by Abby Jimenez
We stared at each other in a Mexican-restaurant standoff of silence, and almost comically, the waitress dropped a basket of chips and salsa between us. It broke the tension and I launched into manic giggling. This made him laugh, and when I snorted, we both lost it.
It took us a minute to get a hold of ourselves.
“Jason, I listen to your music,” I said a moment later, biting my lip. “A lot. I love it. Your last album got me through a really rough time in my life.”
He wiped at his eyes, still recovering. “And I’ve eaten the food from your blog. I’m probably a bigger fan of yours than you are of mine.”
“I doubt that. And at least I told you about my blog.”
“Well, you had to or I’d have never let you on my zombie apocalypse survival team.”
I scoffed.
“I didn’t tell you who I was because it’s not a big deal. I was still a bartender up until two years ago. My success is a very new thing, and I just wanted you to get to know me without it influencing what you thought of me. Besides, I’m not that famous.”
I made a noise that indicated I disagreed. On a fame scale from one to ten, he was probably a solid seven. And anyway, it wasn’t what everyone else thought about him that was freaking me out. It was the fact that I loved his music so much. God, no wonder I’d loved the sound of his voice from the very first phone call. Ugh.
I put my elbow on the table, still holding my twitching eyelid down. “I just need a little while to get used to this idea.”
“Do you want me to sing something for you?” He grinned.
“Not unless you want to resuscitate me after.”
He laughed. “That bad, huh?”
“Oh yeah. That bad. I may be one of your biggest fans, seriously.”
“And yet you had no idea what I looked like,” he deadpanned.
“Your viral video is Claymation. And you’re not on your album cover! It’s just a picture of that weird red-eyed duck.”
“A loon?” He grinned. “You could have googled me.”
“Come on, who googles pictures of singers? Your appearance has no bearing on your ability to make good music.”
“Just like your appearance has no bearing on your ability to be a good dog-sitter?”
“Exactly.”
* * *
By the time our food came, things were almost back to normal—as normal as a first date with your favorite recording artist could be.
The margarita I was having was helping immensely.
My strategy for dealing with this new Jaxon development was to try to forget who he was. Jason assured me he didn’t get recognized very often, so hopefully that would aid in my attempt. If other people swooned, I was going to swoon in solidarity.
I was glad he hadn’t told me. He was right—it might have changed things, mostly because if I had known sooner, my resulting weirdness would have probably scared him off.
“So do I still get one question a day?” he asked, taking a bite of his taco.
“Sure, why not?”
He swallowed and wiped his mouth with a napkin. “What does Kristen say about our date?”
I blanched. “Where to begin? Are you sure you’re ready for this? She’s pretty vulgar.”
He picked up his beer. “I like her already.”
“She told me to climb you like a tree.”
He practically choked on his Corona.
“I was also advised to shake your branches. I’m afraid to think too much about that one. And all this before she knew who you really were.”
He grinned. “And now?”
“Let’s just say that both her and her husband are rooting for you,” I said, talking into my margarita glass.
He looked thoroughly amused.
“She’s been sending me texts nonstop for the last half hour,” I said.
He nodded at my phone. “What do they say?”
I set my drink down and picked up my cell. “‘Ask him if you can touch his guitar.’”
He shook his head. “That’s not too bad.”
“‘Guitar’ is in quotes.”
His howl of laughter turned heads at the other tables.
“She wants to know if you smell like pine cones and flannel.” I tilted my head toward him. “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
He beamed. “When do I get to meet her?”
“Hopefully never. She’ll interrogate you the whole time. Then Josh will get you alone on the premise that he needs help grilling or something and he’ll make threats about what he’ll do to you if you hurt me. You’re better off never meeting either of them, trust me.”
He laughed. “I can’t wait. Just let me know when. But it can’t be this weekend, though, I’m going for a short visit to Minnesota on Friday.”
“Oh.” My face fell a little. “You just got here.”
“Are you gonna miss me?” His eyes sparkled.
I held in my smile. “Who’s watching Tucker while you’re gone?”
“I was going to take him with me—unless my dog-sitter’s available.” He grinned. “But he’s coming with me on tour, though.”
I scrunched my forehead. “You have a tour? When is that?”
“June first. Four months, fifty cities.”
He was leaving in three weeks? For four months? Well, that sucked.
“Will you come visit me when I’m on the road?” he asked.
“Right now, I’m just trying to make it through this meal without hyperventilating.”
* * *
“Now, on to our next adventure,” Jason said after dinner, starting the engine of his truck.
“Where’s that?” I asked, rolling down my window.
“Home Depot.”
“Home Depot? For what?”
“For parts to fix your sink,” he said, backing out of the parking space.
I shook my head. “No. Definitely no.”
“No?” He glanced at me.
“No. I can’t let you fix my sink. That’s…just no.”
He smiled over the steering wheel. “You’d rather let a stranger do it? You, who wouldn’t even tell me where you lived until your kitchen was an inch deep in water?” He gave me a comical wide-eyed look and then turned back to the road with a grin.
I narrowed my eyes.
“Also, bonus, if you let me do it, Tucker stays over longer.” He smirked, knowing he had me.
