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I add “seeing her blush” to my rapidly growing list of my favourite things about her. It sits right there between “the sound of her laugh” and “that look she gives me when I’ve annoyed her.”
“If we leave right now, we should miss the rush hour traffic,” she says, still looking stubbornly ahead.
I glance at my watch. She’s right. We’ve got about an hour before the roads fill with commuters heading back to their homes. If we leave right now, we’ll definitely be able to beat the worst of it and get back to our respective homes relatively quickly. But I don’t want that.
“Should we get something to eat first?” I ask. “I’m pretty hungry, and I saw a few places on the way here that looked good.”
It’s an entirely selfish ask, born out of a desire to stretch out this increasingly rare one-on-one time we have together. Judging by the way she’s still determinedly staring ahead, I’m certain she’s going to say no.
“Sure.”
“Really?”
She glances over at me for the first time since I got in the car. The blush on her cheeks has dulled slightly, but I can still see a shadow of it lingering. “Why do you sound so surprised?”
“What was it you said back there? ‘I’m trying to get rid of him, actually’?”
She laughs and I’m reminded why that sound is number one on my list. “Trying and failing it seems.” She gives me a funny look, like she’s trying to figure something out but can’t quite get there. After a few seconds, she shakes her head in defeat and shoots me a resigned smile. “Let’s go get something to eat, Hawthorne.”
Back to Hawthorne again, but she’s smiling at me, so I’ll take it.
“Okay, dear.”
She jerks in her seat like she’s been slapped. “What?”
I don’t think I’ve ever seen her look so flustered before, and I bite the inside of my cheek to stop myself from laughing. “I said ‘okay’.”
“No. You said ‘okay,dear’.” She squints at me suspiciously. “Don’t say that.”
“Why not? You didn’t mind when Eileen said it back inside the store.”
“That’s because she didn’t mean it– She didn’t mean it like that.”
“Like what?”
She’s glaring at me, but there’s no bite in it. Not really. She can tell I’m teasing her, and for the first time, I feel like I understand the rules of this game she started all those weeks ago.
“You know what you’re doing.”
I hold up my hands. “I’m just doing what everyone else does around here.”
It’s something interesting I’ve learned about the English during my time here so far. People often end their sentences with surprisingly intimate terms of endearment to complete strangers. The woman behind the check-in counter at my hotel calls me “darling” every time I walk past; the elderly doorman calls me “son”; and I’ve been called “pet,” “love,” and even “sweetie” more times than I can count by people I’ve never met before and will never see again.
“Well, you’re not doing it right.”
“Okay, darling.”
She rolls her eyes. “No.”
“Why not, pet?”
“Gross.”
“What about hon, hon?”
“Stop it.”
“No, sweetheart.”
