“What else?” I said. “Hair? Clothes.”
“No blush, just a highlighter over your cheekbones. Subtle jewelry. Diamond studs and the pearl pendant I got you for your birthday. Hair? Hair, hair, hair,” she muttered, and I could hear her brain clicking through the options. “Curl it.”
“Can’t. I did that in my real profile picture, and I told him this one has to be different.”
“Okay, low ponytail, but let it fall forward over your shoulder, and let some of it wisp out in front to make him think about reaching out and pushing it back behind your ear.”
“Outfit? I’m in my pink silk work shirt right now.”
“Ooooh,” she squealed. “I love that shirt.”
“Right? I need something this good. Swiss polka dots?”
“No. Refined but unapproachable. I know! Do that drapey turquoise shirt you have. It’ll be great with the deep berry and so pretty with your eyes.”
“Thank you,” I breathed in something close to a prayer. “Gotta go become his dream woman.”
“You don’t need to become anything,” she said, her voice sharp. She softened it to add, “You’ve always been her. Have fun. Get into some trouble.”
“Haha,” I said, ending the call.
I whipped through the changes, finishing off the look with my favorite jeans and my sparkly sandals. I grinned at my reflection when I smoothed on the deep berry. Sophie was good.
Come down here when it’s a commercial, I texted him.
Why?
To take the dumb picture. I needed him to walk in prepared to see me as something different, thinking about me and that profile, not grunting at me when I walked back into his apartment because he was deep in the game. This would require his undivided attention.
Just take the picture here.
I have better light.
Fine.
Three minutes later, the sound of his hand on my doorknob gave me enough warning to arrange myself against my breakfast bar, leaned back with my legs crossed at the ankles, waiting for him while I texted Sophie. I feel like I’m at bat with the bases loaded.
Swing, baby, swing! She texted back as my front door swung open. I was smiling when I looked up at Will, who paused and stared at me.
Everything froze as he stood there, his eyes traveling over my face, stopping at my lips for a full second, moving down to the ponytail draped like Sophie had ordered, taking in the turquoise shirt and traveling back up to meet my eyes. He didn’t say anything.
“This should do it,” I said, my voice quiet. Speaking at normal volume would have felt like dropping a pebble into a still pool.
He swallowed and shut the door behind him. “Almost.” He walked over to stand in front of me, and I straightened, setting the phone behind me. He tucked the loose wisps behind my ear, and heat scorched the path his finger took as it grazed my cheek. Could he feel that?
A small frown stole across his lips. “This isn’t it, exactly.” He reached behind me and tugged on the ponytail tie, working it out, careful not to pull too hard. It felt so good that it almost hurt, an ache each time he sifted the dark strands over his fingers.
I felt every one of his extra six inches of height as we stood this close together. I studied him through my eyelashes. Was the exact placement of my hair a variable for him to control in this profile experiment? Or was he feeling the heat that I did, the electricity that his touch generated, an energy so strong it lifted the small hairs at the nape of my neck?
His fingers kept combing my hair out, but it wasn’t tangled, and when I let out a shaky breath, he met my eyes. His pupils flared for a millisecond before his stress lines appeared and his fingers moved to his own hair as he stepped away, scrubbing through it the way they did when he was thinking hard. He backed up farther, and his eyes took on the brightness that meant he’d gone into hyperfocus. Just like that, I’d gone from Hannah, the girl whose hair he’d touched like he couldn’t stop himself, to a factor in an equation.
But the heat lingered. Because for a few seconds, he’d seen me. And it had scared him. And that was powerful.
* * *
“Let’s go run.”
I stared at Will standing on my doorstep in running clothes again. It was a new chapter of weirdness. After the loaded moment in my apartment the night before, he’d snapped my picture with my phone, disappeared back to his place, and only talked to me about the game for the rest of the night when I showed up a few minutes later.
I’d decided to do my own thing for the day, and I wasn’t sure what I thought about having Will standing there, waiting to go run together. I’d sort of wanted to do a couple of extra miles for the stress relief and thinking time. But those intentions evaporated like fog in sunshine when Will smiled. I loved those smiles. I hoarded them. So I smiled back and nodded. “Okay. Give me ten minutes.”
