Page 9 of Head Over Heels

“Hundred bucks says you hate camping.”

“Look at you with the assumptions and stereotypes.”

He squinted at me.

I folded like a cheap table. “Hate it.”

“Sports?”

“What—do you, like, have achecklist?”

“Pretty much. What, you don’t?”

“I might have a mental checklist, but I don’t trot it out first thing on a blind date!”

“There’s your first mistake. Why not? It takes all the guessing out of the process.”

“You mean all the fun?”

He glares. “If by ‘fun’ you mean the part where after you’ve had sex for the first time, you ask if she wants to go to a baseball game and she says, ‘I hate sports,’ then yes. It takes all the ‘fun’ out. So. Spill. Do you like sports?”

As much as I wanted him to be wrong about something, I couldn’t lie. I shook my head. “I watch the Super Bowl, for the commercials, and the World Series if I’ve heard of the teams.”

He shook his head too, giving me a look of disgust that was only half in jest. “Okay, so shoot. What’s onyourchecklist?”

At least he was fair. “How do you feel about art museums?”

I probably wouldn’t have normally led with that, but he’d turned this into a tennis match and it was kind of entertaining, so what the hell.

He winced.

“Modern dance?” I was amping it up for effect.

“Oh, Jesus.”

“Knickknacks and throw pillows?”

He shook his head. Then he threw me a doozy:

“How do you feel about kids?”

“Um, is that afirst datequestion?”

He laughed. “I have a two-year-old daughter. She’s mostly with her mom. We never got married, long story. But yeah, I have a daughter.”

“I love kids. But I grew up in foster care and between that and nannying, I’ve already raised, like, six babies. So—I don’t know. Not anytime soon. I need to do life, career.”

He nodded at that. “Also.” He tapped the table. “I hate this restaurant.”

“Oh,” I said, surprised. “Me, too.”

“We could—get out of here. Go someplace else.”

“Like?”

“There’s a burger place—”

He didn’t have to finish the sentence. I was already laughing.

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