“What should I do?” I ask. “How should I sit?”
“Sit however you want. But try not to move too much,” he adds with a smile.
There’s nothing like being openly stared at by an attractive member of the opposite sex to make me feel as if all of my limbs were in the wrong place. I search for a distraction. “So…what’s the story behind your sticker?”
Josh flips over the pad, expecting something to have appeared.
“The one on your sketchbook. The American WELCOME one.”
“Oh.” He snorts. “There’s no story. My dad had a huge stack of them in his office, and I just took one. There were a lot of assholes on Capitol Hill ragging on Mexican immigration that week, so I drew the word I wished they were talking about instead. But it wasn’t an original idea. I saw an Australian sticker like it once.”
“You know what I like about you?” I ask, after a few minutes.
“My dynamite moves on the dance floor.”
“You’ve crafted this bored veneer, but you’re always giving yourself away in moments like that. In the moments that really matter.”
“I don’t care about anything,” he says. “But I care about you.”
“Nope. You have a mushy heart, Joshua Wasserstein. I can see it.”
He smiles to himself and keeps drawing. There’s a fragrant gust of wind, and the first leaves of the season rain down upon us. A nip pierces the air. I watch the tiny boy in the arena dart between his father’s legs and listen to the faint crunch of gravel as an elderly couple walks the footpath behind us. The sun grows lower on the horizon. There’s a new stillness, and I realize that Josh has stopped working.
He’s staring at me. Spellbound.
“What is it?” I’m afraid to move. “What’s wrong?”
“I’ve never seen the sun shine directly through your hair before.”
“Oh.” I glance down at the glowing curtain. “It never looks the same, does it? Inside, it’s auburn. Outside, it’s more of a red.”
“No.” Josh reaches out. He softly touches one of the waves. “Red isn’t the right word. It’s not auburn or orange or copper or bronze. It’s fire. It’s like being mesmerized by the flames of a burning building. I can’t look away.”
I’ve blushed far less around him lately, but – at this – my cheeks warm.
“And that,” he says, as I look down at my lap. “That rosy blush. And your rose-scented perfume. God, it drives me mad.”
I lift my eyes in surprise. “You’ve noticed? I don’t wear much.”
“Trust me. You wear exactly the right amount.”
“You smell like tangerines.” I say it before I can take it back.
“Satsuma.” He pauses. “You have a good nose.”
“Yours is better. At least, the shape of it is.”
“My nose is huge.” He laughs, and it makes his throat bob. “Yours is like a bunny rabbit’s. What the hell are you talking about?”
I laugh, too. “It’s not huge. But it is interesting.”
“Interesting.” He raises a teasing eyebrow.
I smile. “Yes.”
Josh smiles back. His ink-stained fingers thread through my hair, and he leans in towards my lips. But then he pauses to smell my neck. A shiver runs through me. He kisses my neck softly and slowly, and my eyes close.
I want him to kiss me there for ever. But he pulls back, languid, letting his fingers fall back out gently through my hair. He smiles at me again. “Roses,” he says.
My head and heart are in full swoon. “Thank you. And thanks for saying such nice things about my hair,” I add. “Not everyone is that nice.”
“Who wouldn’t say nice things about it?”
“Ha-ha,” I say.
But he appears to be genuinely confused.
“Really?” I take a deep breath. “Well, okay. When I was little? Every grandmother would stop me on the street to tell me how much I looked like one of her grandchildren. ‘She has hair just like yours,’ they’d always say. ‘Except hers is more orange’ or ‘hers is more auburn’. It was so uncomfortable, especially for someone as shy as me. Hattie’s the only one who ever talked back. ‘Then it’s not just like mine, is it?’ she’d say.”
Josh laughs.
“And when a redhead hits puberty? You become this magnet for gross men. A month doesn’t pass without one telling me that I must be good in bed because all redheads are sex fiends, or I must be a bitch because all redheads have fiery tempers. Or they’ll tell me that they only date redheads, or that they never date redheads, because we’re all ugly.”