Page 19 of Mountains Divide Us

I opened my menu and almost sprayed Frank with a sip of water. “Fifty dollars for a steak? This isn’t even a steakhouse.”

“If it’s good, it’s worth it. If it ain’t, we won’t come back.”

Come back? Was he already planning on a second date? I had a few questions for him first before I could commit to anything like that. And was he always so serious?

I wasn’t used to spending money on food like this. Seriously, I didn’t spend money on anything like this. I didn’t have money. Not a lot anyway. The majority of my clothes were purposefully secondhand, and the most I’d spent on a meal in the last year was ten bucks at José’s Diner. Talk about good food. Of course, my parents offered to send me money. They knew how much the county paid me to run the library, which was a paltry amount. And they had plenty to spare, but no. I didn’t want their money. What I wanted from them was their consideration.

“Are you sure this is okay? I mean, obviously, I’ll pay half, but we could go somewhere else.”

His eyebrows fell slowly as I talked, and he fiddled with his silverware again, tipping the butter knife with his index finger until it was perfectly straight in relation to his fork. The rounded shape of the metal handle made it spin away from where he seemed to want it to stay. I thought he might yell at it or stab it into the tabletop. “You will not pay half. I asked you to dinner. It’s on me.”

“Thank you, but you don’t have to do that. This isn’t 1950. I can pay my way. And are you sure? José’s has seriously good chili, and it’s, like, five bucks with homemade dinner rolls and the best steak fries on the planet.”

He scrunched his nose when I mentioned chili, and then his face morphed into a kind of stone-like wall, impassible like Caradhras Pass in Lord of the Rings. Snowy and impossible.

“You don’t like chili?”

“Love it,” he said, “but the smell of it lately turns my stomach sour. Abey eats it for lunch on the regular.”

“Abey?”

“Deputy Lee. Blonde, annoyin’.”

“Oh, right. I knew that. She just joined my book club. I don’t know why I can’t remember her name. It’s unique enough.” See? Case in point. I felt bad that I’d already forgotten her name, but when she’d come to the library earlier, she talked about Frank, so that was all I had been able to focus on. I knew who she was, though, obviously.

He grunted his agreement.

God, he made me nervous. It felt like there was an invisible energy between us, like lightning ready to crack. It felt like a good energy, but I didn’t know what to do with it as it pulsed and grew.

A few minutes passed without a word from either of us while we waited for the server to make his next appearance. I looked around at the other couples and families in the restaurant while Frank watched a little boy two tables over as he played with green plastic soldier men on the arm of his chair. There was a smile trying to emerge on Frank’s lips, but he was schooling it hard.

Then his gaze landed on me. I felt it, and I couldn’t take the silence anymore. I needed to know what he was thinking. The not knowing was working me up into a ball of anxiety.

It just didn’t make sense that a man like him would be into me.

Apparently, Frank couldn’t handle the silence either, and when I turned back to him, we spoke at the same time.

He said, “You ain’t payin’ for dinner,” while I asked, “Why’s she annoying?”

“Wait,” I argued. “You can’t stop me from paying my half.”

He smirked, cocking his head to the side. “Sure I can.”

“No, you can’t. Besides, that would be rude.”

“Darlin’, I wrangle criminals for a livin’. If you think I can’t lock your wrists in one hand in under a second, you’re sorely mistaken. And if you can’t reach for your money, you can’t pay.” He seemed satisfied with that answer, and a tiny little part of me was hoping it was a promise.

“You’re stubborn,” I said, folding my arms across my chest and relaxing back into my seat.

“Wouldn’t be the first time someone accused me of that.”

“This isn’t a promising start to our date. We’re arguing already.” It was true, but I’d surprised myself when I said it so boldly. His quietness intimidated me.

He sighed and sat forward, resting his elbows on the tabletop. “Samantha, I’m not tryin’ to be difficult. Where I come from, when a man asks a woman to dinner, he pays. Or the woman does. If you’d asked me out, I’d let you pay. In fact, you can pay next time. Deal?”

Narrowing my eyes at him, I was trying to decipher if he was being honest, or if once he got me on a second date, he’d take it back and never let me pay. And technically, I asked him!

And then I reminded myself that I was a poor librarian, so why was I complaining?

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