After Matt dropped us off, I shut the door behind him and leaned against it with a happy sigh. Dave walked past me and confined himself to an eye roll, but I didn’t care. Every time he busted my chops, he gave me that much more ammo for when he finally started dating someone. Just one more reason to pull for him and Laurel.
I headed for bed and my laptop to check my messages for any LDS Lookup activity. A handful of interesting guys with psycho-free vibes had sent me messages, which was cool. Somehow, though, I couldn’t muster the enthusiasm to answer back. I snuck another peek at BoardRyder, but none of the other profiles did anything for me. I skipped an analysis of Matt’s influence on that decision and wandered onto my sisters’ blogs.
Leila, my oldest sister, had posted a new family picture. The candid shot showed her buried under her four kids with the youngest one, a little redheaded imp named Justin, sitting practically on her head. Her soon-to-be ex-husband Mark was nowhere to be seen.
It was no surprise. She got married the youngest, six months after graduating high school, to the missionary she’d been waiting for since she was sixteen. They had struggled from day one. She stayed home with the kids from the time Jack was a baby, and the pressure of working and finishing school made Mark short-tempered and impatient. Leila, by far the most high-strung Barrett girl, grappled with depression over failed expectations and financial stress. There never seemed to be a break, and a couple of a times a year she showed up back at my parents’ house with the kids in tow, swearing the marriage was over.
Ironically, Leila rode me the hardest about marriage. It was why we didn’t talk much anymore. I think she wanted to live through me, to experience vicariously the romance and marriage that she meant to have instead of the one she settled for.
I closed my laptop. I didn’t want to think about it anymore.
* * *
I figured making sushi at the church called for casual clothing, so when Matt swung by on Wednesday night, I had on denim capris again, a black tee shirt, and a cool chunky silver necklace I picked up at the Orange County swap meet after some haggling. A quick swipe of lip gloss and mascara finished the job. The great thing about a summer tan is how much makeup it eliminates. Bye-bye blush, hello sun-kissed cheeks.
Matt smiled when I opened the door for him. “You look great,” he said.
“Thanks,” I responded, pleased at the compliment. “You too.”
He had a polo shirt on, but it had a funky retro stripe of brown and green running through it, saving it from being too preppy. It fit his vibe—and his shoulders—perfectly.
I caught him up on my rare whole day off and told him about my run-in with some peevish ducks while I explored Central Park.
“Central Park is pretty cool,” Matt said. “Did you do any disc golfing?”
I stopped on the sidewalk leading up to the church’s double doors and stared at him. “Disc golfing? Is that like snipe hunting or watching the submarine races?” I asked.
“I didn’t make it up, I promise,” he said. “The other side of the street across from the library is all part of Central Park, too, and it’s got a really well-known disc golf course.”
“Okay. What’s disc golf?”
“If you don’t know, I’ll just have to show you.”
“In between making sushi, tennis lessons, and surfing?” I joked.
“Yeah.”
“Hey, are you trying to monopolize all my free time?” I half hoped he was.
“That depends,” he hedged. “If I say yes, are you going to freak out because you think I’m getting too attached?”
“Are you getting too attached?” I asked.
“Too attached? No. You’re fun to hang out with.”
“That’s true,” I agreed. “I am.”
He laughed.
“Answer the question, though,” I prodded. “Is this a monopoly?”
“On the condition that you don’t freak out, yes. It’s a monopoly.”
I heard someone on the sidewalk behind us and we headed toward the door. Matt held it open for me, and, taking his hand, I dragged him down the hall to the stage steps, then tugged him down to sit beside me.
“I’m okay with that,” I said. “But what would happen if I went on a date with someone else?”
He gave me a long, thoughtful stare. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“Not exactly,” I answered. “I guess this is more for clarification.”
“Geez, Ashley,” he joked. “I take you out surfing a few times and you repay me with a ‘define the relationship’ talk? Worst payback ever.”
I rolled my eyes. “Matt, I really like you. But I’m leaving at the end of the summer to dive into a really intense research program, and it’s not fair to either of us to be heartbroken about that fact. I won’t have the time to give to a relationship when school starts again, and I’m just trying to be honest about that.”
“Relax, Ash,” he said. He leaned forward and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear without thinking about it. “You are exactly what I need right now. I’m aware of your time limits, I’m aware of your commitment restrictions, and you are crystal clear about your boundaries. I’m fine with all of that,” he said.
Deciding to test that, I asked, “Does that mean you don’t care if I date other guys?”
“Nope. Doesn’t bother me,” he said.
I tried not to scowl. Instead, I said, “You keep dating whoever you want to date, too, then.”
“I’ll do that,” he said. I stifled another scowl. “Can I ask one favor?” he continued.
“You can ask. My answer depends on the favor.”
He smiled. “If you’re going to go out with other guys, just don’t do any kissing.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You want me to spend the whole summer not kissing anyone?”
