Page 58 of Purple Hearts


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Cassie

Ihung up with Luke and immediately pulled out my phone to cancel on Toby. Toby giving me the cookbook turned into him asking me out for drinks, and me somehow saying yes. But how was I supposed to move directly from saying “I love you” to my fake husband to going on a date-that-might-not-be-a-date? But when I pulled up his number, I reread our text message exchange again.

So what do you think?

After we had hooked up the first time, Toby had been the one to say he wasn’t looking for anything serious. I had told him I was fine with that, and from then on it was an unspoken agreement that I would occasionally hook up with him after practice.

Why the sudden penchant for traditional romance?

He wrote back right away, I’ve been wanting to hang for a while.

Hang?

Date? Go on one?

So if I say yes, then what?I’d realized this could be read as a flirtation tactic. But I’d also honestly meant it. I had enough ambiguous male figures in my life. I was stalling.

I would say how about Thursday night?

He had basically saved my life. I didn’t feel so much that I owed him a date, because that was icky, but more that I was genuinely curious. What the heck would we talk about? The album? Nora? The state of our country? Plus we’d already slept together and not talked about it. I’d doubted this could be any more awkward. Ok, I typed.

Rad.

Rad, I had repeated, not sure whether I was making fun of him.

I’ll pick you up at seven, he’d texted. Thinking we can eat like three steaks each, and then take naps, how does that sound?

I laughed, as I had done the first time I’d read it. Sounds perfect, I had written. Meat and naps. You really know the way to my heart.

I hadn’t been on a date for a while. I’d kind of forgotten how. When Nora and I went on “dates” we would usually spend the whole time talking across from each other with our mouths full at Mai Thai, fantasizing about ways we would murder John Mayer.

I called her. She picked up on the first ring.

When I told her, she screamed. “Toby Masters? Our little drummer boy?”

I sighed. “Yeah.”

“But why?”

I thought of his long hair, his gap-toothed smile, his gushing compliments after shows. “He’s nice. He’s funny.”

“So are lots of human beings.”

“But most human beings don’t ask me out.”

She laughed. “Probably because you spend all of your time playing piano and scheming the army for benefits.”

“Yeah, the timing isn’t great...” I started.

“Uh, yeah, no,” Nora said, her voice dry. “You get fake-married and all of a sudden you want to lock down your fuck buddy? Is this a contagious disease I should worry about?”

“No, no,” I said, forcing a laugh.

I was quiet, trying to quench the fire in my stomach with a sip of wine. Of course Luke was a factor. Maybe I’m trying to see what a normal relationship looks like so I can use my experience to fool the army police. Is that what I was really doing? No. And what if I actually got hurt? I changed the subject.

“What kind of questions do I ask? Like, am I supposed to ask what his favorite color is? Or, like, what his relationship is like with his mother?”

“Ask him to come in earlier after the bridge on ‘Too Much.’ ”

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