If he doesn’t, I just might die. It’s our second date, and we’re parked at a drive-in theater pretending to watch a movie while sneaking looks at each other. This movie is two hours and five minutes long. We have spent one hour and fifty-five minutes not kissing. I don’t want to sound desperate, but I didn’t contour a third of my body with this much highlighter to not get any of it on his shirt. If all goes according to plan, he’s going to be limping home tonight with ravaged hair and enough shimmer powder on his clothes to make him reflective to passing cars. He’s going to smell like my pheromones for a week no matter how hard he scrubs.
I haven’t been shy with the hint-dropping, drawing attention to my lips by licking, nibbling, and idly touching them—advice I got from Cosmopolitan. My shiny lip gloss was developed in a lab to magnetize the mouths of men, effective as fanning peacock feathers. Nicholas’s primitive instincts won’t be able to resist. It’s also a magnet for my hair and I keep getting the eye-watering taste of extra-hold hair spray in my mouth, but sometimes beauty requires sacrifice. On top of all this, my left hand drapes across my seat palm-up for maximum accessibility in case he’d like to pick it up and take it home with him.
My hopes begin to wither when he looks at me and then quickly away. Maybe he’s the kind of person who goes to the drive-in to actually watch the movie. As much as I’d hate to consider it, maybe he’s simply not feeling this. It wouldn’t be the first time a smooth-talking charmer dropped me off with a good-night kiss and ghosted right when I thought things were getting good.
And then I see it: a signal that eating my hair all night has not been in vain. It arrives in the form of an empty mint wrapper sitting in the cup holder. I subtly sniff the air and heck yes, that is definitely wintergreen I smell. I check the cup holder again and it’s even better than I’d thought. Two empty wrappers! He’s doubling up! A man doesn’t double up on mints unless he’s preparing for a little move-making.
My god, this man is so handsome I’m half convinced I somehow tricked him into this. I like every single little thing about Nicholas. He didn’t wait three days to call after the first date. All of his texts are grammatically correct. I have yet to receive an unsolicited dick pic. Already, I want to reserve a ballroom for our wedding reception.
“Naomi?” he says, and I blink.
“Huh?”
He smiles. It’s so adorable that I smile, too. “Did you hear me?”
The answer to that is no, because I’m over here admiring his profile and being way too infatuated for it being so early in our … I can’t even call this a relationship. We’ve only been on two dates. Get it together, Naomi.
“Zone out a lot?” he guesses.
I feel myself flush. “Yeah. Sorry. Sometimes people talk to me and I don’t even register it.”
His smile widens. “You’re cute.”
He thinks I’m cute? My heart flutters and glows. I give an inner thank-you speech to my false eyelashes and this low-cut (but still classy) blouse.
He cocks his head, studying me. “I was saying that the movie’s over.”
I whip my head to face the screen. He’s right. I have no idea how the movie ended and couldn’t tell you what the major plot points were. I think it was a romance, but who cares? I’m much more interested in the romance happening here in this car. The lot is now deserted, granting us enough privacy to make my imagination go wild. Anything could happen. It’s just me, Nicholas, and—
The pink cardigan folded neatly on his back seat, which obviously belongs to a woman, and that woman isn’t me.
My stomach drops, and Nicholas follows my gaze. “That’s for my mother,” he says quickly. I’m not quite convinced until he shows me a HAPPY BIRTHDAY card beneath it, which he’s signed and added a personal message to. Love you, Mom! I inwardly swoon.
“That’s so nice,” I tell him, acutely aware of how isolated and intimate it feels in his car. I’m a mess of nervous butterflies, and the discarded mint wrappers keep snagging my eye. The movie’s over, so what’s he waiting for? “Thanks for taking me here. Not many drive-ins left these days. Probably only