“That’s not what I said. I asked you not to kiss anyone else. Just me.”
My stomach flipped. “I haven’t kissed you.”
“Yet,” he said, and I could hear a soft promise in his voice.
Oh, boy.
I felt the sudden impulse to throw myself across him and blubber, “Anything you want, Matt Gibson!” but a tall, gorgeous girl about my age walked up and saved me from myself.
“Hey, Matt,” she said, but she was giving me the laser eye.
“Hey, Lou,” he answered back lazily.
“You have to go do sushi,” she said.
Kinda bossy, dark blonde hair, and a clear, green-eyed gaze. Hmm. “You must be Matt’s sister,” I said. “I’m Ashley.”
“I know who you are,” she answered. Her tone didn’t suggest whether that was a good or a bad thing.
“Allow me to introduce my sister. This is Lou,” Matt said.
She scowled. “It’s Louisa, Mattie.”
“Right. I forget.”
I grinned. It sounded like me with my sisters. Or Dave. Seeing the grin, Louisa unbent just a little.
“It’s nice to meet you, Ashley. Are you ready to learn how to make sushi?”
“Yeah. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while,” I said.
“Really?” she responded. “This is convenient, then.”
“Louisa’s the one who put this activity together,” he said. “She’s in charge of the activities committee, which is how I end up at half of these things.”
“Ignore him,” Louisa said. “I make him come to all of them. He’s trying to act like he’s too cool to show up, but he never crosses me.”
“Actually,” Matt interrupted again, “the truth is that for some crazy reason, I kind of like Louisa, so I hang around.”
This time Louisa grinned. “As brothers go, he’s a keeper. Mostly,” she amended.
“Making sushi is such a creative idea, but how on earth did you get the bishop to pay for it?” I asked.
“I didn’t. It’s free. There’s a new sushi place opening up over on Brookhurst, maybe a mile away, and they agreed that doing a demo for their target demographic made good advertising sense.”
“Louisa majored in marketing,” Matt said, and I could hear pride coloring his voice.
“The demo was your idea?” I asked, feeling a measure of respect for her.
“Yeah. Wednesday is the perfect night for something like this because—”
“—it’s really slow for them,” I finished. “Great thinking.”
She cocked her head at me and said, “Thanks.” I got the impression she was reevaluating me.
Matt climbed to his feet and pulled me to mine, not letting go of my hand once I was standing.
I squeezed his back. “Who else is going to ask me out if you’re always holding my hand and stuff?” I asked.
“Are you saying I’m cramping your style?”
“Maybe.”
“Bummer. Good luck figuring that out.” And he hauled me down the hall to the kitchen. I was glad he couldn’t see the cheesy grin on my face. Granted, I truly did not want any attachments, but it felt good to be wanted.
There were already about fifteen people mingling in the kitchen, including an Asian guy in a chef’s smock.
“Bet you a Jamba that guy’s the sushi man,” Matt said.
“That’s a sucker’s bet. I’ll buy you a Jamba, anyway.”
“Matt!” Louisa called from the other side of the kitchen. “I need you to set up chairs.”
The crowd in the kitchen trickled out to take seats in the extra-wide hall space on the other side of the counter, and more people drifted in through the back doors. Before long, a crowd of roughly thirty people sat chatting and waiting for the sushi show to get going. Louisa called for quiet, picked a guy to say the opening prayer, and introduced the sushi man. His name was Kisho Nobu, he told us in a nervous voice, and his family had just opened their own sushi restaurant.
He began by explaining a little about the history of sushi and how it fit culturally in his native country of Japan. When he explained that sushi originally meant fermenting the fish in vinegared rice to preserve it, several noses wrinkled in response, mine included. Mr. Nobu smiled and continued his brief history. As he picked up steam, his nerves faded and he began to joke and smile with the curious onlookers squished together in the chairs in front of him. He demonstrated each of his tools, his hands moving deftly, his quick, sure movements following a rhythm. I slipped into a pleasant daze as I watched until the sensation of my own hand being thrust into the air startled me.
“You, pretty lady, come here,” Mr. Nobu called.
I looked around.
“Black shirt, come here,” he called again.
“I just volunteered you to make a California roll,” Matt whispered.
I narrowed my eyes at his high-handedness but then shrugged. It was on The List, after all.
I rounded the kitchen door to take my place next to Mr. Nobu and waited for direction. When I saw him looking for another victim, I tugged on his smock and whispered in his ear. He smiled, then straightened.
“This pretty lady says Matt Gibson loves to cook too,” Mr. Nobu said. “He will also demonstrate California rolls.”
There were hoots from a couple of guys in the audience, the loudest coming from Derek, sitting in the back row. Matt shuffled around the doorway to take his place.