And in less than that, I was back at his door in the purple tank and running shorts. “I was thinking I would do some extra mileage today. You cool with that?” I asked.
“How many?”
“Two more.”
“Fine. But in order to not die, I’m not going to be able to talk.”
It was the best of both worlds falling into my lap: quiet time to think about Will, but Will still there in the flesh. The tan, toned, warm, fiiiiiine flesh. “Let’s do it,” I said and started a slow jog to the lake path. We passed the next forty-five minutes in silence.
Will and I spent a lot of quiet time together, me working a Sudoku on his sofa while he watched a hockey game, him unsnarling an equation at my table while I cooked up something in the kitchen a few feet away. Those moments existed full and complete, like they didn’t need a single word added to them to make them feel right or comfortable. They were perfect as they were, and the run was no different. Even when every single thought I had was about how to get through to him, there was no one I wanted beside me, working hard and gritting it out, besides Will.
When we got back to our building, he bent over with his hands on his knees and took deep breaths.
“That was awesome,” I said. “You’re getting faster.”
“Yeah?” He looked up at me, not quite oxygenated enough to straighten yet, but he managed a small smile.
“Yeah. That was a nine-minute pace. That’s not bad over five miles.”
“So what would be outstanding?”
“Seven minutes or less would make you competitive in most of the local 5K races.”
He groaned and dropped his head further. “I can’t do that. Nine wiped me out.”
“If I can, you can.” I gave his hunched shoulder a gentle squeeze.
He took a couple more breaths, the rhythm settling down. “You’re saying you run a seven-minute pace?”
“Kinda.”
He looked up again. “You do it faster, don’t you?”
I smiled. “Yeah.”
“Then why do you let me slow you down?”
“Because it’s good for you to speed up. So I don’t mind working at that level. I still get a good run in.”
“But you can’t get better doing that.”
“You can,” I said, chucking him on the same shoulder. “And that’s worth it now and then.”
“Not all the time?”
“Definitely not. Sometimes I need to run without anyone holding me back. But I don’t mind you being my charity case every once and a while.”
He straightened and narrowed his eyes. “That’s it. We’re going to play racquetball, and we’ll see who’s doing favors for who.”
“Sure.”
“You’ll go?”
I took a long swig of water. “Bring it on, Will. It’s a date.”
He flinched and cleared his throat. “Speaking of dates, are you ready to see what Twilight Sparkle turned up for me?”
That was the screen name I’d picked over Will’s objections for the profile we’d done together. He said it sounded like a stripper name, but it was the name of my favorite My Little Pony, and I
liked that it was a nod to my dark hair.
My stomach clenched for two seconds until I remembered that the responders would all be guys. We were seeing what kind of guy his ideal woman would attract, not sorting through women hot for Will. And since Twilight Sparkle was 100 percent me, I was interested in the results too. “Sounds good. Nothing like a social experiment to finish out the day.”
“Go shower the stink off of you and come over when you’re done.”
I gave myself a good sniff. “I smell like hard work and effort. What kind of monster makes fun of that?”
He leaned over and pretended to sniff me, and his face wrinkled up. “You still smell like peaches. How is that fair? I smell like the YMCA locker room.”
“Truth.” I danced out of the way when he took a swipe at me, bounding up the stairs ahead of him, laughing when he dragged himself up behind me. I was on the landing before he’d reached the fourth step. “I’ll come over later. Try not to pass out while I’m gone. You’ll just embarrass both of us.” I only laughed harder when he answered me with a whimper.
He was on his couch, hair shower wet, two open Gatorades waiting for us on his coffee table when I let myself in a while later, my laptop under my arm. I tried not to be too obvious about breathing in the lingering trace of his shower gel in the air like it was my new drug.
“Why are you always so dressed up lately?” he asked.
I glanced down. “I’m wearing a T-shirt and cutoffs, Will. Maybe that’s fancy in Hicksville, but I’m pretty sure around here it still counts as being plain old dressed.”
