by Louise Hall
When he breaks away, his eyes remind me of tumultuous thunderstorms. His breathing is shaky and I can feel soft puffs of air on my lips. I’m a little bit in awe. Is it really me that’s made him feel like that? He tucks a loose strand of hair behind my ear, adding goose bumps on top of goose bumps. “That’s why,” he says huskily. He licks his lips almost as if he wants another taste of me. I lick my lips too, curious about whether I can still taste him and I really like how his eyes drop to them and he’s almost mesmerised by the tip of my pink tongue darting out.
“I’d better go,” he coughs. “I’m not down on the roster tomorrow so I’ll be here at six for that rain check?”
“What rain check?” I ask. My head still feels fuzzy.
“Our first date,” he grins, “you should wear that blue dress again. You looked hot as hell in it.”
His bossiness helps to clear the fog, “I might, I might not.”
LOLA
“What time do you finish?” I’ve stopped by the coffee shop on my way home from the Ink so Vada can talk me down from the ledge before my attempted second date with Zev.
“Your first day at the Ink went well then? Maggie said Zev was smiling from ear to ear when he got home last night.”
Darn, I’d forgotten that she was his cousin, “is that going to be weird, us being friends?”
“Don’t be silly,” she laughs. “Sal should be here soon to cover until closing. Do you want a coffee while you wait?”
I have to sit on my hands to stop them from shaking, “yeah, it’s probably not a good idea to add caffeine into this crazy mix.”
“You’re probably right. Do you want a pot brownie instead? Sal usually has a couple extra.”
My eyes must bug out of my head. “I’m kidding,” Vada laughs, “well not about the brownies, Sal usually does have a couple of extra. I think his mom makes them if you can believe it but I’m not going to corrupt you with them.”
When we get back to the house, Mats is there. I think he’s more excited about my date tonight than I am. He can’t wait to have the house to himself because he’s got a big test coming up and he’s uber-stressed out studying for it.
“I think maybe I should have asked Sal for those extra brownies after all,” Vada says after I introduce her to Mats and we head upstairs to my room. “Your brother looks really wound up.”
“He gets like that when he’s got a test coming up.”
“It’s cute the way he scrunches his nose up like that. Is he single?”
I splutter, “is he what?”
“Is he single?” Vada repeats.
“He’s Mats, of course he’s single.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Vada looks at me all wide-eyed, “he’s gorgeous.”
“Ew, he’s my brother, Vada!”
“Hey, I’m getting you ready to go out on a hot date with my cousin, remember?”
“Cousin is a million times better than brother, I wouldn’t care at all if you wanted to go out with one of my cousins, although Rocco and Luca’s wives might but you could always date Oliver?”
I rummage around on the top of my dresser for one of my favourite photos of my cousins at my Granny Reen’s birthday party a couple of years ago. “Meh,” Vada shrugs after she’s finished looking at it, “Oliver’s OK but he’s not Mats. Anyway enough about setting me up with your cousins, what were you thinking of wearing tonight?”
That’s the gazillion-dollar question – I explain how Zev kind of told me to wear the blue dress again but I’m not a huge fan of being bossed about.
“Show it me,” Vada insists.
The truth is that I don’t have a whole lot of fancy outfits in my closet – I’ve got stacks of t-shirts and padded leggings but not cute, date-appropriate dresses.
“It’s a gorgeous dress.”
“Ugh,” I flop down on to my bed, “he’s going to think I’m such a loser wearing the same dress again. Sierra would be so much better at this than me.”
“Or he might appreciate that you wore the dress he liked so much? Maybe we need a man’s perspective?”
Vada disappears and when she comes back, Mats is following her looking totally perplexed. It’s comforting to know that I’m not the only member of this family that’s completely clueless about dating. It definitely never felt like this with Noah perhaps because I’d known him all my life. It would have been weirder if I’d got all dressed up and tried to impress him because he’d have known that it wasn’t really me.
