Page 67 of Ten Years and Then…
Except it definitely counted.
Nora, January 15
Ben had said she wouldn’t hear from him for a few days, but after the way he hadn’t let her kiss him goodbye last week, she assumed he was just being polite. She figured the next time she saw him would be at the Observer office—probably during a staff meeting, where he’d go out of his way not to look at her.
But to her shock, he called an hour ago and asked if she wanted to go to a movie with him. “Home Alone is playing. I know it’s cheesy, and I’m sure you’ve seen it already, but it’s fun, and two hours in the dark with you and a bucket of popcorn sounds like a pretty good afternoon to me.”
She’d agreed, and now here they were, in the back row of Theater Three at the AMC Campus Hills. The popcorn was in her lap—she’d insisted—and his arm was around her. And at some point while Macaulay Culkin was torturing poor Joe Pesci, he leaned over and kissed her.
She’d wondered if he would do it. Honestly, it was all she was thinking about once they’d stopped talking when the movie started. She’d tried to kiss him last week. But now, after a week of thinking and mixed signals, she wasn’t sure if he wanted to—or if she wanted him to.
If she was being brutally honest, she was almost—maybe dreading wasn’t exactly the right word, but it was the closest she could come to it. She hadn’t kissed anyone since Daniel. And she hadn’t realized until this moment how much that mattered. It felt weird to even think about it, almost like she was cheating.
But how could you cheat on someone who you broke up with almost two years ago?
She didn’t respond when he kissed her—the first time.
But ten minutes later, the second time he did it, she kissed him back. And it wasn’t nearly as weird as she had feared it might be.
It was only later, sitting on her bed, with Mr. Fuzzles on the pillow next to her, that she realized how weird it was that it wasn’t weird.
Daniel, that same night
He was in Valerie’s apartment.
He’d been in Nora’s dorm room. And her aunt’s apartment. And back in high school, he’d been in Peggy’s house—even her bedroom once. With the door open and her parents ten feet away.
But he’d never been in the actual home that a woman actually lived in and paid for herself, alone with her.
Maybe it shouldn’t have felt like a big deal, but it did.
He was sitting on the futon she used for a couch, waiting for her to—he didn’t even know what. When they’d gotten there, after another long meal at the Green Lantern Café, she’d headed into her bedroom, saying, “I’ll be out in five minutes.”
“Mr. Keller,” she said in a cold voice, when she stepped out. She was wearing a suit—black blazer over a crisp white blouse, and slacks. “I hope you’re prepared. We spent a lot of money bringing you out to Chicago.”
She wasn’t smiling—or even looking at him. Just staring down at a clipboard.
She’d said she wanted to help him practice interviewing, hadn’t she? Clearly, she wanted to make it as realistic as possible.
Well, he was definitely off balance now, which he was pretty sure was how he was going to feel in Chicago. “Uh, yes, Ms. Vance. I’m ready.”
She started with vague questions—why was he interested in this particular job, what were his career goals, and so forth. He had decent answers for all of them. Then she got into more technical topics, which he had no trouble at all with, but he did wonder how she knew what to ask.
And then, half an hour into it, she asked, “Are fiber optic networks covered by the Telecommunications Act of 1934? And do the privacy provisions of the Telecommunications Act of 1986 apply to signals transmitted over fiber optic lines? And how is all of that impacted by local cable operator monopoly contracts, Mr. Keller?”
“Uh—what?” What in the world did any of that even mean?
She suddenly broke character and burst out laughing. “I’m sorry. But it was worth it to see your face just now.”
He laughed as well; it was kind of funny. “I can imagine. But I guess, if I got a question like that, I’d just say that I’d refer it to the corporate counsel, it’s their job to deal with all that.”
“Good answer.” She took off the blazer and came over to sit next to him on the futon. “I think you’re going to nail it, Daniel. You were ready for everything I threw at you. Not that I have any idea if you answered the tech stuff right or not, but you sounded very sure of yourself.”
“How did you even know what to ask?”
She put an arm around him. “Two hours in the engineering library at Albion. I’m really good at research.” She pulled herself closer to him. “And you’re worth the effort.”
And then she kissed him, for real.
