Page 82 of The System

“Are you sure you’ve never been on a date with a woman before?” Carina asked.

“Pretty sure, yes.”

“Then, you’ve been wasted on Diego because that was an amazingly romantic thing to say that, I’m certain, he’d have no interest in hearing.”

“I didn’t feel that way about him to say it, anyway,” Kieran replied.

During the movie, Carina held her hand anytime they weren’t eating from their shared bucket of popcorn, and when the credits rolled, she stood and offered her hand to Kieran again. Then, Carina walked down the stairs first and held on to Kieran’s hand with both of hers behind her back as if Kieran needed to be guided down the stairs. Or, maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe it was that Carina didn’t want to let go. That seemed more likely. Kieran tossed their trash on the way out and took Carina’s hand in earnest as they left the theater and re-entered the way-too-brightly-lit lobby.

“Hungry? Want to grab dinner?” Carina asked in the parking lot.

“Not really. I ate all that popcorn.”

“That’s not dinner.”

“If you’re going to date me, you should know that popcorn is a food group to me, so yes, it’s dinner.”

“Well, I don’t want to…” Carina stopped by her car and added. “I don’t want the date to be over yet. We only saw a movie, so we didn’t get to talk much.”

“You can come to my place. We can talk there.”

“I brought the wine you got me. It’s in the car. I can bring it up, and we can drink that together before I go.”

“I don’t want you to drink it and drive, Carina.”

“You have an option, then.” Carina turned her around until Kieran’s back was against the side of the car. “You can let me have one glass, wait a bit, and drive home, or…” She moved into Kieran’s space. “I can share the bottle with you and stay over.”

“Stay over?”

Carina nodded slowly and said, “Not for that. Just to stay.”

“To sleep?”

“Yes, to sleep.”

“In the same bed?”

“Yes,” Carina said with a small laugh. “But not if it’s too much.”

“It’s just that I have this mouth guard I wear because I grind my teeth, and I have a nose strip situation because I can snore sometimes. I don’t know if you–”

“Bring it on, Kieran,” Carina interrupted. “Bring it all on.”

“Well, maybe not on the first date. But if you stay and I snore and wake you up, can you just, like, nudge me away, and I’ll go out to the sofa or something?”

“Nope.” Carina kissed her on the forehead. “Ready?”

“Nope to what, exactly?”

“Nope, you’re not sleeping on your own sofa. Let’s go.”

“I don’t want to wake you up,” Kieran said as she climbed into the car.

“I’m a heavy sleeper. We’ll be fine. Just make sure I wake up when my alarm goes off. I have it set three times to make sure I don’t miss it, but at home, I even have that robot alarm thing that gets farther and farther away from the bed every time it goes off to force me to get up to turn it off because I’m not a morning person. Oh, and I sweat when I sleep. I sleep hot, you could say, I guess, so I usually sleep naked or just in my underwear, and I have to change the sheets pretty frequently.”

“Really?”

Carina turned to her in the driver’s seat and said, “None of us is perfect, Kieran.”

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