Dating by Numbers

by Jennifer Lohmann

  He looked back, horrified that he’d brought over breakfast and then wasn’t staying to help deal with the mess. His mother had raised him better than that.

  Then she laughed and all but slapped her thigh. “God, it feels good to get someone else for a change.”

  “What do you mean? You snookered my friends something good.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t know me. I’m not so good at snookering people who do know me.”

  “Har-har-har,” he said, but he was pleased. She was teasing him back. This was going to be a great day.

  “I’ll text you when I’m leaving the house. And we’ll get on with our date.” And our relationship, he thought, though that sounded like the sort of thing he shouldn’t say, because it would come out of his mouth weightier than he meant it.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  And there, behind all the uncertainty and teasing of the morning, was the sincerity he expected from Marsie. The one that he wanted around forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  MARSIE TOSSED HER bag into the back seat of her car and slid into the passenger seat, sweatshirt on her lap and comfortable walking shoes on her feet. “I’ve not been in the passenger seat before. I don’t think I even rode in it when I test-drove the car.” She lifted up to look behind her. “I wonder if it’s comfortable back there. I’ve never sat there, either.”

  She was rambling, but she was nervous. Normally, she could keep nervous rambles to herself, but with Jason, she didn’t even try. Wasn’t that what a relationship was supposed to be? That she didn’t have to try to not be herself? That she didn’t have to keep tight hold of every last particle associated with her body so that no one told her that she couldn’t do anything?

  He shifted into Reverse, then looked at the back seat before looking out the rear window. “Looks a little cramped, but all back seats look a little cramped. My truck has jump seats, so yours looks luxurious in comparison.”

  “There’s a back-up camera, you know.”

  “I know. I’m not used to having one. Easier for me to use the mirrors.”

  “Okay.”

  She remained silent as he backed onto the road in front of her street and pulled forward. Off to their unknown destination. A thousand worries crashed against the rocks in her head. They couldn’t do this. They’d been friends too long. They hadn’t been friends long enough. They were too different. She was only imagining their differences, and this date wouldn’t be interesting.

  She shifted around in her seat, pulling at the seat belt along her chest and neck, nervous that they’d set up their expectations for true love only to be disappointed when it didn’t happen immediately.

  “So are you going to follow along on your phone and try to figure out where we’re going?” he asked lightly.

  “No.” That sounded too sharp. She didn’t want to be sharp with Jason, at least not because she was nervous. Rambles were okay, but he didn’t deserve mean.

  “No,” she said again, modulating her voice to hide her pointy nerves. “I decided to trust you. I’m not going to take that back now.”

  As they turned onto the main road and Jason sped up toward the highway, Marsie let go of the seat belt. Then he put his hand on her thigh, and the fingers she hadn’t even realized she was fidgeting with calmed.

  And Marsie knew that everything would be okay.

  * * *

  HER TRUST WAS feeling more confused than challenged as Jason steered the car off the highway, nearly two hours after they’d started out.

  “Okay, where are we going?” she asked.

  “No surprise anymore?” She appreciated how seriously he was asking the question. Trust was easier when she knew that he was listening and that he cared.

  “I still want the surprise. I guess I should have asked back when we got off the freeway to get on 64. Which was a long time ago.”

  He glanced over to her from the driver’s seat. The smile on his face made it all the way to his eyes and seemed to shoot right past, filling the car with his light mood. “I’m surprised that you didn’t. But glad. This will be down-home North Carolina. All day.”

  She looked around at the small town they were driving through. It was small in the way Wyoming towns were small, a place where the population was counted in the hundreds, and it always seemed to be on the verge of either exploding with growth that no one understood or becoming a ghost town. Usually it felt like both were happening at the same time. Only eastern North Carolina was flat. No rolling hills here and no promise of them on the horizon. And the trees were different. The pines were tall and straight, with barely any greenery to see until your eye traveled way up to the top.

  As Jason drove around several corners, they lost some elevation. Not a hill, but...

  Suddenly, they were in a parking lot on the river’s edge with cypress trees hanging over them and a shack with a line of people at the door.

  “I feel like we’ve stepped back in time,” Marsie said as she popped the car door open. She stood next to her Prius and looked around. The highway wasn’t that far away, but this place was not just from another time—it also seemed like it was thousands of miles from the highway. With the river in front of her and all the trees around them, plus the...restaurant, she was guessing from the barely legible sign that said Cypress Grill, that seemed to be barely standing, she could almost be on another planet. Even though the Research Triangle Park and all of its high-tech companies and research firms was only two hours away.

  “Great, right,” he said, looking at her with an encouraging smile on his face. His arm snaked around her waist, and she leaned into his warmth. It was late March, so it wasn’t cold in North Carolina, but it wasn’t warm, either, and Jason was.

  Plus, she just liked being next to him. He smelled good. Not like cologne, but like Jason. And Jason was a man she wanted to keep smelling.

