pieces that she’d have to sweep up off the shop floor later. He had the best smile she’d ever seen in her life, like a baby animal and a classic Hollywood leading man combined. Like she wanted to hug him and grow old with him and also have sex with him. It was a smile that contained multitudes.
“Okay, then. So, Theodora . . . or Teddy . . . Wait. What should I call you?”
“Either one is fine,” she said. “But pretty much everyone aside from Josie calls me Teddy.”
Everett smiled again. “Teddy it is, then. Teddy, do you want to hang out sometime? Without your friends or my friends or my sister, someplace where we can talk about anything except Jazzercise because we said we were done with that topic—”
“Yes.”
“What?” Everett asked. “Yes?”
Teddy smiled, despite the unease currently roiling in her stomach. She said she was going to do one thing every day that scared her, and right now, more than skydiving or bungee jumping or getting a tattoo, what scared her most was going out with Everett St. James. And now that he was standing directly in front of her, staring at her with those expressive eyes and that mouth she desperately wanted to kiss and those hands she desperately wanted to hold, she was both calm and terrified.
“Yes,” Teddy repeated. “Let’s hang out.”
“Great.” Everett smiled. “So, uh, do you want to go eat somewhere, or . . .”
“Do you have a bike?” Teddy asked.
Everett held completely still for a moment. “A bike?”
Teddy nodded. “I want to learn how to ride a bike. Well, relearn, I guess. It’s been a while, because I have a bicycle fear. It’s on my list.”
She loved that she didn’t have to explain the idea of her list to Everett, because he already knew. He already knew so many things about her. Maybe all friendships/relationships/dates should start with several long, personally revealing emails, for convenience’s sake.
“Yeah,” Everett said, running his hand through his hair. “My best friend will probably let me borrow hers. I have one, in storage at my parents’ house, but it’s too big for you, I’m sure. But I think Natalie’s about your size.”
“Okay,” Teddy said. “Could you do tomorrow evening around five thirty? And you don’t mind? Being there for my first bike ride in years?”
Everett smiled and leaned forward until his face was maybe half a foot from hers. He decidedly did not smell bad—he smelled like a bed she wanted to climb into.
“Theodora Teddy Phillips,” he said, “it would be my honor to help you relearn how to ride a bike.”
Teddy couldn’t help it; she felt a smile bloom across her face like a field of wildflowers. She was a cliché screen saver picture and she didn’t even care.
“And you know what they say,” Everett said, leaning back. Teddy had to fight the urge to tell him to lean closer. “You don’t forget how to ride a bike. It’s ingrained in you, presumably like your knowledge of Jazzercise footwork.”
Teddy pressed her lips together. “I actually have to relearn the steps with every class. I’m terrible at Jazzercise.”
“We said we weren’t going to talk about Jazzercise anymore,” Everett said, walking backward toward the door without taking those big brown eyes off of her. He bumped into a rack of novelty socks and jumped. “Okay, sorry,” he said, grabbing the rack and righting it. “I . . . Oh, no. Great. I’ve showed you what a lumbering oaf I am. This didn’t come across in the emails.”
Teddy smiled (she could not stop smiling! Her face was going to break!). She liked this lumbering oaf. “You don’t have to worry about the socks. They’re not fragile.”
“Right,” Everett said, bumping into the door. They couldn’t stop looking at each other. This was ridiculous; it was like the shop was a Magic Eye picture and Teddy kept staring at the center to see Everett St. James appear.
“Wait,” Teddy said as he pushed the door open, still looking at her. “Where are we meeting?”
“I’ll pick you up,” Everett said, holding the door open with one arm.
“But you don’t know where I live.”
Everett smiled again, and it made Teddy want to shiver. “Why don’t you email me?” he asked.
This was the part where a very different kind of man would wink. A man who had a different kind of charm, maybe even a bit of smarm. But Everett was not the winking type, which was one of the things Teddy could already tell she