“But it’s a fancy T-shirt.”
It totally was. It was lacy and flattering, as were my denim shorts, which I’d picked because my legs looked awesome in them, but I wasn’t going to admit to that. “You have a weird definition of dressing up.”
“But—”
“Oh, hush. Drop it, and let’s talk about who wants to date me. I was so busy at work today I didn’t even check the e-mail those notifications go to.”
“You did not get any responses. Twilight Sparkle did.”
“Semantics.” I cracked open my computer and pulled up my inbox. “Oooh, eight. Eight men want to date me,” I sang out.
“You better do a quality check before you get too cocky about it,” he said. He scooted over so he could see the screen, and his weight made me slide a couple of inches toward him until we were pressed at the shoulders and knees while he leaned over to tap through the messages. “You are hot.” Tap. “Hey, beautiful.” Tap. “I’d love to see more.” He yanked the laptop to his own lap. “He wants to see more? Who is this guy? What picture did you put up? Didn’t you put up the one I took?”
“Yes, dummy.”
“Why would anyone think that’s the kind of picture where someone is dying to show him more? He’s saying it like you posted a bikini shot.” He clicked the link to take us to the profile page, and the turquoise-shirt picture came up. He groaned. “This isn’t the picture I took.”
“Yeah, it is. This is the only one that was on my phone. What’s wrong with it? It’s fine. I think it looks good,” I said, hating that I could hear the faintest note of hurt in my own voice.
“It’s suggestive.”
“What? Give me that back.” I looked closely, but I couldn’t see a hint of cleavage or shoulder or belly or anything. “You’re crazy. I don’t even own skimpy clothes.”
“It’s your expression.”
I looked at it again. I looked like I had a secret, a really good one. He’d snapped the shot while I’d been soaking in the tiny vibrations that had shivered between us when I’d sensed that for those few short seconds, he hadn’t had a single brotherly feeling toward me. He’d clicked the camera, shoved it at me, and hurried out.
“It’s my normal smile.” It so wasn’t. It was a cat-with-the-canary smile. “It’s fine. I’m not redoing my makeup to take another picture for your dumb experiment.”
“This is your dumb experiment. And you look . . .” Words failed him as he stared at the picture.
“I look like what?”
“Like you . . . never mind. Let’s talk about these messages. They’re lame.” Tap. “You are hot.” Tap. “You are beautiful.” Tap.
“You already said those.”
“No, two more guys said the same thing. Real original. Oh, and here’s a third ‘You’re hot.’ Dude. These guys have no game.” Tap. “I’d love to meet you.” He snorted. “Now there’s a guy who’s magic with words. Tap. “I can’t wait to take you out to breakfast after—aargh.” He closed the laptop.
“Someone typed ‘aargh’?”
“You don’t need to know how that sentence ended. Good news though. Eight messages, and I know exactly how to approach any women I see online who look interesting. Just don’t be these guys,” he said, thumping my computer.
“Stop. I keep telling you this is a numbers game. You need a bigger sample size before you can decide how you want to make your approach.” And I needed a few days of breathing room before he went on another date. “Let’s let my views get up to at least twenty-five so we can look for patterns before you revise your profile and go hunting.”
“I’m not trying to bag a deer,” he said, leftover irritation sanding his tone.
“But maybe if you’re lucky, you’ll land yourself a pretty little fawn or a Bambi.”
His mouth quirked up in spite of himself. “You’re the worst.”
“The guy who wants to take me to breakfast doesn’t think so.”
“That guy’s the worst. You’re the second worst.”
“On that note,” I said, reclaiming my laptop and standing, “we’ve learned everything we’re going to until I get more messages.”
“Where are you going?”
“Game four isn’t until tomorrow. I’m going back to my bat cave for some peace and quiet.”
“But you barely got here.”
“Yeah. I better get a head start on those twenty yards if I want to get home at a decent time.”
“Shut up, Jimmy Fallon. I meant that we should probably strategize some more.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “I think I want a mellow night.”
