Lady Superior (23 page)

Kristen blew out a breath. “I think I overdid it with the dress.”

“No, no way. Who cares what they’re wearing? You look incredible.”

She cracked a polite smile. “Thank you.”

The light shone across Jack’s face as he reciprocated with a smile of his own, creating interesting little shadows in his stubble.

I still want to bite him.

“Do we want a starter or go straight to the entrée?” He asked.

Kristen glanced at the menu for only a fraction of a second before the word
shrimp
caught her eye. “Shrimp?”

“Shrimp? Where’s shrimp?”

“Small plates.”

“They have foie gras.”

Kristen looked at him over the top of her menu. “Do you actually want to eat foie gras or do you want it to say you did?”

“If I don’t get it, but still tell people that I did, will you play along?”

“If I do, do we get shrimp?”

Jack laid down his menu with a sensible, setting-appropriate chuckle. “Sure.”

Kristen flipped her menu over again. “We start with shrimp, then we go…porterhouse for two?”

“How do you want it?”

“So rare I have to fight it for dominance.”

Jack tilted his head in thought before saying, “I have this thing where I don’t like eating things that can still call for help. Compromise? Medium rare?”

Kristen nodded. “Medium rare.”

“And we’re having steak, so cabernet sauvignon?”

“Do you know wine or did you look up pairings for every possible menu item before driving out here?”

“Actually, I looked them up while I was sitting on that bench.”

“Good call.”

“Do we want anything else?”

Kristen laid her menu down atop the other. “Maybe dessert, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Jack made a show of looking at his watch. “Ho-ly crap.”

“What?”

“I don’t think any other couple in the history of the world has ever decided what they wanted to eat as fast as we just did.”

Kristen sipped from a glass of ice water, hand cupped beneath it to catch any dripping condensation. Those droplets wouldn’t have gone anywhere good if left unattended. “It doesn’t count if you don’t pick anything. If you want something, say so.”

“I did. We compromised on the steak.”

“And you picked the wine, I guess. Okay. Fair enough.”

Jack turned away to scan the restaurant for their waiter. Kristen took the opportunity to sneak-tug her dress back up and curse her poor decision-making. Their order shortly placed, they sat in sudden silence, neither sure what to say next. Kristen ran the options through her mind. Comic books? Video games? She knew they had those things in common, but the setting was all wrong for it. It didn’t feel right. Discussing nerdy things had a tendency to be more volatile than politics, too.

Shifting forward, Jack pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “Hear me out for minute?”

Though skeptical, Kristen nodded. “Okay.”

“There was this study awhile back. Some guy came up with a list of thirty-six questions. His theory was these thirty-six questions could make any couple fall in love.”

“That sounds like something that has never worked in the history of ever.”

“From what I read, it has. Turns out some of the people in the initial study got married afterwards.”

“And this is a real thing?”

“It’s a real thing.”

“Weird. But it didn’t work for everybody, right? Seems to me it’d only work if you’re already compatible.”

“The basic idea of the study is love is the result of—and I’m quoting the study here—sustained, escalating, reciprocal, personal self-disclosure. In other words, getting to know one another.”

“Do we need a list of questions for that?”

Jack passed the paper across the table. “We don’t have anything to lose, do we? If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. If it does, we save a lot of time. Win-win.”

Kristen pushed the paper back. “Don’t give it to me. It’s your idea.”

“So you’re in?”

“Why not?”

Jack unfolded the paper with dramatic flair. “Okay, I’m going to read these verbatim. Ready?”

“Ready.”

He read the first question aloud with formal precision. “Would you like to be famous? In what way?”

Kristen feigned a laugh. Acting like she found his questionnaire ridiculous wasn’t the most polite thing she could have done, but she needed to buy a little time. How could she phrase her answer to the question without giving something away or lying outright? “Let’s see…I, uh—Yeah, I think I’d like to be famous.”

“Okay. In what way?”

“For being successful.”

“As opposed to?”

“Being beautiful, being a criminal, getting mangled in a car accident, botched plastic surgery, setting a world record for being struck by lightning…”

“I wouldn’t want to be famous. It’s probably the last thing I want.”

