“So, tell me,” Rob said as they left the chill of the air-conditioned ice cream parlor for the warm June evening. “What did you want to be when you grew up?”
Kari eyed him sideways, her shoulder-length hair fluttering in the faint breeze. The spoon in her mouth paused, then she drew it out in a measured way that made his brain skid sideways into carnal territory. “What makes you think I wasn’t keen to be a bookkeeping office manager extraordinaire?”
“I’m sure you’re excellent at what you do. But few of us actually get jobs doing what we thought we would when we were kids.”
“What brings this on?”
“Mia. She’s been crazy about books since before she could read. She would bring her board books to us and insist we read them to her. When she started reading, I was convinced she had memorized certain books and was just repeating from memory. Then we got her a new book and she sat down cross-legged on the floor with it spread across her lap and started sounding it out right away.”
“How old was she?” Kari’s face held a sort of wistful expression.
“Four.”
“No wonder you didn’t think she was reading yet. That’s early.”
Pride surged through Rob, and he reminded himself he hadn’t done anything to earn that. That was Mia’s accomplishment, not his. “Yeah. And as soon as she learned that people had written them, that they didn’t just occur spontaneously, she started writing her own little books. Illustrating them and getting Liz and me to staple them together so they were actually bound volumes.”
“I’ll bet they were cute.”
“Adorable. At any rate, she graduated from simpler stuff, like ‘This Book Is A List Of Animals’ to actual stories. She kept her second grade class spellbound with a serial she wrote about a girl who turned into a horse and totally rolled with her new horsey life. I always figured she’d move on like most of us do—figure out something else to do, to give in to life.”
“But she hasn’t.”
“No. Her passion has changed. She realized at some point that she didn’t want to write her own stories anymore, but she loves helping make writers make better stories. And she’s really good at it.”
“So she’s on the same path she was on since she was tiny.”
Rob nodded. A cold trickle of moisture on his hand alerted him that his ice cream was melting down the cone. He slurped at the melted sweetness, then made a passage around the base of the scoop with his tongue, catching Kari’s expression as he tidied his dessert. Her pupils were blown wide, her tiny smile speculative.
Well. Now he was getting all sorts of ideas about where else he could apply his tongue.
He cleared his throat. “Anyway. I was curious. About your childhood dreams.”
Kari took another spoonful of her double-fudge chocolate and held his eyes as she drew the spoon out of her mouth and swallowed. “You really want to know?”
Oh, she was killing him. He wanted to know anything and everything about her right now. And he wanted to start with her mouth. “Yeah.” His voice rasped in his throat.
“A singer.”
“Not an artist?”
“Different kind of artist, but yeah. I had some sort of idea of being a classical singer. Maybe opera. My parents’ luxury was a small stash of records.”
“Can you sing?” He nearly winced. He hadn’t meant to be that blunt, but Kari nodded as if he hadn’t just stuffed his foot in his mouth alongside a lick of pistachio.
“Yeah. I can. I used to play those albums over and over, trying to get my voice to sound like what I heard. But I had no notion of how expensive and uncertain that sort of path would be. And my parents didn’t have money for private lessons or connections to that world or any other or…much of anything. So, like you said, I gave in to life. I moved on. I had a talent for organization, I’m good with numbers. I found a place where I could be valuable.”
Rob nodded, his throat tightening. He knew all too well what it was to have a dream that didn’t survive the harsh realities of life.
“What did you want to be when you grew up?” she asked.
The look of shock on Rob’s face at her question surprised Kari. He had to be expecting this—wasn’t this what this sort of getting-to-know-you back and forth was all about?
He made another circuit of his cone with his tongue, sending shivering heat through her body—good grief, was one bout of good sex enough to short circuit her brain forever?—and looked back at her, his big dark eyes pinning her to the sidewalk.
“I wanted to be a history professor.”
“Like, college?”
He nodded. “I would have had to get a Ph.D. I’d just started my master’s program which could have led into that.”
“And then what happened?”
His mouth tightened, then softened. “Mia happened. Liz got pregnant and we had to adjust.”
Kari’s head rocked back. “Oh. Not planned, then?”
He laughed softly. “No. We weren’t married. We were young. Having a kid was the furthest thing from our minds.”
Kari nearly laughed aloud at that. “Can I tell you something?”
He looked at her, his eyebrows crimping together. “Of course.”
“My parents were never married.”
He blinked, but didn’t question her further.
“Mom had Bjorn—my brother—after they survived the shipwreck. He was her husband’s son. She had married in Norway. Not a love match. Mom and Dad met and fell in love on the voyage. When Mom’s husband didn’t survive the wreck, Mom and Dad told the authorities they were married. They were terrified of being separated in a new country. But since they had told everyone they were already married…they felt like they couldn’t get married.”
“Not even in secret?”