He was quiet for a minute. “That’s too bad.” His tone was casual. Suspiciously casual. The kind of tone I used to use with Dave to tell him I was going to Sophie’s when really we were going to a party.
“Why is that too bad?”
“I was about to make Tetris nachos.”
And I was about 90 percent sure he’d decided that on the spot. He was trying to get me to stay. Why? He didn’t need me for anything else tonight. My heart rate accelerated. I had to test him. “That sounds really good. But I kind of had my heart set on a Friends marathon.”
He shrugged. “Just stream it on my TV. It’s on Netflix, right?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You hate Friends. Why are you going to watch four hours of it?”
“I want nachos. I can’t make a small batch of nachos. And they don’t keep, so I’m not going to make a batch and waste half. So basically if I want nachos, you have to stay.”
I tried not to smile. Will is looking for reasons to keep me around! I walked back to the sofa and sank down. “Go ahead.”
“What?” he asked when I elbowed him in the ribs.
“You better get started on the nachos.”
“Right.”
I grabbed the remote from his hand and began the search for Friends. He sat for another minute until I gave him a pointed look, and then he headed for the kitchen. I was halfway through “The One with the Monkey” when Will walked through to the balcony. I heard the usual grumbling when he tried to wrestle the grill out of the corner and couldn’t resist the urge to mess with him again. “Hey,” I said, leaning against the open patio door. “I feel really bad. Take it easy on yourself. Don’t do nachos. I’m just going to go home.”
“What? No. It’s fine. The grill’s a pain, but I’ve got it handled. Go watch TV.”
&
nbsp; I smothered a smile and went back to the sofa. This was pretty fun. I knew I had the Twilight Sparkle experiment to thank for this. If I hadn’t talked him into giving it a couple of days to collect data, he’d probably be out on another date tonight. Or at the very least searching HeyThere to find his next one. Instead, he was making me my favorite food in the whole wide world. I could get used to this.
Except I really couldn’t, not unless I could think of another reason to keep him out of the dating pool and not distracted by other women soon. How long did I have left on this diversion anyway? I checked my e-mails, hoping no new messages had come in from the dating site. The faster we got to twenty-five, the sooner I had to think of a new distraction.
Two new e-mails were waiting for me. Dang. Was I the only woman in America who was actually bummed when men responded to her profile?
I opened them and laughed out loud. “Hey, Will,” I called. “Some guy calling himself Johnny99 got really original and told me I had the body of a hottie. Should I give him a pass for at least rhyming?”
He slammed a cupboard shut. “Dave and I have been telling you for years that guys are idiots and you should stay away. There’s your proof.”
I opened the next e-mail, ready to laugh again, but it was a handful of sentences instead of a handful of words. Hi, Twilight Sparkle. That’s my youngest niece’s favorite Pony, and she’s a pretty cool kid, so you must be pretty cool to pick that handle. I don’t think I could ever send a note to a Pinkie Pie. Also, I don’t really know who Pinkie Pie is. It’s the only other name I remember hearing her say. But in my defense, I could pick Twilight Sparkle out of a Pony lineup. Anyway, hello. I’m Jay. And I liked your profile.”
Nicely done, Jay. Pony lineup. Ha. I laughed out loud.
“Another loser? Read it to me,” Will called from the kitchen, where he was mixing up a rub for the meat.
“It’s nothing. This is my favorite part of the episode. Make the nachos, and stop distracting me, boy.”
“You’re the one laughing to yourself on the sofa, and I’m the distracting one?”
“Shhh,” I said, waving to the TV without looking at him. I didn’t glance at the TV either. I was glued to my computer screen. This Jay guy was funny. And his thumbnail picture was cute. I clicked to enlarge it. Not cute. Hot. And he had picked my profile. The real me. And had made the effort to start a conversation. The drive-by “You’re hot” messages were the virtual equivalent of yelling at women on the sidewalk while hanging out of your buddy’s truck window. But this Jay was trying to make a connection, not a pass. If I was looking for something besides crumbs of Will’s attention, it would have thrilled me.
Always Will Page 10