“Why not?” She looked up. Their waiter stepped up to the table bearing wine, glasses, and a platter of shrimp. Both of them offered him pleasantries as he laid out the shrimp—fried and crispy with a sweet and sour agrodolce sauce—and filled their glasses. He reciprocated the pleasantries and left them, leaving the bottle on the table. Kristen laid her fingers on one of the shrimp and jerked them away just as quickly. “Shit, they’re hot.”

“Careful.” Jack raised his wine glass to his face. He swirled it, smelled it, and finally, took a drink. “Yep. That’s wine alright. I think being famous would suck. I don’t want my name everywhere. I don’t want paparazzi outside of my house. I don’t want to wake up every day and go online and see everyone speculating on whether I’m straight or gay or who I’m dating. Just leave me alone, you know?”

Kristen quaffed her wine, considering her response when her purse started buzzing. She slipped a finger into her purse and silenced the phone.

They ate and drank, making small talk and answering questions. Jack kept his answers lighthearted and Kristen followed suit, even as they grew increasingly personal. Each declined to answer a couple of them, such as
tell your life story in four minutes
. Kristen had no interest in telling a story she considered depressing at an otherwise enjoyable dinner. That Jack also declined surprised her, but it was only fair—if she didn’t tell hers, she wouldn’t expect him to tell his, whether it was as depressing or not.

Jack pushed the shrimp away, letting Kristen take the last one. “Okay, next question. What would constitute a perfect day for you?”

“Is it alright if I narrow it down? Perfect morning?”

“Sure.”

Kristen took the shrimp by the tail, dragging it slowly back and forth through the agrodolce. “Perfect morning, in spring and summer, starts just before dawn. I like to go running while everyone else is still asleep. It’s dark and it’s quiet and you have time to think and you aren’t freezing your ass off. I run through the park, and the grass is covered in dew. As the sun rises, the dew becomes a layer of mist just at ground level. The mist makes everything look magical, like a fairytale. Even better is when I have someone to run with. Not talking, just running. Together through the mist.”

Jack waited, either expecting more or engrossed in the imagery. Kristen noticed, and bit into her shrimp as punctuation. He snapped out of it. “Do you have a running partner?”

Kristen shook her head, chagrined. “No. Nobody I know is willing to go out that early. Last time someone went with me was years ago now.”

“An ex?”

“Do you really want me to talk about an ex on our first date?”

“I don’t mind if you don’t mind.”

Kristen refilled her wine glass. The bottle was surprisingly light; they’d gone through it far too quickly, three-quarters empty already. Her head was swimming and she knew, if nothing else, she could still get drunk. “I was nineteen and broke. He was…older and had a lot of money. Long story short? Turned out I was his mistress. To him, I wasn’t actually a person, I was his fetish. The details of all that can stay in the past. Your turn.”

Jack scratched his forehead with a thoughtful wince. “The
creep
thing makes a lot of sense now.”

“Listen, every lady has a reason to be wary of creeps. The ones who haven’t…well, they will. Your turn.”

“I’d run with you.”

“Is that your answer?”

Jack shook his head. “No, that isn’t my answer. I’m just saying I’d run with you. I spend way more time at the gym with headphones in my ears than I should, so it’d be nice to get out. If we go past date number one, we should run together.”

Kristen smiled into her cup, letting the wine flow between her lips. She drained the cup—she hadn’t filled it to the brim—and dabbed her mouth with a napkin. “Answer the question.”

“Eggs and bacon for breakfast. Watch cartoons for a couple of hours. Hit the gym. A bunch of stuff I haven’t thought about after that, then finish the day with drinks with friends. Hell, there doesn’t even need to be drinks. Just friends.”

Kristen’s purse buzzed again. She slid her hand inside and held down her phone’s power button, turning it off.

Their steak came bloody, and already deep into their cups, both tore in with abandon. Questions came and went, and their wine went, too. The bottle and glasses were taken away, replaced with cocktails.

Jack broke into a laugh, but Kristen as clueless as to why. He forced himself to speak through giggles. “Okay, okay. When did you last sing to yourself?”