“What do you think?” Vada nudges Mats.
“Jane,” Mats winces, “you promised you weren’t going to try and turn me into Sierra?”
“I’m not,” I insist, “I just need to ask you this one simple question and then I promise I’ll never ask you for fashion advice ever again.”
“It’s a pretty dress,” he concedes. “It’s definitely the nicest thing you’ve got in your closet, no offence and ugh… I think I might vomit but he did ask you to wear it so what’s the problem?”
“Fine.”
“Can I go now?”
When Zev arrives, Vada’s still there, trying to flirt with my brother.
“Do you need us to give you a lift somewhere?” I ask Vada.
“Nah, I’m good. I thought I might hang out here for a bit. You don’t mind, do you?”
“It’s up to Mats,” I shrug, “it’s his house.”
Vada flutters her eyelashes at Mats, “I could help you study for your test tomorrow. I’m an amazing study partner.”
“OK,” Mats concedes and I bite my cheek really hard trying not to laugh.
I meet Zev at the front door because I don’t want there to be any more weirdness. It’s bad enough that my new friend is making a play for my brother.
“No Spanish inquisition today?” Zev asks, raising an eyebrow.
“Nope,” I explain about Vada pursuing Mats.
“Poor guy,” he shakes his head, “when my cousin wants something, she’s relentless. He doesn’t stand a chance.”
Zev has driven to pick me up and looking at his car I panic because I haven’t been in a car driven by anyone but my parents or Mats since the accident.
“Tell me you’re a safe driver,” I say quietly, closing my eyes. I try and tell myself that if he’s really serious about this date then it’s probably a good idea to let him see the basket case he’s getting involved with now before things go any further. “You don’t take any risks and you stay below the speed limit.”
He hesitates for a moment and I’m sure he must think I’m a freak of the highest order but then he nods. “I promise I’ll always look after you, Jane.”
“OK,” I climb into the car and try to relax but I can’t keep from clinging to the side of the car every time we go around a bend.
Zev plugs in his phone and one of my favourite songs comes on. It’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen. I turn to look at him. “I didn’t know you liked Queen?” I’d worn one of their vintage tour t-shirts to work today and when Zev had stopped by at lunchtime to talk to Shanks, he’d teased me because I hadn’t even been born when the lead singer, Freddie Mercury had tragically passed away.
He doesn’t say anything, he just smiles and I relax a little.
The music pulses through my bloodstream and when we stop at a set of traffic lights, Zev laughs, “I can’t believe you know all the words to “Bohemian Rhapsody”, it’s a six minute song.”
I laugh too, realising that I must have been mouthing along without realising it. I don’t ever sing out loud because I have a terrible singing voice. “It’s my party trick,” I shrug.
“I wouldn’t have thought that somebody like you would be into a band like Queen.”
“Oh yeah,” I arch an eyebrow, “and what kind of music did you think somebody like me would be into then?”
“I don’t know,” he shifts a little in his seat, “just not that.”
I know I’m at least a couple of years younger than him so he probably thinks that I’m st
ill into boy bands and the top 40. I’m not offended though because I kind of like messing with other people’s expectations of me. I mean, I grew up wanting to make my career playing a sport that a lot of people thought I didn’t have the right combination of chromosomes for. Also, it does wonders for a normal girl’s self-esteem watching an insanely hot guy wriggle and squirm. It’s like the universe tips in our favour for a moment.
“Oh my goodness, you’re just like Emmy,” I tease, “just because I’m not tatted-up doesn’t mean I’m a Little Miss Prissy Knickers, OK?” I giggle even more at his horrified expression. He mustn’t have realised that I’d overheard her awful nickname for me.
“I don’t think you’re a Little Miss Prissy… anything, OK?”
I’ve had my fun so we spend the rest of the car ride to the restaurant sharing theories on what we think “Bohemian Rhapsody” is really about.
