Page 82 of All Our Nevers

He laughs and it’s almost childlike. “I do.”

“Yes!” I spin around to face him, walking backwards without a care for the people around me. “You have to show me. I bet they’re so fucking hot.”

He catches my waist with his hands, maintaining our pace through the crowd. “Oh, you like that, huh?”

“Mhm.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“And hey,” I say, twisting back to his side and looping my arm around his middle, “I may never have played whatever Spelling Bee is, but I like crossword puzzles too. We should do one together when we get back to my place.”

“That’s what you’re inviting me over to do?”

I bat innocent eyelashes at him. “What else would it be?”

“I still can’t get over it, Amelia. That whole exhibition was insane. How do you find time for stuff like this on top of your regular job?”

We’re winding through Lower Allston on foot, Korean restaurants and vape stores and red brick apartment buildings on all sides.

“Well, I don’t exactly have a regular job, as you so often remind me.”

“Okay, it may not be a regular job but it takes a job’s worth of time and energy. Plus this? Not just going to the shows, but actually making the art… Do you sleep? Do you ever watch TV or like… go to the bathroom?”

“Do you want an honest answer?”

“Yes.”

“I think people who watch TV are boring and I’m better than them.” I turn my head towards him in challenge. “You gonna tell me I’m an asshole now?”

He huffs a laugh. “I think most people are boring and I’m better than them.”

“Including me?”

“No,” he says, fingers reaching to intertwine with mine. “Definitely not you.”

It pulls a smile out of me, but I keep walking, eyes fixed ahead. “Why not?”

“You want me to find you boring?”

“I want to hear you compliment me.”

He stops in his tracks, then tugs me towards him by our connected hands. I land against his chest and big hands wrap around my waist, steadying me there. “I think you’re exactly as intense and obsessive and bitchy as I am.”

I quirk an eyebrow. “Did you just call yourself bitchy?”

His eyes are the teasing blue of a fast-moving current. “Do you disagree?”

“Not at all, little bitch boy.”

“Little? I’m at least four inches taller than you.” His palm presses into my lower back, pulling me tighter against him, arcing his body over mine to prove the point.

“I have four inch heels that would solve that.”

“Better wear them on our third date, then.”

“We’re going on a third date?” I ask.

“Mhm.”