Page 126 of Sharkbait
“Are you inviting me into your oven, Louise?”
“Ew.” I laugh. “You’re being weird. Why are you being weird?”
“Sorry,” he says. “I’m a little nervous, I guess. I want to make sure this night is good for you. There’s a fifty-fifty chance my idea could be a disaster.”
“You’re nervous?” I ask.
“Don’t sound so shocked. Of course I am. Everyone getsnervous around things they care about, don’t they?”
I shrug, not sure how to answer that question.
“Can I mention something I’ve noticed?”
“Uh-oh,” I laugh. Last time you said that, you told me that I have all-or-nothing thinking.”
“This is good. I promise.”
“Go ahead.” I hold my breath.
“You haven’t done the Jeopardy thing in a long time. This little brick oven fornication interlude just now was actually the first bit of trivia you’ve busted out in over a month.”
Huh. He’s right.
“I guess I… haven’t needed to,” I say. “When I’m with you, I feel…safe. Understood. I don’t need to work so hard to impress you or keep you.”
It’s quiet a moment until James says softly, “I know I asked you to wear the blindfold, but would you mind taking a quick peek at me?”
I lift the bottom of the blindfold up an inch and am treated to the most brilliant smile on his handsome face. He’s beaming.
“I really liked hearing that,” he says. “Thank you.”
He lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it. Goose bumps erupt all over my skin.
“Alright, back into the blindfold you go. We’re getting close.”
How did I not notice this before? That ever since I’ve gotten close with James, that nervous need in me has quieted. I never really questioned how that whole trivia thing started and what drove me to do it. But now that I’m thinking about it, it’s all becoming clear.
“That wholeJeopardything I do—or did—I’m realizing it’s kind of sad. Night after night I would sit at my tray table eating the microwavable meal I heated up for myself, and get the comfort I should have found in my parents from a game show host. Isn’t that sad?”
I don’t actually need him to answer that question.
Somehow, he knows that and just listens.
“Game shows are supposed to be fun. But have you ever noticed the name of that one?Jeopardy? Do you know thedefinition of the wordJeopardy?”
“Sure, I guess. It means—”
“Exposure to or imminence of death, loss, injury.”
“Yikes,” he says.
“Yeah. And that’s how it felt. Like it was life or death whether or not I got all those answers right. Especially after it became a little parlor trick for my parents. ‘Do the thing, Wheezy,’ Mom would say proudly whenever one of her new ‘friends’ was around. Rattling off all those facts and information always got me their approval. Their attention. So I made sure to keep it up.” I pause. “But maybe I don’t need to do that anymore.”
“Yeah,” he agrees. “I don’t think you do.”
A Beatles song comes on the radio, and James immediately changes it.
“Not to get too heavy,” he says. “But as a kid who lost his mom young, I can tell you there is a real tendency in me to ‘live for my mom.’ She was awesome, and that approach sounds good on the surface. Because people suggest things like that all the time: ‘you get to live for her now,’ and ‘go out and do all the things she didn’t get a chance to do.’ But living our lives for other people gets dangerous real quick. We lose track of what we want and who we are while we’re trying to honor them.” His tone shifts. “It goes the other way too though.”
