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She held up a hand and stopped him.
“Please stop talking. I’ve had to see and hear you a lot over the past few days and I’m tired.” The moment she said the words she felt it in her body and face. The burn in her eyes, the ache in her joints, the tension in her shoulders. “I’m so damn tired I could cry. I have this date and one more with Ryan before I end it. I just want to get through it in a respectable way.” She waved her splinted arm in a circle indicating André’s presence. “I need less from you. Which should be easy, seeing as you haven’t spoken to me in two and a half years.”
André frowned and then nodded once.
She glugged back her beer. When it was empty, André handed her his and took her empty cup. She faced the field and waited for her date to return.
So, André was there.
Fine.
It didn’t matter.
Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and she growled.
André took her beer from her so she could get her phone out of her pocket. She knew who it was. She glanced at the screen and shook her head.
AL: how’s the date?
Nikki closed her eyes and dropped her head back.
“What’s wrong?” André asked.
“Nothing except that I can’t reply to any of my texts.” She waved her splint.
“What about voice to text?”
She frowned his direction. What about voice to text? “How do you do that?”
He put both cups in the holders on either side of him and gestured at her phone. “May I?”
She handed him her phone and he was very careful not to touch her as he took it. He cued up the text and showed her the tiny microphone icon on the bottom of the keyboard.
She’d seen it many times but had never even thought about it.
“You just tap the microphone and speak into the phone.” He demonstrated. “Date is going well. Period. André is a twat. Period. And send.”
She smiled despite herself.
He chanced a smile of his own as he handed the phone back to her.
He’d said twat.
Why did that amuse her so much?
It always had though.
André had been born in America—Texas, maybe—but his parents split up when he was ten. His dad took him to England, his mom kept his sister and stayed in the States. André moved to Chicago just after he’d finished school.
He’d only lived in London for twelve years and most of the time you’d never know it. But sometimes he’d say something so British that there was no mistaking where he’d spent his formative years.
For instance, when he said twat.
“Thank you. I didn’t know how to do that,” she admitted.
He adjusted in his seat, glancing over his shoulder. “I remember you preferring to use your hands for things.”
She eyed him. “Yeah,” she replied slowly. “I’m tactile.”