“At first, I’m sure they could have, but it would have been difficult. New country, new rules, who do you trust to ask these kinds of questions? I think later it might have become one of things they realized they didn’t need. I didn’t learn about this until just before my mother died, but somehow it didn’t surprise me. So, when you say that you and your ex weren’t married and therefore didn’t expect Mia…” She shrugged. “It doesn’t faze me. But my experience isn’t exactly common.”
“True. But nice to know other people’s lives throw them curve balls. At any rate, Liz and I got married in a hurry, she had Mia, and our lives re-centered around raising her.”
Kari took another spoonful of ice cream, considering. “You couldn’t go back to your original plan? Go back to school?”
Rob chuckled, shaking his head. “Getting a degree—especially an advanced degree—and having a kid are both net negatives, economically speaking. I needed to make money. We needed to have insurance for Liz’s pregnancy and Mia’s delivery. Not to mention the eighteen-plus years of actually raising a kid. I took my college minor in computer programming and parlayed it into my first I.T. job. Like you, it turned out I was good at it. And here I am.” He flourished his ice cream cone as if to indicate some vast kingdom.
His light tone danced over some deeper truth of dreams deferred or dead and she remembered that funny moment when they were buying her faucet and she’d called him “Professor.” Kari’s heart twisted. She was so used to burying her own desires under the grinding reality of need: the need to make rent. The need to pay bills. And now, the need to pay a mortgage. Panic seized her throat at that last, recurrent thought, the responsibility of owning a home.
Relax. Millions of people pay mortgages. It’s not so different from rent.
Except it was. She owned those walls she had painted. She was responsible for that plumbing. Even the plants in the yard were counting on her to come through with water if there was a drought.
She glanced at Rob, who had worked his way down to the cone, cracking it between his teeth and looking thoughtful as he moved down the street. They had walked away from where his car was parked in unspoken mutual accord, past the shops in the downtown area. Expensive-looking little boutiques mixed oddly with national chains in the streets ringing the central square, anchored by the library and a paved area with a fountain where kids in bathing suits played in the summertime.
“Where did you live before you bought the house?” Rob asked.
Kari blinked at the suddenness of the question. “Why do you ask?”
His eyes glinted with humor and he looked at her sideways. “You just seemed to appear from nowhere. One day the house was empty, the next you’re there transplanting azaleas and cracking wise with your niece in the backyard. I have a little of your family history now, but I feel like I know young-Kari and now-Kari. What about in-between-Kari? Where did you go to school? What’s your history?”
She shrugged, plastic spoon scraping against the cardboard, transferring the last of the chocolate goodness to her lips. “Born and raised in Rockville. One of those late in life ‘surprise!’ babies. I got a two-year associate’s degree at Montgomery College. I worked as a secretary. I got a certificate in bookkeeping, got a few different jobs, finally got the job I have now seven years ago. Oh, and I moved around a bit, and lived in an apartment building about a mile from our neighborhood for the last ten years.”
Rob cracked another piece of cone between his teeth, chewed it, swallowed. “Huh. If it weren’t for the six years between us we might have met at a football game or something in high school. Funny thing to think about, isn’t it?”
A little thrill ran through her at the idea of meeting a younger version of Rob. Both of their lives might have been entirely different.
Rob couldn’t account for the startled look on Kari’s face, but then she tossed her cup in a trash can and sucked ice cream off her thumb and he forgot to wonder. His entire attention fixed on that thumb, those lips, the hint of tongue as she pulled her hand away from her mouth.
Jesus. He hadn’t felt like this since…when? He didn’t know.
It wasn’t that he felt like a teenager. Thirty years hadn’t melted off of him—and nor would he want them to. In fact, the very idea of being a teenager again made him shudder. No, it wasn’t that sort of hormone-induced wildness that would flare and retreat seemingly at random all those years ago. What he felt now was an intense, steady sensation of being drawn to Kari, with each detail he discovered about her only making the feeling stronger.
And with that tractor-beam feeling came the intense desire to not screw whatever this was up.
“You okay?” Kari asked.
“Sure, why?” he said, well aware that he was lying. Of course he wasn’t okay. How could he be okay with this realization? He was the king of screwing things up with women. He’d never done anything but screw up things with women.
“You were staring.”
“You’re something to stare at.” He winked and popped the last bit of ice cream cone in his mouth.
She snorted. “At least I’m wearing a bra.”
“I knew something was missing.”
“The opposite of missing, actually.” Kari rolled her eyes.
“You know what I meant.”
She smiled a little. “Yeah, I did. I’m still mortified about that, though.”
“I’m sure Mia didn’t care. If she even noticed.”
“Oh, she noticed. Many woman would.”
“How?”
“Keeping your arms wrapped around yourself the way I did is like the universal signal for ‘I’m not wearing a bra and I should be and I’m embarrassed by that fact.’”
“Universal?”
“Universal for people who need bras. We have our own language, you know.”
