Page 78 of An Introvert's Guide to Life and Love
I startle and then laugh. “Yeah. They are.” Facing him does not help my dilemma. What do I do with my arms? They’re itching to twine around his waist, because they’re arms and hence have no brains; that would obviously be an extremely weird thing for me to do right now. To his credit, Daniel doesn’t seem fazed by the moment’s awkwardness. He stands, an inch or two away from me, hands in the pockets of his shorts (real shorts tonight, not bike shorts), face turned toward the lone tree in my yard. In the last week, the buds have bloomed into big, creamy white blossoms.
“Nice magnolia.”
“Is that what it is?”
“Oh yeah. You didn’t know?”
“I know nothing about plants. I was wondering what it was.”
“Southern magnolia,” he says. “Beautiful.”
“Thanks,” I say, as if I can take any credit. “So, um, I would invite you in, but as you know I have no furniture.”
“The backyard was pretty comfortable.”
“Yeah?” My heart flutters annoyingly. “May I offer you another drink? Perhaps some chips?”
“I would love another drink and perhaps some chips.”
I give his arm a playful nudge, and if that sounds like it was just an excuse to touch his rock-hard arm, that’s because it was.
We weave around to the back of the house in silence. At the bar cart, he scans the wet cans of beer sitting in melting ice and the half-emptybottles of wine and then selects a can of seltzer. I follow suit and also grab a bag of Lay’s, then lead the way to the side of the pool. We kick off our shoes and sit on the edge with our feet in the warm water.
“Do you not drink?” I ask, hoping it’s not a rude question.
He crunches on a chip. “I do. Just not often.”
“Ah.” I nod. Usually when guys say something like this, it’s because they had a problem with alcohol, or their dad did, so I don’t ask any follow-up questions.
“Having two brothers and a lot of guy friends, I’ve seen too many guys turn into complete assholes when they drink. It’s like they can’t control themselves. I decided a long time ago that I wanted to be able to control myself. And, you know, not to be an asshole.”
I hold up my can of seltzer to clink against his. “Cheers to that.”
We swish our feet back and forth. Like magic, a pair of fireflies zips over the pool, zapping and blinking. The evening breeze makes a gentle rushing sound in Lottie’s flower bushes.
“This is nice,” Daniel says.
“It is, isn’t it?”
“Whoever gets to live here sure will be lucky.”
I don’t say anything to this.
“Tell me about your house,” I say after a minute.
“Hmm.” He leans back, planting his hands on the cement behind us, and doesn’t apologize when a couple of his fingers land on mine. I straighten up and put my hands in my lap, clutching my cold, sweating drink.
“It’s a condo,” he says, “on the first floor of a three-story building over on Pleasant.”
“On the beach?”
“On the beach. It’s a one-bedroom with a big balcony. I added faux-wood floors and a shiny new IKEA kitchen and bathroom. Bigproject, but it needed it. It was my parents’ first place together. They bought it in the early eighties for, you know—”
“A thousand bucks and a spit handshake?”
“Basically. They kept it for various reasons over the years, but I think it was mostly sentimental. They lived there as newlyweds. But they told us they kept it for the rental income, and then later for us kids to crash if we ever needed a place for a few months. Summer break from college, that kind of thing.”
“Did you go away to college?”