“Fine,” I said, putting my mouth into my palm, not wanting him to see my smile.
“Anything else that needs fixing?” he asked.
“The whole house,” I mumbled.
“It’s not in good shape?”
The house had begun to feel like a sandcastle at high tide. It was crumbling around me.
“No. When Brandon and I bought it, he was going to fix it up. He was good at that stuff…” I said, trailing off, not knowing if I should be talking about my dead fiancé on a date. But Jason’s expression stayed neutral.
“Give me a list. I’ll do it,” he said, turning onto Roscoe Boulevard.
I smiled. “You’re a handyman in addition to being Jaxon Waters?”
“We’re self-sufficient in Ely. I could build you a whole new house if you wanted. So what do you need done?”
“Jason…”
“What? I like fixing things. Besides, my dog likes you. I bet he’d like to come over. Come to think of it, I like you and I’d like to come over too.”
His unrelenting flirting was going to give me a heart attack. But I couldn’t really argue with his reasoning. The pipe did need fixing. Josh did two day shifts at the station, so if he had work tomorrow that would leave me without a kitchen sink until at least Wednesday—that was provided he dropped everything on his day off to come help me, which I hated. And frankly, I couldn’t afford to pay for a professional to do it. I already lived paycheck to paycheck.
Brandon’s fire station had set up a GoFundMe for me after Brandon died. That had helped bridge the gap until I was up to working again. I made okay mo
ney doing astronaut cats from the volume alone—I’d always been fast. But the ancient water heater just needed replacing and the month before that, the air-conditioning unit broke. Now my kitchen had flooded, and I wasn’t sure if the floors were going to survive the damage. If I had to pay for a new kitchen floor, I wouldn’t be able to pay my mortgage this month.
I should have sold the house after Brandon died. I couldn’t afford it on a single income. It was too big for me and too broken. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, the same way I couldn’t bring myself to empty his closet or clean out the garage.
“Okay. But can I pay for your time?” I asked. “And I’ll obviously cover the materials.”
“I don’t want you to pay me. Oh, which reminds me.” He reached across me to open the glove box. His arm brushed my knee, and the sides of his lips twitched. He handed me an envelope. “Here. The money for watching Tucker. I know I don’t have your receipts yet, but I guesstimated. And I added a reward.”
I held the envelope and looked at it. I needed what was in it. But now taking it felt weird. It was one thing to accept it from a stranger whose dog I was watching, a man who was taking Tucker away from me. That was a business arrangement. It was something else entirely to accept money from a guy I was kind of dating and who wanted to help me with repairs on my house.
I handed it back to him. “Why don’t you keep this? You can fix the sink and we’ll call it even.”
He didn’t reach for it. “I insist you take it. It’s nonnegotiable.” Something final in his voice told me the discussion was over. “As for materials, you have a lot of tools and parts in the garage. I doubt I’ll need much else. I can get a lot done with what’s already there.”
I didn’t reply. He parked the truck in the Home Depot lot and put on the brake. “We’re here.”
“You don’t think this is a little weird? You fixing my sink?”
“The weird thing would be me not fixing it knowing that I can. Come on,” he said, opening his door. “I wanna get my hands on your pipes.”
* * *
Jason went through Home Depot with a surgical accuracy that told me he knew his way around a home improvement project. At the self-checkout stand, he wouldn’t let me pay. “Part of our date.”
“No, it’s not,” I objected, trying to swipe the items from him.
He pivoted and held everything over his head, out of my reach. I crossed my arms and glared at him. His blue eyes twinkled, and I marveled for the hundredth time at how handsome he was. His pictures had been great, but he was so much better set in motion.
“If I’d taken you to a carnival and won you a stuffed animal, that would be part of the date, right? Or if I’d brought flowers or paid for a movie?”
“Yes. But that’s typical date stuff. Buying me parts to fix my sink isn’t.”
“So you want me to be typical?” He grinned.
He had this way of backing me into my own corners. He turned his back on me and continued his purchase, shooting a victorious look over his shoulder as the receipt printed out.
“One more stop,” he said, grabbing the bag.
“What now? Are you going to change my oil or something?”
“I can change your oil if you want.” He laughed, then took my hand and wove his fingers through mine as he walked me out of the store.
I died. I had to draw on some internal strength women probably use for childbirth just to close my fingers around his, because his touch made me lose control over the use of my hand.
Jaxon Waters is holding my hand.
I didn’t even remember the walk to the truck. I think I blacked out.
“You’re going to like the entertainment portion of this date,” Jason said a few minutes later, pulling up to a gas station. “Let’s go inside and get some dessert.”
We made our ice cream selections from the deep freezer, and then I poured myself a small decaf and hovered over the coffee station, eyeing the individual flavored creamers. Jason came up behind me as I took seven hazelnuts and slipped them into my purse. I turned to him and he arched his eyebrows at me.
“What? They come with the coffee. And I love the little creamers. I keep them in my purse for coffee emergencies.”
“Coffee emergencies?” He smiled down on me.
He was back in my personal space again. Just slightly closer than most people stood. It made me feel a little breathless.
