Page 64 of The Summer List

“I’d like to keep you alive long enough to get you downtown. Speaking of, we really do have to go before this car drives off without us.”

We rush downstairs and out of the house to where the driver is waiting just outside the gate. We pile into the backseat of the car, and I squint at the driver’s phone screen for any hint of where we’re going, but I don’t recognize the address listed as our destination.

“Are you sure I’m dressed up enough?” I murmur to Andrea.

She nods. “More than enough. It’s really not that fancy, or at least not as far as I can tell.”

“You’ve never been there before?”

She shakes her head. “I was looking for places to take you tonight and saw they had an…interesting menu item we really cannot miss out on.”

I give her a curious look, but she just smirks at me and then pretends to be engrossed in staring out the window.

I do the same and watch as the sprawling properties of Mansionland morph into the packed streets of downtown. We drive all the way to the heart of the ByWard Market. The sun has only just started streaking the sky with orange and pink, but the streets are already filled with tourists and locals heading out for dinner and drinks.

“This good?” the driver asks as he pulls up to an empty strip of curb.

Andrea scans the collection of restaurants and bars lining the street before nodding. “Yeah, thanks. It’s right up there.”

She slides out on the side closest to the road, and I pause in the middle of climbing out of my seat when she reappears to hold my door open and offer me one of her arms.

“I feel bad,” I say as she helps me to my feet on the sidewalk and then swings the door shut so the driver can take off. “You’re the one wearing heels, so shouldn’t I be the one helping you out of the car?”

She shrugs. “I have no idea. You probably understand sapphic dating etiquette more than me. This is, uh…well, this is my first date with a girl.”

She slides her arm out from under mine and presses her lips together while she shifts her weight from foot to foot like she’s nervous.

Like I make her nervous.

The idea of me making someone like her nervous is so wild I almost laugh, but instead I reach to grab hold of her arm again and tuck it back in place.

“Well, this is my first date ever,” I tell her, “so I think we’re just going to have to fumble our way through it together.”

“So it would appear.” She drops her voice low, and I’m suddenly very aware of every single place where her skin is touching mine. “Somehow, I think we’ll manage.”

I can’t stop myself from glancing at her lips, those lips that felt like flower petals and velvet ribbons and silky-soft feathers when they moved against mine in the water slide.

She leads us down the sidewalk, and as we weave around groups of people wearing everything from formalwear to ‘I love Canada’ t-shirts and hats shaped like maple leaves, my head spins with a combination of hope and anticipation that’s more intoxicating than any of the liquors Shal has ever persuaded me to take a sip of.

I’m walking around with my arm linked through Andrea’s for the whole city to see, and not even a dozen shots of gross tequila could make me feel braver than I do in this moment.

“You sure didn’t waste time getting this date set up,” I tease.

She brings us to a halt in front of a restaurant door and swings me around so I’m facing her, her eyes sparking with that same heat from back in the house.

“I sure didn’t,” she answers, her tone matching mine as she arches an eyebrow. “This might be a summer fling, but I wanted to at least take you out for a meal before I kissed you again, and do you really think I could have made it longer than tonight without doing that?”

She leans in so close my eyes start to flutter closed as the rest of me braces for her to kiss me again, but all she does is hover over my lips before pulling back and grabbing the door’s handle.

“Dinner first,” she says with another smirk.

I’m seconds away from passing out in the middle of the sidewalk, but she tugs on my arm to guide me in after her. I didn’t get a look at the restaurant’s name outside, but the interior has me turning to ask her if she’s sure this is the right place.

The restaurant looks like an old European spinster’s cottage. The walls are bare stone with eerie black and white family portraits hung alongside some shelves housing a collection of creepy dolls in what I think is traditional Bavarian clothing. Old-timey brass band music plays softly overhead, and the few occupied tables are filled with a middle-aged couple drinking from huge beer steins and a family with a toddler munching on a giant pretzel.

“So…Google said it was a German restaurant,” Andrea says as I took a second look at the dolls. “It actually has great reviews! Plus, I really only picked it for this one appetizer they have, so we can just get that and then go somewhere else if you want.”

Despite the concerning decor, I’m still flying high enough on the thrill of walking down the street with her that I work up the nerve to bump her shoulder with mine and joke, “Wow, Andrea, you sure know how to treat a girl.”

---