Contrast Ch. 04

He drums his fingers on the table. The nearness of telling her the truth makes his brain crackle electrically, shoots current through the wires of his whole nervous system. He tries to find the suave Dan Holden who handled this situation so deftly in all the fantasies he'd had since digging the book out two days earlier. "Well," says a passable imitation of that Dan Holden, "I wasn't a hundred percent sure you wanted me to say anything. Maybe you just left it out by accident. Maybe if I said something, then I'd be the one crossing a line. Remember, you're the scary black woman in this relationship."

That makes her smile - but she also wears a hint of embarrassment on her face. "Thought I had the scary pretty well turned off that night."

"You did." Enough with the joking. Get your legs under you and help her get hers too. "It wasn't you I was scared of. It was the idea I might do something wrong and lose you."

Her eyes close slowly and then re-open. She leans her chin into one palm.

"I was afraid of that too," she admits. "I knew it was off-limits - I just ... I wanted there to be more. I wanted it so much. So I spent all afternoon before you showed up taking that book out, putting it back, taking it out, laying it open at my favorite scene, closing it back up."

"What's your favorite scene?" A physical thrill runs through him that she knows the book well enough to have a favorite scene. He has to know which one it is, and he simultaneously thinks it doesn't matter and also thinks, The meadow scene, right?

His intensity surprises her. She wonders if it's somehow possible the book is as important to him as it is to her.

"Page three-hundred and sixty-eight," she says. "You know, where she admits everything she's been hiding from him. Where she opens up and we finally learn what makes her tick, why she's so fucking brave and keeps sticking her neck out where it might get chopped off. Every time I read it, it's like, God, I want to be this chick and believe in things like she believes in them, and then also find somebody who deserves to be trusted that way, who I could feel safe letting myself be weak in front of."

Dan is just looking at her, not saying anything. She has no idea what his expression means, but she knows she can sit here and take that look all night long if he keeps it up.

The waitress comes back, though, with a bowl of queso and some chips.

"You folks ready to order?" She's a weathered-looking hispanic lady, one of those completely indifferent servers whose gum-chewing is the most energetic thing about them.

Jenice waves a hand back and forth between the two of them. "We'll both have the enchilada plate."

The waitress turns her face blankly at Dan, somehow managing to make a question of it without a hint of expressiveness.

"Yes, absolutely, enchiladas," he says, to get rid of her as quickly as possible.

Taking the menus, the waitress departs.

Unable to wait any longer, desperate to know if this coincidence of the book is as big a deal as she wants it to be, Jenice asks, "So - you read the rest of the series too?"

He nods, opens his mouth like he has something to say, but then closes it again.

It's a thing, she thinks. It is, it's our first big thing we share together. "I've read every goddamn thing the guy's written," she says. "He's amazing. Now you've come along, he's downgraded to my second-favorite Daniel, but lemme tell you, it's a near thing."

Fuck, he thinks. This is it. Here we go.

"It's ... uh ... a nearer thing than you think."

She narrows her eyes at him, not sure what he's getting at.

His heart's pounding as he puts a fingertip by the name on the front of the book. "This is me, Jenice."

Jenice feels her jaw drop - not because she believes him, but because she's stunned that he would make a joke out of something she's trying to say is so important to her.

"That's not funny."

Oh shit. She doesn't ... The way her face closes off makes him panic for a second. This wasn't how his fantasies had gone at all. Wait, he thinks. Wait, wait, wait ...

He remembers what he'd first thought, seeing the book on the nightstand that night - that she'd snuck a peek in his wallet and found his ID.

"Look," he says, grabbing out his billfold and fumbling the driver's license free. Holding it out to her. "Look. I'm totally serious."

She takes the license, stares at the picture, stares at the name. "You're shitting me."

"No, Jenice, really ..." He rifles through the credit cards, pulls out the business one with his publishing imprint on it. The one he charged the hell out of in the early days trying to run ads and find a readership. It's still pretty maxed out - self-publishing hasn't been that good to him. But at least here's a use he can put it to. He flips the book over, holds the card next to the publishing company name.

She puts a hand out like she's going to touch the book or the card, then pulls it back and says, "Where the fuck is my margarita right now?"

Dan isn't sure he hears much humor in her voice, so he waits.

"You're not shitting me. Oh my god." She's trembling, the driver's license forgotten in her hand as she looks at him. "I've been screwing Daniel fucking Holden for a year without even knowing it. Jesus."

She's about to start crying, he thinks. It hasn't occurred to him, but now it does, that she might be such a big fan of his writing that she won't be able to handle knowing him. No ... no, she's tougher and cooler than that. Just pull it together and bring things back down to Earth. In a stab at humor, he says, "Actually, the 'F' stands for 'Frederick.'"

She picks up the book and hits him with it, feels amazingly better for having done so, is about to hit him again, then stops and looks at the cover and says, "Wait. There's no 'F,' it's Daniel P. Holden."

"Yeah, but I didn't think saying the 'P' stands for 'Frederick' would be as funny."

She hits him again, but now she's laughing and collapsing back into her chair, giddy and dazed. "Fuck you. I bet the 'P' stands for 'Prick,' you asshole."

"It can definitely stand for that if you want it to," he replies. "And any time you want it to. And some other 'P' words too."

"Nasty," she says. "You nasty, nasty boy."

"That surprises you, after a whole year?"

Jenice just shakes her head and blinks at him a while. "Daniel P. Holden. Daniel P. Holden. Would you believe I've been in love with you since I was nineteen years old?"

"Sure, that's totally you," he says. "You've always got to go one bigger than me - I've only been in love with you about eleven and a half months."

Again, she feels her jaw try to drop. But this time she doesn't let it. "Did you just say that?"

Dan wrinkles his nose. "Yeah, I guess I did. Probably not the most romantic way to say it the first -"

Before he can finish, Jenice launches out of her chair and across the table, grabs his tie, yanks him forward to get her mouth on his, knocking over a sugar barrel and her water glass in the process. They spend what seems like half a Tejano song kissing before she comes back to her senses and lets him go - though they don't pull more than an inch away even after she releases his tie.

Nose to nose with him, she understands that he's real, that this is real, that everything she's ever wanted is here, near enough to grab, and hers to have. Even if this place had the best enchilada plate in the whole world, she would no longer be hungry.

Dan tries to figure out what the look on her wonderful face means and finds that he can't be sure - until a shrug of her smooth, dark shoulders offers her entire body to him, and she whispers, "You want some of this?"

He does his best to pour a yes out of his eyes and into her soul. She smiles and goes on: "Coz if you want some of this ... our apartment is right over there."

He kisses her again, then puts his lips to her ear and breathes, "Bitch, you are bad news."

She laughs, and now it's Jenice's laugh to him. Grins, and it's Jenice's grin. Says, in her sexiest growl, "You've only seen the start of it. Let's get out of here."

He throws a couple of bills on the table, and they take each other home.