“Yeah,” I swallowed. “You can never be too prepared.”
“And do you have a lot of these emergencies?” he asked. His eyes moved to my lips again, and he cocked his head a little like he was studying them.
“At least one a day.”
He came back up and grinned. “Come on.”
He took my hand as he led me to the register. He bought our desserts and my coffee, and he asked for twenty dollars’ worth of lottery scratchers.
Once we were back in the truck, Jason drove us around to the car wash. “Ready?” he asked, leaning out the window to punch a code into the kiosk.
“Ready for what?”
“The entertainment. Rainbow car wash.”
I laughed. “Oh my God, I love rainbow car washes! It’s been so long since I’ve done one!”
“You don’t wash your car?” he asked, driving in. Once the tires were taken over by the track, he leaned back in his seat and opened his ice cream.
I pulled the lid off of my sorbet and started poking at it with my spoon. “You haven’t seen my car.”
“The Corolla? I saw it in your garage when I was looking for the shop vac.”
“Well, then you understand why I don’t bother to wash it,” I said, looking up at the windshield as water started spraying over the truck. The long strips of fabric began slapping back and forth across the hood and the nostalgic citrus smell of the underbody wash drifted in through the vents.
“We need a soundtrack for this.” He fiddled with the radio. A mewing Lola Simone song came on and he quickly changed the channel. I hated her music too. Too Courtney Love for me.
He settled on KROQ, and when the foamy rainbow soap started to pour over the truck, we glanced at each other and smiled. We held the look for a long moment before staring back out through the glass.
I was so sensitive to him sitting there I could barely focus. It almost felt like neither of us was actually watching the car wash. Like our eyes were there, but our attention was on each other. At least mine was.
When the truck was done, Jason parked in front of the gas station and handed me ten dollars’ worth of scratchers. “If we win anything, we decide what to do with the money together,” he said, digging in his cup holder and producing a penny to give me.
“How do you think of this stuff?” I smiled, rubbing my penny on the scratcher. “I think this is the best date I’ve ever been on. First the guy saves me from a flood. Then he reveals he’s my favorite recording artist. He gives me an envelope full of money and buys me hardware, followed by a show and some gambling.”
“I could think of a few ways we could make it even better.” He gave me a devilish grin.
“Just so you know, I don’t even kiss on the first date,” I said, finishing my scratcher. I won two dollars and held the card up to show him with a smirk.
“And here I am, getting the upgraded car wash for nothing.”
I laughed.
I couldn’t believe what a good time I was having. I always figured my first date after Brandon would be a painful milestone. A Band-Aid to tear off. But it wasn’t. Jason made it easy.
Jason made it a lot of things.
“Can I see you tomorrow?” he asked.
I smiled. “You want to see me again?”
“I don’t even want to drop you off at home tonight.”
I blushed. Again.
But then I remembered what day tomorrow was. It was the two-year anniversary of Brandon’s death. The day we’d taken him off life support. I had an agenda for tomorrow, a list of positive things I’d decided to do i
n his memory.
“I can’t. I have plans tomorrow. How about the day after?”
He looked slightly disappointed, but he nodded. “Okay, the day after, then. It’s a date.”
I didn’t object to him calling it a date, and he looked triumphantly back at the scratchers in his lap. He won five dollars.
“So what do we do with the money?” he asked.
I bit my lip, thinking. His eyes moved to my mouth again, and I smiled. “With seven dollars? How about we buy a chew toy for Tucker?”
“Great idea. We could take him to PetSmart on our next date.” He put the scratchers into the drink holder.
A guitar intro I recognized came through the speakers. “Oh, I love this song,” I said. “‘Name’ by the Goo Goo Dolls, right?”
He picked up my raspberry sorbet. “Yup. Can I try this?” he asked.
I nodded at his carton. “Give me yours.”
We sat listening to the music and eating each other’s ice cream. His was mint chocolate chip. We used each other’s spoons. Something about knowing that the little plastic utensil had been in his mouth made my heart pound.
I couldn’t believe this day.
We stared at each other unapologetically as we sat there. My eyes traveled from his sharp blue irises to his lips. I wondered if his beard would tickle if he kissed me. I’d never kissed anyone with a beard before. I moved down to his throat and watched his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed. I saw the pulse of his neck and the dip of his collarbone, the way his chest strained against his shirt, the rhythmic rise and fall of his breathing.
By the time I looked back up, neither of us was moving. I sat with my spoon upside down on my tongue, all the ice cream in my mouth long gone. He held his carton in his lap and just stared at me.
Jason had this way of looking at me. It reminded me of how people used to look at my paintings, back before the astronaut cats. A focused fascination that leaned in and searched the brushstrokes. He didn’t even blink. It made me feel self-conscious, except I was pretty sure it meant he liked what he saw, which was good. Because I liked what I saw too. A lot.
And then suddenly he was moving.
Without breaking eye contact, he put his sorbet onto the dash. He took my spoon and my ice cream out of my hands and his fingers brushed mine in a split second of electricity before he set the carton down somewhere. Then he slid across the seat and slipped my cheeks into his warm palms, his fingers raked through the back of my hair, and he kissed me.