a laugh. "Other than that."
"Small towns are a strange creature, and if the rhythm of the way they move doesn't fit you exactly right, it's hard to ever feel like it's your home."
I thought about that as he pulled into the parking lot of a fancy looking steak restaurant, a dark, low slung building with clean lines and tasteful landscaping.
"I don't know if I've figured out that rhythm yet," I told him. "Considering we had to drive almost an hour to feel safe enough to enjoy our first date."
Tucker tilted my chin up with his thumb and placed a feather-light kiss on my lips. "We'll be able to date all over that damn town soon enough. As soon as someone else makes bigger waves than I just did."
While it may not have helped me feel like it was my home, it was enough for me. Or at least it was for one night.
He left the truck and opened the door for me, holding my hand as we walked into the dimly lit restaurant. He'd reserved us a private booth, and even if it made me look like the cliché of all clichés, I forced him to sit on the same side of the booth as me.
"I don't want that table in between us," I told him when the hostess walked away. He curled a hand around my thigh and dropped a kiss at my temple, breathing me in before he pulled back.
"Pretty Girl, you're going to make me lose my mind, I can already tell."
The smile on my face at his answer stayed there almost the entire night.
We ate slowly, his hands staying firmly on that one stretch of skin along my thigh, even if it meant he had to eat one-handed. And we talked for hours. No one rushed us, simply refilled waters, brought a couple glasses of red wine for me, a whiskey for him, and I spent those hours getting to know Tucker Haywood, letting him get to know me.
My fingers itched for my camera as he spoke and as he listened, because I could have taken picture upon picture of him for my hypothetical book. A veritable study in focus and attention, from the set of his eyes to the smile hovering over his lips.
But if I’d been taking pictures, I wouldn’t have been able to talk with him like I was. And that would’ve been a sin.
For each thing we had in common, there was something about us that was completely different.
He didn't like chocolate, which was a sin in my eyes, but we agreed that pineapple on pizza was perfection.
He loved watching golf, which was my favorite way to trigger a nap, but we both preferred college football over professional.
His voting patterns leaned toward the right of the middle, and mine leaned to the left.
He told me about his job, how long the law firm had been in his family, the expectations that came with it. I listened without judgment of how unhappy it made him, just like he didn't chide me for up and moving across the country without a single lead on a job.
With each topic we covered, it was like unrolling a smooth sheet of pristine white paper. There was no flaw to it, to this conversation, just unending possibilities of what it could be turned into, and that's when I realized that the curse didn't mean that you found someone who was exactly like you.
Tucker was explaining what he loved about going to church, and even though I couldn't remember the last time my head had been covered by the roof of a place of worship, I found myself interested in knowing why it was important to him, to explore the truth of a God that dwelled in a single space.
I preferred the outdoors, climbing a mountain or following a trail to a sunset that would show some holy space of creation. Our differences didn't deter me, it simply heightened my fascination until I felt like I'd never look at him without stars in my eyes.
As he didn't like chocolate, he didn't join me in savoring the dessert that I'd picked, even though I was stuffed to the brim and in serious danger of a food coma. He simply watched with amusement as I licked the spoon clean, that warm, big hand parked right on my thigh, his fingers curled around a place that was about four inches south of where I wanted them to be curled.
"Should I make a