We pull up in the parking lot of a fancy looking restaurant. There are groups of people milling about outside so I wait there while Zev goes inside. There’s a stack of leather-bound menus so I busy myself flicking through one of them and my heart sinks when I realise that he’s brought me to a vegan restaurant. I know it isn’t very ladylike and is probably completely inappropriate for our first official date but I was longing for something big and meaty.
“Our table should be ready in a couple of minutes,” Zev says when he comes back. I was so nervous before, I didn’t really get chance to take him in. He looks different than when I’ve seen him previously, more polished. His dirty blonde hair is slicked back in a low ponytail and he’s shaved. I’m beyond flattered that he’s made such an effort for our first proper date but I miss the real him, scruff and all.
“Have you been here before,” I ask, trying to gauge whether he genuinely wants vegan food or if he’s just trying to impress me.
“Nope, first time.”
I don’t want to stereotype because I know some really cool vegans like my brother but one of the women in the group in front of us has her blonde hair in ratty-looking but probably utterly on trend dreadlocks, reeks of hemp and is discussing the superiority of making your own almond milk instead of buying it from the market.
I look at the pleather-bound, uninspiring menu again. “What are you going to have?”
Zev joins me in looking at the menu and I swear his nose wrinkles just the tiniest bit. He doesn’t want to be here anymore than I do. Ugh, I could totally kiss him.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Why did you bring me here?” I really hope I haven’t read the situation wrong. “I mean, if this is where you really want to go then I’m happy to try it but I’m not vegan. I mostly eat a plant-based diet here because Mats is and it’s just easier to make the same meals for both of us but…”
“Oh, thank goodness,” Zev chuckles. “What do you feel like instead?”
“I’ve heard about this place that’s supposed to do really great burgers?” The almond milk lady gives me the filthiest look.
“Hell, yeah,” Zev says, slipping his hand into mine.
We get the burgers to go and pull over at the side of the road so we’re facing the beach. Nothing calms me down faster than staring out at the Pacific Ocean. We climb up on to the hood of his car and eat our burgers and fries. They’re amazing with like a billion exclamation points.
“You’ve got ketchup on your cheek,” Zev comments.
I look across at him sceptically, “is that just a line so you can touch me again?”
He laughs, “nope, you’ve got a big dollop of ketchup on your cheek. It’s right there, I promise.” He even gets his phone out so I can check. Yeah, I was trying to be cute but the whole time I looked like a victim in a slasher movie. Such a Lola thing to do.
I grab a napkin and quickly wipe it off. “You should know that I’m epically bad at dating.”
“Why because you got a little ketchup on your cheek? That’s nothing. I once went out with a girl who spent the whole meal flirting with one of the waiters and then asked me to drop them both off at her apartment on the ride home.”
“Ouch,” I wince. “My prom date only asked me to go to make his ex-girlfriend jealous. It obviously worked since I caught them kissing halfway through the dance.”
“That’s tough.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t all bad though because then Noah turned up – he’d been living in Australia and I didn’t even know he was in the country let alone Seattle.”
“Noah’s an ex, right?”
“Yeah, we broke up after the accident.”
“He ditched you?” Zev snaps angrily.
“Actually,” I laugh, “I ditched him. I even did it by text message. I know, it’s shocking that a girl with only five toes would actually dump a guy that professes to love her. I mean it’s not like she’s going to get anybody else, is it?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“I know you didn’t,” I put my hand on top of his. I’d forgotten that Americans weren’t as comfortable with sarcasm as us Brits.
After a couple of minutes of quiet, I turn to Zev, “shouldn’t we have had the The Talk by now?”
He looks at me, eyes wide and I decide that teasing Zev is my new favourite thing to do. He must have gone out with some real doozies in the past if he thinks it’s even a possibility that I’m angling for a ring and babies on our first proper date.