  “I’m pretty sure this is the last river herring shack in North Carolina. They’re only open January through April and, no matter what else is on the menu, you have to order the river herring. They’ll get it so crisp that you can eat everything but the ribs and spine.”

  He gave her waist a gentle squeeze, and all her muscles seemed to relax at once. “This is all really great,” she said, because it was. She let him take her somewhere as a surprise, and he’d taken her someplace completely unexpected. Nothing she would have ever found on her own.

  It didn’t even matter if the food at the Cypress Grill was good or not, because she was here, with him, trying something new with a man who challenged her.

  Her day was perfect.

  * * *

  ONCE THEY’D EATEN and climbed back in her car—Jason in the driver’s seat again—Marsie asked, “How did you find out about this place? You didn’t grow up down east.”

  “No,” he said, backing them out and up to the road for the drive to some other surprise. She was guessing that she needed her comfortable shoes for the next place.

  “I’d love to say that I found it because I fish with my dad and fishermen all talk about river herring and this place, but that’s not true at all.” He glanced over to her and she thought he looked a little embarrassed, which made no sense.

  “Everything we see today I saw on Carolina Weekend.” He named a show on the local PBS station with a shrug. “I’ve actually never been to any of these places, either. But ever since I saw that particular episode, I’ve wanted to visit them. It was probably the first time I wanted to hit every place they covered. And I decided I’d take a special girl there.”

  “So I’m special, huh?” she said, unable and unwilling to stop her chest from puffing out with pleasure.

  “You know you are.”

  “Thank you.” She said the words primly, because she knew he would laugh and he did.

  It was
n’t until they were far down the road to whatever their next destination was that she realized being taken on a surprise trip by someone who had never even been to the places that he was trying to surprise her with would normally bother her. Not upset, but like a small rock in your shoe that wasn’t enough to stop you in your tracks, but an irritant you’d continue to think about while moving forward.

  Huh. So this is trust. It’s nice.

  She leaned her head back against the headrest and turned her face to gaze out the window, content in their companionable silence and the passing scenery.

  * * *

  JASON PULLED INTO the parking lot at Pettigrew State Park, pretty damn pleased with himself, truth be told. Marsie had enjoyed her river herring and—even better—she’d appreciated the Cypress Grill’s uniqueness and its character. As they’d stood on the edge of the parking lot, his arm around her, looking over the cypress trees and the river, he’d felt as content as he could ever remember being.

  He put the car into Park. The disappointment that he had previously felt at a lack of blood rushing to his head and stars in front of his eyes was nowhere to be found. He was happy. They could sit in this car and do nothing but stare at the trees and he would still be happy.

  Spark. He’d been too much of an idiot to realize sparks could be minor or major and he’d been looking for major sparks, which would have stopped his heart.

  Marsie was a minor spark, and she started his heart.

  “So what is this place?” she asked, as she got out of the car, rubbing her eyes. For the last part of their drive, he’d wondered if she’d fallen asleep. It appeared that she had.

  “Pettigrew State Park. It’s small, just this path around the lake. Apparently the fishing is really good. But the trail will take us through cypress swamps, and we can walk out over the lake on a long boardwalk. It sounded really cool on TV.”

  “Yeah,” she said, slipping her hand into his. “It must have.”

  Together, they stepped forward to the trail.

  They walked the entire three miles of the trail out and three miles back hand in hand. He probably shouldn’t have been surprised that Marsie was able to recognize a number of the birds by their calls and knew the different kinds of trees.

  “I like learning things,” she said when he asked, as if it was no big deal, to know what a pawpaw tree was. “I particularly like learning things about math and statistics, but I’ll read anything someone puts in front of me. Airline magazines have a lot of random articles, and one from several years ago had an article on trees.”

  “Yeah, but they didn’t include all the trees of eastern North Carolina in that article.” He wasn’t going to let her get away with being modest about this.

  “No.” She looked shyly at him, and he leaned over to peck a kiss on her lips. Encouragement for her. Enjoyment for him.

  She smiled, then looked back over the railing of the boardwalk keeping them out of the swamps. “The article was interesting, so I checked a bunch of books on trees out of the library. And read them all. Then I made flash cards and quizzed myself until I could recognize the trees by different things. Bark and leaves and such.”

  “For fun?” he asked, unable to keep the surprise out of his voice.

  “For fun.” He felt both her nod and the slight bit of self-consciousness in her voice.

  “That’s really cool. And I’ll make you a deal.”

  “Is this another deal where I buy you dinner?”

  “Well, if you want to, sure. But that wasn’t the point of the deal. My deal was this—I’ll find us random, out-of-the-way places to go. And you make flash-card quizzes for yourself so that you can blow me away with how much you know about a place you didn’t even know we would visit.”

  “Would that be fun for you?”

  “To be impressed by you at every turn? Of course.”

  “I’m reading a book about coral right now. Want to learn to scuba dive?”

  “With you, yes.”

