Page 50 of Finders Keepers
What if I were to lean back, rest against him? Best-case outcome: He’d wrap his arms around me and kiss the top of my head. Worst-case: He’d push me away…No, no…worst would be he whispers something mortifying in my ear like, “Um, Nina, did you remember deodorant this morning?” Which I did. I’m like ninety-eight percent certain. Most likely is that he’d go stiff (not in the sexy way) and take a step backward,either assuming I’m requesting more space or to politely remove himself from my proximity.
Just going to stay right where I am, I think. (And maybe turn my head to take a subtle sniff of my armpit to make sure everything is all hunky-dory under there.)
“I like to think we make a pretty good team.” Hanako beams as she sets our drinks in front of us on the bar. The love absolutely radiates from her as she flashes her left hand, which sports a tattooed infinity symbol on her ring finger. “Ten years together and counting.” So maybe she hasn’t been flirting with Quentin after all. Then again, I still haven’t completely ruled out the whole non-monogamy thing.
Quentin tries to hand her a twenty-dollar bill, but she shakes her head and instead gestures for him to lean in. She whispers something in his ear like she did at the coffee shop, and Quentin goes pink again. Or maybe it’s just the moody lighting in here, because the color is gone by the time he straightens. Then he bends back down to whisper something to her that makes her grin, then roll her eyes. He drops the cash into a cigar box being used to collect extra donations and grins back at her.
Whatever this moment is, I am clearly not a necessary part of it. So I grab our drinks and move to the door leading out onto the patio, pushing my hip against it. Quentin appears behind me, arm stretched over my head to prop the door open, and his scent and the light breeze coming off the river combine into something so summery and sensual that I feel like my kneecaps have turned to jam.
At least it’s less packed out here—only an uncomfortable first date happening at one of the picnic tables and four guys playing a game of cornhole in the nearby grass. Even thoughthe music the DJ is playing inside is still piped over an outdoor speaker, it’s quiet enough to have a conversation without needing to raise our voices.
I sidle up to an empty cocktail table made out of an old barrel. “You and Hanako sure have a lot of secrets, huh?”
“Nah, not a lot. Just one, really.” Quentin takes a sip of his drink and emits a hum of appreciation. “This is super good. It’s the Hi-C one. Wanna taste?” he asks, offering me the glass.
I shake my head and instead try my own. It’s tart and crisp and refreshing on this sultry evening. “One secret can be a lot.”It certainly was for us, I don’t say but definitely think.
Quentin leans in. “You jealous, Hunnicutt?”
“Hardly,” I say, grabbing his drink and taking a swig despite having just turned down his offer.
He’s sucking the corner of his bottom lip, as if he’s concentrating on something. Then he says, “You know, Thursday night, after you left, it struck me that I don’t know what style pizza you prefer.”
“What?”
“Or the best concert you’ve ever been to. Or if you studied abroad.”
I finally relinquish his Hi-C cocktail (which is indeed super good). “Um…”
“I know that a lot happened over the last seventeen years. For both of us. But it’s easy to forget sometimes.”
“It is,” I say. Because that period of time when he was absent from my life feels like a fever dream lately. There’s us before, and there’s us now, but everything in between feels kind of like a series of endnotes that neither of us have skipped ahead to examine.
“So maybe…What do you say that tonight we try to catcheach other up? We can treat it almost like a first date. Pretend we’re two strangers getting to know each other over a drink or two while enjoying this scenic setting, and…” He pauses, listening to what’s now playing over the outdoor speaker. “Harvey Danger’s ‘Flagpole Sitta’?”
My brain latches onto the word “date” and doesn’t want to let it go.Likea date, I try to tell it.Likeone, not that itisone. Even so…“I don’t know if—”
“Forget everything you know about me.” He holds a hand out over the barrel, and it takes me an embarrassingly long time to realize he wants me to shake it. When I finally do, he smiles warmly. “My name is Quentin Bell,” he says. “I’m a lawyer, currently in town renovating my dad’s old house.”
When I don’t respond automatically, he prompts, “How about you?”
“Nina,” I say. “Nina Hunnicutt. Historian. I’m here visiting my parents for the summer.”
He’s gracious enough not to point out that this is a gross simplification of the reason I’m back home. Instead, his smile widens. It isn’t that too-charming one that bothers me either, but something much more natural and unguarded. Something that, even if he were actually a complete stranger, I would know right away is genuinely, one hundred percenthim.
“I hope to get to know you better…Nina, was it?”
I narrow my eyes at him, but then my gaze goes softer as I say, “Yeah, I hope to get to know you better too, Kevin.”
Joking aside, I do mean that. Because Quentin is right that there are a lot of gaps in my knowledge of the adult version of him that’s sitting across from me. I’ve been so preoccupied trying to reconcile that he’s the same boy who hurt me with my undeniable attraction to the man he is now that I’ve neglectedto consider the time we spent out of each other’s lives was actually longer than we spent in them. So much happened during those years, things that shaped us both. And now I have a million questions. Like, what does he like to do on a lazy weekend? Does he know how to cook? Does he like IPAs or porters? Does he even drink beer at all? How many times has he had his heart broken? Or broken others’? I might know his origin story, but that isn’t enough. I want to know the person he’s grown into and everything that’s made him that way.
I want him to know me too. Which may be difficult, consideringIbarely have any clue who I am right now. But maybe this is the first step in figuring it out. And maybe it will take away some of the mystery, some of theallureof him.
So Quentin and I spend the next few hours just…chatting. Catching up on the time we missed. Filling each other in on where we were, with whom, why. Funny stories, new hobbies, the music we listen to these days. I learn that he spent two summers in college volunteering with Habitat for Humanity—hence the comfort with power tools. I tell him about when I got stuck in my apartment building’s elevator for an hour and that I learned to drink black coffee in grad school because someone kept stealing all of the sugar and creamer from the student lounge. We talk a bit more about Dad’s accident, the emotional and financial uncertainty of it all. The aftermath of his parents’ divorce, and the resentment he used to feel toward his sister, who was already out of the house and much less affected by it. We agree that Neapolitan pizza is the best, but disagree on the order in which we rank Detroit-, Chicago-, and St. Louis–style pies.
And it’s frankly better than any real first date I’ve ever been on. Not that I’ve been on that many. Or any at all for the past six years. Also, not that this is a date at all. It’s onlylikea date.We’re just two strangers who already sort of know each other, getting drinks to support an old classmate’s injured employee, and so that one can avoid drawing naked people with her mom. A tale as old as time, really.
It’s dark before we know it. I’m sure we missed the Pog tournament—for the best, as Quentin definitely would’ve trounced me. Solar lanterns and café lights keep the patio illuminated, but not brightly enough to block out the stars.
