suspicion. “Are you worried about something?”
“It seems odd,” I say, “that you were at the restaurant, then the road, then here.”
He lifts a shoulder. “You were all those places. I wasn’t suspicious. I just thought I was lucky.”
My mind is racing. I don’t know what to believe. I don’t know what to do. My brain is saying, Get in your car and drive away and make sure he doesn’t follow you home. My body is saying, Do it again.
“Let’s get something to eat,” he says, sensing weakness.
He’s too nice. He’s going to take it personally when I don’t want to give him my number or see a movie next week.
“I don’t do seconds,” I make myself say, even as a desperate part of me tries to plead its case.
“No?” he says. “I think if we’d had more time that night, I could have given you seconds. And thirds.”
Whatever protest I’d been about to utter dissolves in the cold air at the mention of that orgasm. That’s what I want. Seconds. Thirds. More.
“I live near the restaurant,” he adds. “Verre Plein. Come over.”
I think about how easy it must be for him. Being himself all the time. No secrets, no lies. He sees a woman he wants, gives her his room key— “Why did you have a key?”
“What?”
“Why did you have a hotel room if you live near the restaurant?”
“Burst pipe in the building. Two floors had to spend the night elsewhere.”
Holden City Grand Hotel is not the place a teacher at a farm school would be able to afford. “That’s a nice hotel.”
“The building paid for it. They should, with what they charge.”
The sane part of me, the part saying, This is too much. This can’t be a coincidence, is turning on the part of me that climbs to the roof every night and urges me to step off. This feels like a compromise. Like inching my toes over the side, but not jumping. Not yet.
“Come on,” he says, starting toward his truck. “I don’t have a spare key this time, so you’ll have to follow.”
“We’ll see,” I say, even though I know I’m going to do it.
He nods, then jogs to his truck. I return to the garage to collect my car, and when I back out into the lot he’s idling at the exit. He puts on his blinker to make the turn onto the freeway, and I do the same.
He doesn’t drive straight to the city center, like I’m expecting. That’s where Verre Plein is, where he lives, where I live. No, he leads us to the east side of the city, popular with artists and hipsters, streets lined with small restaurants hawking food from all over the world. This is where Denise has her studio apartment.
He parks in a public lot, and I find a spot the next row over. He’s waiting when I climb out of my car. “You said you lived near Verre Plein.”
“I do. But I told you I was starving and I want tacos. Come on.” He doesn’t wait, just heads for the sidewalk.
I want to complain, but my stomach leaps at the thought of food, so I follow. The streets are busy for nine o’clock on a Tuesday, restaurants and bars doing good business. He stops at a place called Rita’s Cantina and opens the door, gesturing for me to go inside. He doesn’t ask if I like Mexican, though I do, and the smell of roasting meat and spice makes me forget all my misgivings.
The restaurant is half-full and he leads the way to a tiny corner booth, taking the seat opposite me. The walls are covered with canvas prints of Mexican movies, their hand-painted artwork a bright contrast to the plain walls and tables. A server comes over and I order two tacos and the stranger gets five, then checks with me before ordering a couple of beers, too.
“Five tacos?” I say, sipping my beer. “Really?”
“I’ve gotta keep up my energy if I’m going to fulfill all my promises.”
“All of them? How many are we talking?”
He thinks for a second. “Six,” he says, trying to keep a straight face.
I raise my eyebrows. “Oh, wow.”
“Not up for it?”
“You’re going to have to eat fast if you want to fulfill six ‘promises’ before midnight.”
He sets down his bottle. “What happens at midnight? Do you turn into a pumpkin?”
I said midnight because I want there to be an end time. A finish line. And once we’re across, we’re done. But instead I