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Tara seemed to be thinking along the same lines. “I have to go put these away.”
“Sure.” I stared at the dashboard. So much for my nice pink nails and the outfit I’d spent twenty minutes picking out. “See you Monday, then.”
For a long moment, she didn’t move. “Where were you going to take me?”
“Oh. It’s stupid.” I bit my lip. “I thought we’d walk along Church Street.”
The street was like an outdoor mall, with quirky little shops we could browse through and plenty of restaurants if we wanted to grab a bite to eat. Now that I thought about it, it was also the same street that Vino and Veritas was on. Obviously Tara wouldn’t want to go to her workplace on her night off.
She frowned. “Give me a minute.”
She disappeared into the apartment building, and I twiddled my thumbs as I waited an interminable amount of time for her to return. Should I text my friends? No, they’d be as befuddled by this as I was.
At last, Tara returned. Her coat was undone, and she was wearing a black button-down shirt and loose jeans underneath. Her short hair was slightly darker, as if she’d just combed through it with water. “My friends are fine with spending a few hours by themselves,” she told me.
“Your friends are in there? The ones from last night?”
“They’re visiting from Boston.”
Oh, God. I put my hand over my face. “You should spend time with them. We can reschedule.”
“No, that’s okay. They said I should go out with you, on one condition.” She grimaced. “They think we should go shopping.”
“Why would we do that?”
“I don’t exactly have proper furniture. They’ve been giving me a hard time about it.” She looked abashed. “I don’t want to take advantage of you driving a truck, but…”
“That’s fine! Take advantage.” I definitely phrased that the wrong way. Keeping my face turned away from her, I put the truck into gear. “Let’s go.”
I tried to stay calm as I drove. The diversion from my original plan was making me nervous. I’d had a vision of us smiling and laughing as we wandered Church Street for hours. A furniture store was completely different. Surely we’d be bound to feel like it was a platonic hang-out.
Either way, wouldn’t it have been better to head straight to her place? Since her friends were there, we should’ve rescheduled to another day. A little fun in the bedroom was all I wanted, after all. This was a lot of effort to go to for one hook-up. Although, now that I thought about it, would I really be satisfied with just one time?
We decided on an independent store along the route to Colebury that sold secondhand stuff in perfect condition. Along the way, she told me about her friends’ visit so far. She said they were like a family to her. She also described the state of the furniture at her place, which took me by surprise.
“How can you live without chairs?” I asked.
“I havesome.Just not in the kitchen.”
“If you were a guy and I came over and found your place looking like that, I’d turn around and walk out.”
“Good thing I’m not a guy.”
In the furniture store, we headed straight to the kitchen section. “This store is much simpler than IKEA,” Tara said. “They say that going there is the ultimate test of relationships. It’s a long, exhausting experience, and deciding on furniture that both partners like is super stressful.”
Well, it wasn’t like we were in a relationship. “I won’t have any input on the chairs,” I said, “so that part should be easy.”
Soon I was eating my words. When we did find the kitchen section, she went for the ugliest chairs I’d ever seen.
“You can’t be serious.” I choked on a laugh. “Those look like wicker torture implements. Plus I’m pretty sure they’re meant for the porch, not for the table.”
She looked injured. “They’re not that bad. Besides, they’re the cheapest ones here.”
“So if they were double the price, you wouldn’t want them?”
“Well…” She had no answer to that.
We kept hunting, and soon she found some reasonably attractive chairs. Folding chairs, but they were in her budget, and they looked a heck of a lot better than a milk crate. After getting the chairs into the truck, she glanced around.
