Page 12 of Ten Years and Then…
“I’ll have to remember that in a year and a half.” Daniel looked down as he said it, and it took her a moment to realize why. Did he think they’d be together then? Was he afraid she’d think he was making long term plans in the middle of a first date? She wouldn’t have given his words a second thought if he hadn’t acted like he’d said something wrong.
She reached across the table, took his hand, gave him her best smile.
“Or you could just get yourself a decent fake ID, and then you could buy me a margarita anytime you wanted.”
Daniel
She’d joked about him getting a fake ID, and then showed him hers, which he had to admit was pretty good. It would have fooled him, anyway. And then, while they waited for their food, the conversation had just dried up. They had been talking like real people, joking around, saying things that actually meant something. He’d been more open with her than he’d ever been on a date, or really with anyone anytime, besides Bianca.
And now they were exchanging boring details about classes and assignments and whatever else they’d been saying the last ten minutes. Not even any good stories about classes, like the way he’d zoned out this afternoon. Just stupid things that you’d tell a distant relative at Thanksgiving to fill time while you were waiting for the gravy to come back around the table.
It was weird that the service was so slow tonight. Maybe that was it, maybe she was just hungry and it was throwing her off, or his nerves were catching up to him, or—it didn’t matter why.
This was stupid, this was not how tonight was supposed to go, not how it had been going. And not how it was going to go from here, if he could help it. “Nora, what’s going on? What are we doing?”
Her water glass was halfway to her lips, his words stopped her as though her system crashed. She blinked, blinked again, like she was trying to reboot herself. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, we were really talking, and now we’re not. Both of us, and—I don’t know what happened, but I liked how it was going.” He reached over and took her hand, looking down at it, willing her to understand what he was saying. She looked down, too, both of them staring at their hands. “I mean, I got called out in class today for daydreaming about you, so I really want things to go right, you know?”
She looked back up at the same instant he did, and their eyes met, and he felt—he didn’t know how to describe it. It was something like the way Bianca would look at him, but more. So much more.
“You were daydreaming about me? Tell me about it.” She was grinning, but then her expression changed, becoming somehow both softer and more serious at the same time. “Please tell me?”
Without realizing it had happened, both of his hands were on the table now, holding both of hers. “I was trying to picture what you’d wear, what you’d say when I met you, what I’d say and would you think it was funny, just—everything about tonight. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
Nora
She wanted to lean across the table and kiss him. Just like Molly Ringwald at the end of “Sixteen Candles.” She would have done it, if the waitress hadn’t picked that exact moment to bring their food.
It was fine. There’d be other opportunities before the evening was over, and anyway, a kiss over a cheeseburger wasn’t as romantic as one over a birthday cake, right? “I’ve been kind of obsessing about it, too,” she said. “About you.” Maybe she couldn’t kiss him right now, but she could still make sure he knew how she felt. “Because of what you said yesterday. How you liked me just from hearing me, before you saw me. You—you have no idea how that made me feel.”
His eyes hadn’t left hers the whole time. “Please tell me?”
“It made me feel like even before you saw me, you saw who I—who I want to be. Who I hope I really am. Not the girl—oh, God, you told me stuff that had to be really hard to say, I can do it too.” She owed it to him, after the way he’d said things that he had to be afraid she’d think were stupid, or worse. “Not the girl who wouldn’t put up a fight and wouldn’t make any trouble afterwards. I don’t like her. I don’t want to be her anymore. And after what you said, I thought—I hoped—maybe I wouldn’t have to be.”
He didn’t say anything for a while, but he didn’t look away, and he didn’t look disappointed, or freaked out. If anything, he looked angry, but—and she couldn’t say why she thought so—it wasn’t at her.
“I hate that you ever felt that way.” He finally looked down, stared at his cheeseburger for a moment, then back up at her again. “Bee—Bianca—met a guy, this was last winter, and after she told me about it—he treated her like—like how you said you felt, like that kind of girl. And we talked for, I don’t know, two hours, and afterwards I wanted to get in Dad’s car and drive down to Philadelphia and find that guy and beat the crap out of him, for treating her that way.”
Nora hadn’t expected that. Not any of it. She wasn’t sure what she expected, she only knew she had to be as honest as he had been to her, and in return she’d gotten—God, if this was who Daniel really was, maybe—maybe she did deserve him, after all. Maybe she always had.
“Really?”
He gave her a sad little smile. “I’m still kind of ashamed I didn’t do it. But Dad would have killed me for taking the car, and the guy—Bee never said what he looked like, he might have been six foot four and built like a tank for all I know, on top of being four or five years older than me.” He reached out, took her hand. It was warm and strong and she felt better—and maybe safer—than she could ever remember feeling. “You shouldn’t ever have felt like you had to be that girl. But I think it’s because so many guys—that’s what they’re looking for, I guess. It sucks, and they suck, but—I guess there are an awful lot of them, so probably, you just—what were you supposed to do? But that’s not who you are. I can see it. I hope you see it too.”
She couldn’t help herself. This time, she did lean across the table, cheeseburger and all, and she kissed him.
Daniel
Daniel was shocked when he looked up at the clock over the bar. It was nearly ten o’clock. Had they really been sitting here, talking and laughing, for almost three hours?
Nora followed his gaze, and she must have been thinking the same thing. “Wow. I had no idea we’ve been hogging this table all night. We probably ought to let them have it back.”
He didn’t really want to. He’d be happy to sit here with her until the café closed, but she was probably right. He stood up first, offered her his hand, and as he did so, the jukebox came to life. The first notes of the song instantly sent him back two years, to a night in June of 1986, and to the parking lot of the movie theater on Central Avenue. She noticed his reaction—of course she did.
“What, you didn’t like Top Gun? Or is it just Berlin you don’t like?”
He couldn’t tell her what memory Take My Breath Away brought back. There was honest, and then there was honest. And didn’t they say, talking about past relationships was the kiss of death on a date?