“Okay, now you watch,” Mr. Nobu ordered, and he began to assemble his California roll, scooping the rice onto the bamboo mat, shaping it into a long thin strip, and placing his remaining ingredients at one end of the rice. Then he took one side of the mat and with sure fingers, rolled toward the other end, causing the California roll to emerge with the crab and avocado perfectly placed in the center of his rice roll when he sliced it.
“Easy,” Mr. Nobu said. “You do it.”
Matt lifted an eyebrow, like maybe he thought “easy” was an exaggeration, but he reached for the steamer and plopped some rice down on his own mat. When he began poking at it, I started on mine. I concentrated hard to get the rice just like I had seen Mr. Nobu do it. I could hear him clucking at Matt’s attempts to shape things properly. When I thought I had it right, I picked out some juicy crab and some pretty green slices of avocado and laid them at one end of my newly formed rice strip.
“Mr. Nobu,” I interrupted him, trying to save Matt from the rather hilarious berating Mr. Nobu was dishing out. “Is this right?”
He checked my work and his furrowed brow cleared. “Ah, pretty lady makes pretty sushi!” he exclaimed. Then turning to Matt he scolded, “No cooking. Find something else that’s better for you. Like the pretty lady,” he said and shooed Matt in my direction.
Matt strode over and stood behind me, resting his hands on my shoulders and nestling my head under his. I saw Derek’s eyebrows shoot up all the way on the back row, and several other girls exchanged glances in the audience. I pretended not to notice and focused on rolling my sushi the way Mr. Nobu did.
“You heard the man,” Matt drawled. The vibrations from his chin tickled my scalp. “You’re better than sushi, straight from the mouth of a sushi expert.”
“Smooth, Gibson,” one guy called from the middle row. I reddened. Mr. Nobu grinned, so I asked, “Is my California roll done?”
“Yes. Slice and eat,” he said.
I scooped up a section and then whirling quickly, popped it in Matt’s mouth just as he was opening it to protest me moving, forcing him to chew instead of speak.
“No more talking,” I murmured with my back to the audience. Then in a slightly louder voice I asked, “Is it good?”
Mr. Nobu hurried over and nodded Matt’s head for him like he was a puppet. “It’s very good,” Mr. Nobu proclaimed in a voice two octaves deeper than his own. While the audience laughed, he ordered, “Everyone clap for the pretty lady and this guy.”
The audience obeyed and we took our seats again. After whipping out over thirty California rolls in an eye-poppingly short span of time, Mr. Nobu ended the demonstration and we enjoyed the samples. Several people in the group planned to head over to Mr. Nobu’s restaurant to keep the feast going, but when Matt asked me if I wanted to join them, I shook my head.
“I love sushi,” I said, “but more for lunch than dinner.”
“Then I can take you out for dinner somewhere else.”
We decided on a Chicago-style pizzeria downtown on Main Street, not far from Hannigan’s. One barbecue-chicken pizza later, we rolled ourselves out of our cozy corner booth and walked another block down to PCH, then crossed it and wandered down the pier. It was a pretty night, a nearly full moon clearly visible even beneath the usual evening cloud cover. Standing out at the end of the pier with nothing but a rail in front of us, we watched the moon’s reflection gleaming and rippling on the dark water beneath us, stretching and re-forming in rhythm with the waves slapping the concrete support pylons.
Another comfortable silence descended between Matt and me. I savored it, appreciating how we could spend an hour over dinner cracking nonstop jokes and then slip into these quiet moments. Matt leaned next to me, his forearms resting on the rail as he stared out at the ocean. Shifting slightly, he angled his body to face me instead of the water, his head cocked, watching. I let him, not minding. When a small gust of wind snagged a long tendril of hair and blew it across my face, he reached out and replaced it with a tuck behind my ear, much like he had on the stairs at church.
“You never said whether we have a deal or not,” he murmured.
“What?” The question came out sounding sleepy, the waves having lulled me into a gentle trance.
“Kissing,” he said, capturing my complete attention.
“I’m a big fan of it,” I assured him.
He chuckled. “Yeah, me too. But how does that fit with your attachment issues?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, if I kiss you, I’m kissing only you, no matter who else I might go out with,” he said, causing me to feel an alarming twinge somewhere near my liver. “Are you okay with kissing only me right now?”
“You’re saying it doesn’t matter who I date as long as I’m only kissing you?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you’ll only kiss me if I agree to that?”
“Well . . . yeah.”
I pretended to think about it, although there wasn’t any argument from me. I’d always been a kissing monogamist no matter how many guys I’d dated at any given moment. And for the record, that number was only three, and it was a summer many, many moons ago when it sounded like a good idea. It wasn’t.
“Then I agree.”
He leaned forward, his lips scant inches from mine.
“Ashley?”
“Yes?” I managed to strangle out in a hoarse, tense syllable.
“Is that your way of saying you want me to kiss you?”
“No. This is,” I whispered and narrowed the distance between us to almost nothing. Almost. I wanted him to close the gap.
And he did.