I hitch my dress up a little so it’s at my knee on my gammy leg. I’m so glad we didn’t try and have this conversation while we were still eating because I know it’s mine but that thing is still nasty. When I look over at Zev, his eyes are bugging out even more. Yikes, I only meant to lead into the conversation about how we lost our respective chunks of flesh and bone. He’s still looking at my mess of a leg. “Eyes up here, mister.” I’m starting to feel self-conscious, I can feel his gaze burning into my scarred flesh.
“I just thought,” I wring my hands together in my lap nervously, “since we’re here on this date because we want to get to know each other better, we might want to get it over with and share the gory details of our accidents.”
Zev doesn’t say anything and for the fifteenth time tonight, I want to curse my lack of dating know-how. I’m going to have to pore over the entire back catalogue of Cosmo before I even think about going out on a date again. I’m surprised I could get my burger in there with how firmly my foot must be entrenched in my mouth.
“It’s OK; you don’t have to tell me what happened. It’s not exactly my favourite subject either…”
Zev puts his hand on mine and it immediately calms me down. “I want to hear about what happened to you, Jane. If you want to tell me?”
I focus on the weight of his hand, the feel of his fingers entwined with mine. “I was with Noah when it happened. We’d just had dinner with our families and we were walking back to the hotel. I don’t remember the accident but I found out afterwards when I woke up in the hospital that when the car mounted the kerb, Noah ducked behind a pillar and left me to take it all. I lost my toes in the accident but at first my leg wasn’t that bad. I’m an overachiever…” I laugh but it’s hollow. “I couldn’t just get hit by a drunk driver and lose my toes, I had to go and get MRSA as well while I was in the hospital and it kind of ate up most of the flesh on my calf. The doctors fought really hard to save my leg but sometimes when I look at it, I kind of wish they hadn’t bothered. I know it makes me sound so ungrateful. It’s not just that it’s ugly, it hurts.”
“You think if they’d just cut it off, it wouldn’t hurt anymore?”
“I do,” I look up at him, “is that foolish of me? Does yours still hurt?”
Zev sighs, “I get phantom pains every now and again.”
“When I was younger, if I got really stressed out about something, I’d wiggle my toes. I still try and do that sometimes but it feels weird and then I remember that I’ve only got half my toes now.”
“I was in a car accident too,” Z
ev says quietly. He squeezes my hand but he isn’t looking at me, he’s staring out at the ocean. “I lived in L.A. for a few years and it happened while I was there. I was staying with a friend and I was driving back to his place late one night. My leg was too badly crushed for them to save it.”
“I’m sorry,” I say quietly. I know this is only our first proper date and he accused me of being a teenybopper earlier but I really hate the thought of Zev being in pain.
“You don’t still have feelings for him then?” Zev asks, “Noah?”
I shake my head, “I’m disappointed that things turned out the way they did. I mean, we’d been friends for all our lives but no, I’m not still in love with him. I know it was probably just a reflex but I couldn’t be with somebody who could be so cowardly.”
Zev lifts up his arm and I rest my head on his chest. “Have you ever been in love?” I ask him.
“I don’t know if it was love. I thought it was at the time. Sam and I were childhood sweethearts. She was the reason I moved to L.A. after high school but we broke up just before I came back to Hawaii. She wanted to be an actress, her career was in Hollywood and I wanted to come home. It was a mutual thing.”
We talk until it’s getting late and then Zev drives me home.
Like a gentleman, he walks me up the steps to the front porch.
“I can’t believe you made reservations at that vegan restaurant; that was so thoughtful of you.”
Zev smiles, “I wanted to do something nice for you. Besides,” his eyes twinkle, “you wore the blue dress for me.”
I gulp, “something’s happening here, isn’t it?”
He brushes a strand of hair away from my face and I love how it feels when he touches me.
“I like you,” he says quietly, “I like you a lot, Jane.”
“I like you too.”
We kiss again except this time, he puts his hand on my hip and it feels like he’s claiming me somehow and I really like it. I trace my fingers down the front of his shirt; I can feel his muscles are all bunched up underneath the thin cotton. His skin is toasty-warm.