinner with me and my parents. At my house. Any other time, I’d text Kirby and Mara about it, but I’m not sure how I’d explain it. I can barely explain it to myself.
Neil’s eyes grow wide. “You’re sure?”
“Of course,” I say. “They love having people over.”
“Would it—” He breaks off, shoving his glasses up, which have once again slid down his nose. “Would it be okay if we stopped at my house on the way there? I want to get some books for them to sign. It’ll only take a few minutes.”
It hits me again what his friends said earlier, about him not having people over. He’ll probably run inside and run right back out. I’m not actually going to his house.
I tell him yes, and on the way back to my car, I text my parents that he’s coming. Then I pepper Neil with more questions about the books. He’s an Excavated expert, recalling details like the name of Riley’s pet gerbil (Megalosaurus), the location of her first dig in book one (a small town just south of Santa Cruz, where her family was vacationing), and what she found there (a Pliocene-era sand dollar). Consider me impressed.
“You’re going to have to give me directions,” I say as I turn the key in the ignition.
“Turn left after the Forty-Fifth Street exit.” He buckles his seat belt. “This is weird, huh? You going to my house, and then the two of us having dinner with your parents?”
I let out a laugh that’s a little more high-pitched than usual. “Yeah. It is.”
“And just so you know, we might be having dinner together, but this isn’t a date,” Neil says, completely straight-faced. “I just don’t want you to get too excited. I mean, your parents are going to be there, so it would be really awkward if you were fawning over me the whole time.”
NEIL MCNAIR’S PERSONAL LIFE: WHAT I KNOW
- He lives somewhere north of Lake Union but south of Whole Foods.
- He has a closet full of suits.
- He’s Jewish.
- He has a sister. Maybe more than one? Maybe a brother, too?
- He had some kind of emergency earlier today.
- um
5:33 p.m.
NEIL UNBUCKLES HIS seat belt. When I don’t budge, he asks, “Are you coming?”
“Oh—I didn’t think—okay,” I say, unable to decide which sentence to finish.
“We’ll be fast,” he assures me. But I don’t ask the question I so desperately want to: Why? Neil McNair wants me in his house, or he’s not even thinking about it, or…?
Before he opens the door, he pauses. “It might—” he starts, and then breaks off. He rakes a hand through his hair, and my fingers itch to smooth the strands back into place. Neil McNair is not Neil McNair if every piece of him isn’t in perfect order. “It might be messy,” he finally settles on, turning the key and letting me into the McLair for the very first time.
Neil’s house is in an older part of Wallingford. The houses on this block are all single-story, yards overgrown with weeds. Neil’s is a bit tidier than the others, but the lawn still looks like it could use an hour with a mower. Inside, it’s clean—and cold. Sparsely decorated, but nothing out of the ordinary. I’m completely mystified by his warning.
“I hope you’re okay with dogs,” Neil says as a golden retriever jumps on me, tail wagging.
“I love them,” I say, scratching the golden behind the ears. My dad’s allergic, but I used to beg for one for Hanukkah every year. “Golden retrievers always look so happy.”
