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But instead of making his disgusted face—which had been burned into my mind—or making some kind of side comment the way my ex had done, he nodded his head along. “Bring Me to Life,” he said. “Classic. I love Evanescence.”
I slumped in my seat, a smile threatening to break through. “They’re great,” I agreed. “This is one of my favorite songs by them.”
Maybe this marriage wouldn’t be so bad.
ChapterSix
NATHAN
Islapped my hand on the table, shaking my head. “Unacceptable,” I said.
She grimaced. “I know. I’m sorry. I’m not super refined.”
We were sitting in the frozen yogurt bar—Yogurt Kingdom—in the center of town. After Ciara turned on her car and gave me the surprise of my life with her apparent love for Evanescence, we sang the lyrics together and went down a rabbit hole of our favorite rock bands of all time.
We then sat in the brightly colored Yogurt Kingdom, where I had declared my disappointment in the fact that she presented herself as this frumpy, boring woman on the dating app when, in fact, she could recite, from memory—and quite well, I might add—all the lyrics from Fall Out Boy’sDance Dance.
I shook my head, waving her apology away. “No, it’s not that,” I said. “It’s unacceptable that you didn’t put this in your profile. Or that we didn’t talk about it when we first met.”
She shrugged, picking at the strawberries on top of her dessert. “It just didn’t seem relevant.”
“Not relevant?” I threw my hands in the air. “How is one of your two main interests not relevant to finding a partner? You have a full collection of Foo Fighters albums!”
Though she blushed profusely, that hint of a smile made her lips twitch. “I guess it’s important.”
“It’s literally one of four things I know about you.”
She rolled her eyes, and I raised my eyebrows at the gesture. It was the first time I had seen a look other than placid pleasantness or embarrassment from her. “You know more than four things,” she said.
I leaned forward, accepting the challenge. “Really? Okay, let me list them. You like rock music. You love to draw, so much that you’re applying to an animation program. You have no siblings, and you live with your dad. And you have a best friend named Brooklyn, who was the reason you even signed up for the HEA app.”
She shrugged again, taking a bite of froyo. Finally, she said, “You also know that I work at the HC Bookstore, and that my boss is Daniella Gopaul, and that I work a lot of hours.”
“That doesn’t count; that’s hardly about you. And in any case, that makes five things. Also, it’s not something you would put on a dating profile.”
I took a bite of my own froyo, considering her. She was a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle, one that I couldn’t make heads or tails of. Her outfit made her forgettable—or rather, unforgettably anachronistic—but the more I learned about her, and the more I heard her speak in that low, soothing voice of hers, which reminded me of quiet nights by the fire, the more interesting she became.
Maybe being married to her wouldn’t be so bad after all.
She watched me furtively, her eyes never resting on me for more than a second. “What?” she asked. “Do I have something on my face?”
I shook my head, still studying her. “Why do you dress like that?” I blurted. “It’s so…I mean, you’re twenty-five, right? Are you not interested in dressing like those in your generation?”
Her brow furrowed, but she smoothed it out before I could ask her what was wrong. “These are just my work clothes,” she said quietly, staring down at her outfit. “I have jeans and stuff.”
I grimaced, hearing my words in my head. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean…”
She smiled then, a small smile that didn’t reach her eyes and seemed to be more for my benefit than her own. “You did, but it’s okay,” she said. “It’s nothing that Brooklyn hasn’t already told me. I believe she said,burn your cardigansone time.” She laughed.
Now I was the one to frown. I wanted to ask,Then why don’t you?but I had already used up all my asshole tokens for the night.
Instead, I said, “While I won’t say I’m not a little…thrown off…by the way you dress, I also don’t know you well enough to know if this is how youwantto dress. It’s just that it seems the opposite of the cool, Evanescence-lyrics-citing animation artist that you are.”
“To each their own, I suppose,” she said, picking up her spoon, effectively ending that line of the conversation.
We ate our froyo in an awkward silence, with me scrambling to come up with something that wasn’t overtly or accidentally offensive. I was missing many key pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of Ciara Payne, and it chafed in a way I wasn’t expecting.
Finally, unable to sit another moment in the weirdness, I blurted, “What’s your favorite color?”
