Page 80 of Jonesing for a Spy

Maybe he’s not right in the head. Perhaps he’s perpetually positive. That won’t do.

“Your face looks like you’re trying to do complex math.”

I look down on him, scrunching my complex-math face, and flip him the bird. “I’m trying to figure out if you’re normal. And what I’ve gotten myself into.”

Water sluices down the ripples and dips of his muscles as he stands. “Those are two wildly different questions. Now, let’s get you fed.” He’s out of the tub and tossing a towel to me.

The man is a conundrum. He carried me in here like a groom over a threshold and is leaving, having heaved a towel my way.

I watch his ass as he goes. He admired mine, but his is muscled, tight, and has those little dimples at the sides. He even has them right above his cheeks. I wonder if that’s genetic.

Before that thought can percolate, I wrap myself in the towel, find my toiletries bag and freshen up a little. Out on a date in Nashville with my man with his slutty little glasses is worth the effort.

In no time, we’re on the street, hand-in-hand, watching the people passing by. We’re not in the super touristy area, but it’s not like the downtown business districts in most major metros where it’s dead on a Saturday night.

It doesn’t take us long to find a hole-in-the-wall gyro shop and grab a table. We order one chicken gyro and one lamb one, an order of fries with some Greek dressing and feta on them, and two huge bottles of water.

The owner, Dimitri, delivers it to our table himself and chats us up about recipes and how long he’s lived in Nashville. It’s not long enough not to have lost his original accent, but long enough that his English words are tinged in a southern drawl. He’s delightful.

He leaves us, returning to the kitchen. I catch the words “in love” but nothing more as he walks away.

The meal is delicious. My mind is exhausted. My body is sated. My belly is full. And my heart is… content.

Never in my life have I had such peace in a time of so much strife. The holidays, the fact that the agency is investigating the man in the booth across from me and that I have to disclose our relationship, my potential status as a mom, how my brothers will react to the news.

Strider grins, and his eyes crinkle behind his glasses.

“What?” I ask.

“You’re back to complex math on your face, but you’re moaning with each bite and dancing in your chair with each french fry.”

I shrug. “I was hungry.”

“And your brain is working out all kinds of scenarios that we don’t know we need.” He extends a hand across the table. He squeezes when I take it but lets go when his gyro starts to collapse. “We will make it work. Me and you, Freckles. We’ve got this. No matter what, okay?”

How can he say that?

“Stop squinting at me like you can read my mind with your eye-daggers. I mean it. We’re not eighteen. We’re adults who communicate. So long as we’re honest, we will be fine.”

Am I being dishonest by not telling him he’s being investigated? To get technical, I’m being treasonous if I do. Rock, meet hard place.

I nod and eat my gyro. When we’re well and truly stuffed, we wave goodbye to Dimitri and step back onto the street. Though our hotel is to the right, Strider tugs my hand to the left and leads me down a block off the beaten path.

I understand why when I see the swishing doors and the well-lit red W sign. He’s taking us to the pharmacy. In and through, into the aisles of pregnancy tests. He studies each, asking questions I do not know the answers to.

The man grabs four different kinds, smiles as he shrugs an arm around my shoulders, and leads us—much to my mortification—to the front. At the last minute, I steer us to the self-checkout machine and fling all of them into a bag quickly as he taps his card on the screen.

“Ready?”

Nope. Not in the slightest.

34

configuration of lines

Mirren

I’m not, but I step out on the sidewalk of Music City and fight not to rush back to the hotel. It’s long past sundown, the stars can’t be seen this deep in the city, and the black of night trips along the roofs of the buildings around us, even if the lights of the state capitol illuminate our way and push the darkness further out.