  After that, Marsie no longer bothered to pretend to hide the vast depths of her knowledge. And Jason just walked beside her and enjoyed it.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MARSIE TRIED TO be silent on the car ride home from dinner. Tried, and failed. Because Jason listened to her.

  Not that he sat in the driver’s seat, drove and didn’t interrupt her. He listened. He interrupted. He asked questions. He pointed out places where he thought she was wrong, and he asked where she had learned that information.

  Active listening.

  God, it was so awesome that they made the entire two-hour drive home after dinner before she stopped to take a breath. And when she took a breath as they pulled into her driveway, she didn’t take a breath and apologize for talking too much or knowing too much or reading too many books.

  She just took a breath.

  And Jason smiled.

  “It’s late,” he said as he turned off the car.

  “Yeah.” None of the dating books she’d read covered what to do now. Was she supposed to wait until their third date before she invited him in for sex? They’d already had sex, so clearly that rule didn’t apply. If it was still even a rule.

  And was this even their first date? They’d had coffee together at least once a week for months. And lunch. And been out to dinner to talk about their online dating. And played poker. And...

  Fuck it. “Do you want to come in?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation. “Very much so.”

  He handed over her keys as they walked to her front door, but was otherwise quiet.

  “I’m not asking you in for a nightcap,” she said as she unlocked the door. “I mean, you can have one if you want one, but that’s not what I’m offering,” she added to clarify. Maybe there were websites where guys went to look for the rules of dating that she didn’t know existed. She should be clear. Lay out expectations. Make sure he wasn’t surprised.

  Marsie wasn’t good with surprises. She still hadn’t fully processed that she’d had sex in her office. At work. That was going to have to sit, unconsidered, for a couple days before she would be able to look at the what and the why.

  Then she’d probably call Beck and brag. ’Cause, God, it had been awesome and freeing and so un-Marsie-like. But it had been her, and she had been free and she hadn’t felt like a completely different person. She’d felt like the person she was when she was with Jason.

  He chuckled. “I had guessed that.”

  He put his hand on her as she pushed the lever to open her front door. “Marsie?” She looked up. “There are no expectations. No rules. Friday night means everything. And it means nothing. If all I get is a drink and a chat, that’s okay. And I’m here for the chat more than I am for the drink.”

  The door opened. “I wasn’t thinking about rules.”

  “Don’t front. You’re not very good at it.”

  “Hey,” she said, her indignation only half faked. “I was good at acting for poker.”

  “Well, yeah, but you getting what you want out of men who don’t believe in you is as much a part of who you are as your absolute honesty with yourself.” He smiled, seemingly delighted with something she didn’t fully understand. “It’s awesome that they exist in the same person.”

  “Well,” she said, both flattered and not sure what to say. “I’ll get you that nightcap, then. Whiskey? Gin and tonic? Something else.”

  “Gin and tonic sounds good.”

  “Great. I’ve even got limes. And the navy-strength version of that gin from Durham. It’s part of my fiendish plan to get you to stay the night.” With a quick, slightly embarrassed smile, she rushed off to the kitchen for glasses and drinks.

  Mostly, she didn’t know what to do because she hadn’t planned for this to happen. She hadn’t known what would happ
en when he came over with breakfast and certainly hadn’t known what would happen when they went on their daylong date.

  Jason wasn’t Richard, who’d operated with the same level of precision that she used to employ when organizing her relationships. And he wasn’t some guy she didn’t know and was cataloging in her mind. He was Jason. A whole different level of person. One she might never be able to fully categorize.

  She dropped lime wedges into the glasses. For the first time in her life, not knowing sounded as interesting as knowing.

  Jason was sitting on the couch flipping through a copy of The Economist when she came into the living room. He patted the seat next to him as he took a sip of the drink she handed him.

  “So...”

  She kissed him. No rules. Nothing to hold her back. Nothing to make her think Jason wasn’t part of her plan. It didn’t matter if he was part of her plan. He was here, and she didn’t want him to be anywhere else.

  And she didn’t hold back with the kiss. Last night, she’d been uncertain as she pressed her lips against his neck, testing him. Now she knew. This exciting world between knowing that she was doing the right thing and not fully knowing what he would do next or how they would be together.

  Because she knew they would be awesome together. In this case, the details didn’t matter so much as how she felt. She felt like she had warm, gentle sun covering her entire body, enough to make her flush red with excitement and anticipation.

  His lips were strong, certain, which she hadn’t fully realized lips could be. And they were cold from the gin.

  The edge of his glass hit the top of the table, then she heard him push the glass around until it landed on something softer than the nice wood of her coffee table. She pulled her head back enough to look. “You made sure the glass landed on a coaster?”

  “My mama raised me right. And you have them on every wooden surface in this room. Even if my mama hadn’t raised me right, I’d have to be an idiot not to have noticed that it was important to you.”

  She fell back on him, delighted with his answer. Back when they’d been sharing cups of coffee, he’d teased her about the little things that she’d noticed. Only he noticed little things, too.