“Right. But my point is that it’s going to be another nice summer night. We could sit outside somewhere, have a beer and some food. There’s a noodle shop in Montpelier that’s barking my name. It’s been a while since I had cold sesame noodles and crispy duck.”
That does sound delicious. But I have so many questions. “Do you mean… like a date?”
“Absolutely,” he says.
“But we’re not dating,” I point out. “I’m not dating anyone right now.”
He shrugs. “I’ll let you sort out your own semantic arguments. But I’d like to take you out for dinner. What have you got to lose, anyway?”
“Besides more of my dignity?”
He laughs. “You know, it kills me that I can’t remember meeting you the first time. Were we super polite to each other? Or was it just as snarky?”
“Snarky from minute one,” I admit. “You were nice to me, but I couldn’t figure out how sincere it really was.”
He looks over to me again, and his expression is filled with so much warmth that I’m taken aback. “I was sincere,” he says, before turning back to watch the road. “Not that I remember it. But I just have a feeling.”
My heart thumps like a bunny rabbit’s. But then you stood me up. I keep that detail to myself. My dignity is in enough jeopardy already. And it’s not like he can explain himself. He doesn’t even remember meeting me.
I don’t have room in my life for warm glances and dinner invitations. Rickie is very distracting. And I cannot let myself get distracted.
“So?” he asks. “Dinner? It will be like an hour-long vacation. Have some noodles with me, Shipley. It won’t hurt. I swear.”
“Maybe,” I say. “I’ll text my mom and see what she’s planning. If she has big plans for dinner, I wouldn’t want to bail on her.”
“Fair enough,” he says. “Ask her, then.”
Fine. Whatever. I pull out my phone and send a message to Mom.
But she hasn’t answered by the time we finish our first two deliveries in Burlington. That’s not unusual. She’s a busy lady.
“Oh well,” I say, feeling relieved. “Maybe we should have given her more notice.”
“Maybe,” he says as he pulls into a parking spot near the School of Public Health. “Why don’t you give me your number and I’ll text you to check in later.” He pulls out his phone and looks at me expectantly.
“It’s…” I pause, because it’s just occurring to me that we’ve texted before. Shit.
“It’s what?” He’s waiting.
“I think I have your number already. I’ll check. And I’ve got to run.” I grab Audrey’s pastry box, leaving Rickie’s pastry behind in its own bag. Then I open the truck’s door and hop out.
“Wait, really?”
“Really.”
And now he’ll realize he can look for those old texts. And he’ll know that he stood me up, and that I failed to mention it, because I was embarrassed about that too.
Lovely. That’s the problem with secrets. They never stay buried.
“See you at five,” I say. And then I run for it.
Fifteen
Rickie
Daphne hustles away from the truck, and I gather my things and cross the campus in the other direction. Outside the lecture hall, I take out the savory croissant that Audrey made for me and eat it slowly.
I guess it makes sense that Daphne and I corresponded before. If you’re doing a ride share with someone, you’d do that.
I’m just so tired of the big gap in my memory. I don’t even know what I don’t know. It’s exhausting.
After finishing my excellent pastry, I sit in the last row of the lecture hall and pull out my phone. While the professor talks, I search my phone for 802 numbers. There are a bunch of them. There aren’t any Daphnes. And the only Shipley is Dylan.
But eventually I find one for a “SHark,” which must stand for some blend of Shipley and Harkness. Who knows what nineteen-year-old me was thinking?
When I open it up, I find a conversation from fall of three years ago. It begins with a boring conversation about where to pick her up—at a gate on Elm Street. Then we negotiate a meetup spot for the ride home. It’s at the same exit as the ice cream place. Just like she’d said.
A chill snakes down my spine, even though I’m reading the dullest exchange of text messages ever written. It’s just that I know I’m the guy who wrote this. But I don’t remember, so it feels like someone else did it. My double. My evil twin.