“I think I read a science fiction book about that in the eighties.”
“It’s not science fiction. It’s stone cold fact.”
“I always knew women were mysterious creatures.”
She rolled her eyes again. “Mia lets you get away with saying stuff like that? Weren’t you bragging how she made you a feminist?”
“Touché. She’d gut me for that one. Never tell her I said it, okay?”
“It will be our secret until I need leverage. I may blackmail you with it one day.”
“Cruel.”
“Maybe. But fair. I will only blackmail for good.”
“Isn’t that impossible?”
“I guess we’ll have to find out.” She shot him a mischievous look, one eyebrow arching. It gave him a sort of twisting, yearning feeling.
“Anything else we should do while we’re downtown?” he asked.
“Hm.” She glanced at the library. “Maybe we could get a movie. Something I’ve seen that you haven’t. Like a cultural exchange.”
“Why are you looking at the library?”
“Because they have DVDs.” She gave him a look that said he should know this obvious fact.
“They do?” Rob had hardly been to the library since Mia was little.
“Yeah. Your tax dollars at work.”
“That’s kind of awesome. But I don’t even have a library card.”
Kari’s sneakered feet stopped and she stared at him. “You don’t. Have. A library card?”
Rob’s eyes wandered upward, his face heating. “Um. Nope.”
“Good grief. We’re fixing that immediately.” She grabbed his arm and dragged him across the street to the library.
He laughed and opened the door for her, waving her in. “After you.”
She gave him a fake stern look and went inside. He expected hush and stasis. What he found was a soaring room, light and open, a staircase curving around a circular wall opposite the entrance. And people everywhere.
“Huh. I’d thought libraries had gone the way of the dodo.”
“Only because you haven’t been inside one for years, I’m guessing.”
“Guilty.”
She shook her head. “Bad assumption. And a huge waste of money. Come on.”
He followed her to a desk where she told a librarian about his shameful lack of library card. The woman didn’t seem to be as scandalized as Kari was, merely checking his ID and issuing a plastic card with a bar code on it. He slid it in his wallet and looked at Kari, who was regarding him thoughtfully.
“I know you’re up on Disney, but how are you on classic movies?”
“Um. I’ve seen Casablanca.”
“That’s it? What about classic screwball comedies?”
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Blank slate.”
“Good.” Turning on her heel, she led him to the media area, scanning the spines of DVD cases until her face lit up. “Aha.” She pulled one off the shelf and showed it to him. “His Girl Friday. Perfect.”
“Weren’t you giving me guff about feminism? That title sounds off.”
“Don’t judge anything by its title. Rosalind Russell plays a journalist who is so good she…well, that’s a spoiler. I mean, it’s definitely not perfect feminist material, but it was also the 1940’s.” She handed him the case. “Go ahead. Give that shiny new library card a test drive.”
Kari settled into the corner of Rob’s sofa, butterflies fluttering in her stomach as he put the DVD into the player. The last time they’d done this, she’d sat on one end of the sofa and he was on the other. But now that they were…something more than friends, would they curl up together? Kari realized she hoped they would. Sex had cracked the isolated shell she had been living in for the last few years and she wanted touch and closeness.
But she also wasn’t really sure where this was going or what it was at all. It was strange to know what he looked like without clothes on, to know how he smelled and how his mouth tasted, and to wonder if wanting a cuddle was a bridge too far.
She reviewed all the little touches and sweet teasing he had indulged in since they had gotten out of bed and tried to tell herself she was being silly to wonder.
It didn’t help, somehow.
Rob stood and grabbed the remote from the coffee table, starting the movie. “I always forget how the credits were so brief in these old movies,” he said, sitting beside her, his hip touching hers. “This okay?” he asked, hovering his arm over her shoulder.
She nodded, not quite trusting her voice at the moment. His arm settled on her shoulders and he pulled her against him. She leaned a little, not quite relaxing into him.
Where is this coming from?
Why did this feel intimate in a way that having him inside her body did not?
She swallowed and vowed to focus on the movie, trying to ignore how solid and warm his body was against hers. Ignoring the thought that they would be sharing a bed tonight. To sleep in.
Maybe just to sleep. Would that be such a bad thing?
A bark of laughter from Rob made her realize that, far from focusing on the movie, her brain had drifted. Rosalind Russell had just thrown her purse at Carey Grant and he ducked, not pausing in his rapid-fire banter as the bag sailed over his head. Kari smiled a little and let herself lean into Rob a little more. He kneaded her shoulder and she sighed.
This was just so nice. Rob chuckled at the movie and his laughter reverberated through her body.
Stop overthinking everything.
She slid sideways a little so she could rest her head on his shoulder. He toyed with her hair, the light touch at the back of her neck making her shiver. Her eyes slid closed, soothed by the touch and the rhythmic dialogue. She wasn’t sure when she’d last felt this relaxed, this cared for, or this hopeful.