Kristen’s eyes rolled as she thought about it, counting days with a clouded mind. “Two days ago? Three days ago? …maybe today? You?”

“Never.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. “Okay, I have to get serious for this one. I’m up first. Give me a minute.”

Kristen perked up, chewing slowly through a piece of steak, warm juices flooding her mouth. She watched him, and while she did, popped a mushroom into her mouth for good measure. Jack breathed in and out, exorcising the drunkenness, if only for a moment.

“Okay. Question is: when was the last time you cried?”

“Uh oh. Are you going to cry now?”

Jack broke into a grin. “No, I don’t think so. Anyway, last time I cried was the night of my graduation. High school. Not college. I didn’t do college.”

“Cried from…joy?”

“No.” Jack held up his hand and turned his wrist toward Kristen, showing her the watch. “My grandpa gave me this watch when I graduated. It was the most expensive thing I’d ever owned. Most expensive thing I own now, actually. Problem was I used to be fat. Seriously fat.”

Kristen tilted her head. “You don’t look it.”

“I don’t now, sure, but I have stretch marks like battle scars to prove it.”

“Honey, you don’t need to tell me about stretch marks. Seriously.”

“I was too fat for the watch. The band didn’t fit around my wrist, and it wasn’t even close.” Jack lowered his arm, resting both forearms on the table, palms up as if pleading. “I was depressed at that age. I went from five-foot-one and maybe a hundred pounds to five foot eleven and over three hundred pounds in four years. I never felt like doing anything, but I had a part-time job, and I spent all of my money on trash. Because trash made me feel good. Then I got the watch and realized I was screwing myself up. I cried until it hurt. I was sick of being depressed, and I thought maybe if I got into shape, I’d feel better. When I was too depressed to go out—I never wanted to leave the house unless I had to—I’d try to put on the watch. When it didn’t fit, I got angry. When I got angry, I had the motivation to go to the gym.”

Kristen squeezed her eyes shut to chase away the buzz. She could still see him in her mind, strong, but lean. Rugged with his stubble, yet beautiful with his blue eyes and high cheekbones. “Seems like it worked. You look good. Really good.”

He blushed and broke into giggles again as his brief sobriety collapsed. “Well, thanks.”

“How old are you again?”

“Twenty-eight.”

“So the last time you cried was ten years ago?”

He shrugged.

Kristen raised her glass to her lips. Empty. She frowned into the cup. “I don’t remember what this was but I want another one.”

“You don’t remember?” He snorted a laugh. “I think we should switch to water. I feel like I might die if I keep drinking.”

“I think it had maple syrup in it.”

They switched to water in the end. Kristen was full, but didn’t want to admit it—she was having a good time, and for the price they’d paid for that meat, she wasn’t going to let it go to waste. She paid little mind to the passage of time even as the sun began to dip low and every other patron of Bacchus had turned over, replaced with evening reservations.

Jack noticed. “I think they’re going to be
pissed
if we don’t get out of here soon.”

“We haven’t been here that long. Have we?”

He checked his watch. “Uh, yeah. We’ve been here a couple hours.”

“How many questions do we have left? Are we in love yet?”

“We’re almost done. Just a few left. I skipped around.” Jack read from the script. “List five things you like about your partner. It’s not written that way, but screw it.”

“So you got drunk and threw the whole test out the window?”

“Pretty much.”

“Whose turn is it?”

“I don’t remember. You go.”

Kristen hung her drunken head to think and counted items off on her fingers. “You brought these questions and gave us something to talk about besides comic books. You’re cute. You have pretty eyes. You’re not as creepy as you seemed, even though you probably prepared all of your answers beforehand, and that’s a little weird. Is that five?”

“You’re holding up four fingers.”

“Oh, yeah. And I want to take your shirt off sometime.”

Jack’s head hung similarly. “Shit, we’re drunk.”

“Yep.”

“Okay, five things. You scare me. You picked steak for dinner. You’re built as hell. You’re gorgeous. Your boobs look amazing in that dress.”

Kristen broke into laughter at his list and clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle herself, vaguely recalling they were in an establishment for fine dining. Eventually, she managed to calm herself. “I think we need to try this one again sober. I scare you? Seriously?”