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“Exactly,” I say. “And I’m a sucker for some word play.”
“Word play?”
“Yeah, like if you’d said, ‘Hey girl. Are you good at bowling? ‘Cause you’re striking’? Now that would get you a lot further with me.”
“Is that so?” he asks. He still has a rather grave countenance about him, but a smile is finally starting to play at the corners of his mouth. “Then I’d like a second chance.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible,” I say. “You can’t have a second chance at a first impression.”
He tilts his head toward me and says, “I don’t believe in impossible.” Then he stands and walks back to his old seat before I can say another word. He picks up his magazine and returns to reading it.
I’m confused, thrown, and more than a bit disappointed. Is that it then? I guess I shouldn’t have insulted his pickup line.
But then he glances at me out of the corner of his eye and, seeing my bewilderment, nods emphatically at my martini.
I want to smack my forehead when I realize what I’m missing. He’s not ditching me. He’s merely resetting the scene. I try not to smile as I play along, affecting the same expression I’d worn before and taking another sip of my martini, looking lazily at the bar before suddenly making eye contact with him again.
We stare at each other for a beat, and then he gives another little prompting nod. Oh right, my line.
“Hello,” I say.
He stands again. He walks to me again. And once again that cinnamon smell envelops me. We shake hands and this time his touch lingers a bit longer.
He says, “Nick.”
I say, “Evie.”
And then he says, “Hey girl. Are you a beaver? ‘Cause damn.”
The corniness of it is too much. I burst out laughing. Mysteriously sexy stranger Nick finally smiles. It’s bright and wide and makes him look deviously sexy.
I’m so thankful that my shirt dried.
“Thank you,” he says when my laughter has died. “I’ve always felt like my game was missing something. Now I know what it is.”
I snort at the idea that this guy ever has trouble picking up women, but again play along anyway. “Yes. A good pun is ideal for picking up women.”
“Is that how you met your boyfriend?” Nick asks.
A flash of Brent’s face in Puerto Rico dances before my eyes. We’d met in college when he’d thrown up on my shoes at a party. Not the greatest opener, but I guess it had worked as we were together for six years afterward.
I hesitate before answering. This is the first time I’ve been single since I was twenty-one. I still haven’t gotten used to it, especially when it wasn’t so long ago that I’d expected to be committed for life.
“Recently single, actually,” I say.
Nick shakes his head. “I’d like to meet that unlucky idiot,” he says. “How’d he let you get away?”
I dodge the truth. I’m still not a hundred percent certain how to explain the topic to strangers. I definitely don’t want Nick to pity me. I’d rather keep up the old-world illusion that I’m trying to cultivate in this luxury train car. Katherine Hepburn didn’t get left at the altar. Rita Hayworth would have laughed in the face of Instagram jealousy if that concept had even existed in the ‘40s.
“You could call it a mutual realization that we had absolutely nothing in common,” I say. “I like salsa dancing. He liked getting blackout drunk. I like romance movies. He liked… getting blackout drunk.”
“I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to miss a moment with you,” Nick says.
The frank sincerity of his words makes me feel like I’m actually in one of those old movies. “Well, darling,” I drawl. “You don’t know me. I could be just plain awful. Maybe he was drinking to get away from me.”
“Possibly,” Nick says. He sips his own drink but his eyes never leave mine. “So is it true? Are you just plain awful?”
“I’m…” I’ve wondered this very question over the past month. Am I awful? Boring? Annoying? Bad at sex? I’ve yet to receive a real answer from Brent on why he decided to blow up our entire lives. Right now I’m just going on the assumption that Cheryl has a crack rock where most women have a pussy. It should make me feel better, but it doesn’t really.
