Page 22 of The Love Interest
She goes over to the corner that Goliath is standing in, moves him aside a bit, and then looks over at me to make sure I’m really going to the opposite corner.
“I’m not going to leave you hanging,” I whisper into the corner.
“Holy shit!” she whispers, and I can hear her so clearly from thirty feet away. “That is so cool!”
“Welcome to New York, Fiona.”
“Thank you, handsome stranger. I really appreciate you coming here with me.”
“I didn’t have anything better to do.”
“Rude.”
“And I wanted to come here with you.”
“Better.”
A group of about twenty people enter from outside and then hurry up the ramp behind us. Despite their chattering, we can still hear each other perfectly.
“Is it all that you hoped it would be?”
“Better.”
“Good.”
She starts humming a tune that I recognize. “Sad Eyes.” The Springsteen version.
“I like that song.”
“It’s going to remind me of you from now on. What song is going to remindyouof me?”
“Too soon to tell.”
“Rude.”
“Honest. I don’t take that question lightly.”
“Okay, then. Tell me one true sentence, Emmett Ford.”
Holy shit.
“It’s something Ernest Hemingway wrote about. InA Moveable Feast.Tell me one true sentence, and then we can go.”
You just blew my mind. That is one true sentence.
It feels like I’m dreaming, and I don’t want to wake up.That is another.
But I can’t tell her these things.
The whispered words that keep echoing around my mind are,I have never wanted so badly to kiss a woman I’ve just met in my entire life.What I whisper out loud is, “I’m glad I met you tonight.”
“Me too.”
“Are you going to tell me one true sentence now?”
“I just did. I was going to say the same thing.”
“Tell me one more true thing, then.”
