And closer to him.
Funny how he hadn’t known her before that spring but the idea of her being away from him made a knot form in his stomach he didn’t know how to get rid of.
“That makes me really sad,” she commented, steering them back to the subject at hand. “I lived in Chicago, grew up here, and I still go to my favorite places at least once a year.”
“Like what?”
“The Lincoln Park Zoo, for one. The most fun you can have in Chicago for free.” Emmy nodded at her own statement, making him believe it though he hadn’t tried to argue. “Shedd Aquarium, obviously. And the Natural History Museum. Sometimes I’ll walk the riverfront from Navy Pier in the morning and end up at the museum. You can kill an entire day in Chicago that way.”
“What if we didn’t have a day?” Tucker took a swig off his beer, trying to pretend he hadn’t said we. “What if…someone only had an hour or two?”
She fiddled with the label on her bottle, hazel eyes gazing thoughtfully into the air. “Let me get back to you.”
The bartender returned and gave them an expectant stare.
“Do you trust me?” Emmy asked Tucker.
“I do.”
She looked back at the bartender. “We’ll have the small deep-dish, extra cheese, with Canadian bacon, ground beef, garlic and banana peppers.”
The man nodded and plopped a caddy on the bar in front of them with napkins, dried parmesan and a container of hot pepper flakes.
“Banana peppers?” Tucker asked.
“You said you trusted me.”
“I did. I do.”
“Then believe me. You’ll love this.”
“And here I thought you were just ordering the garlic to keep me from trying to kiss you.”
Emmy choked on her beer. Tucker was starting to see a trend of him attempting to murder her with his own poor choice of words.
“Sorry,” he said quickly, handing her a stack of napkins.
Emmy wiped a small wet spot of beer off her chin and checked the front of her shirt to see if she’d missed any. “You said this was just dinner.” Her voice was soft and low. It wasn’t accusatory, but he still felt guilty.
“It is just dinner.”
“Can you be my friend, Tucker?” Now she looked up from her shirt and met his gaze directly. He didn’t know how to interpret what he saw there.
“I don’t know.”
On the TVs the Cubs were playing poorly, and the crowd got noisier, alternating between cussing out the umpires for questionable calls and then damning their own team for losing. Baseball fans were like older siblings: it was totally fine for them to insult their kid brothers, but if you did anything to hurt them, you were in for a beating.
Only a Cubs fan could badmouth the Cubs. It was true of every team, but Tucker was seeing it in its truest form here.
He and Emmy sat in silence, a new awkwardness between them, and watched the game while they waited for their pizza. She seemed lost to her own thoughts, and he didn’t know if he was welcome to intrude, so he stayed quiet and waited for her to speak first.
Between the third and fourth inning their food arrived, and Emmy spoke to him at last.
“You’re going to be a problem for me, aren’t you, Thirteen?” She wasn’t looking at him, too busy cutting their pizza and divvying it up onto small white plates. The insides were steaming hot and full of gooey cheese, and Tucker didn’t think he could remember a pizza ever smelling as delicious as this one.
“That depends on you.”
“Oh?” She shoved his plate towards him and sat sideways on her barstool, staring at him.
“Problem has a negative connotation, don’t you think?”
“Sure.”
“I don’t want to be something you view negatively.” He pinched a thread of melted cheese and pulled it free of his pizza slice, popping it in his mouth while she watched him. “I don’t have to be a problem.”
Emmy rested her chin on her hand and sighed. “I like you.”
“You know I like you too.”
“So you see where my problem is.”
“No.” He gave his head a shake. “Your problem isn’t me. Your problem is somewhere else.”
She chewed on her lip, prodding her hot pizza with a fork. “You asked me where to go if we only had a few hours.”
His heart hammered, and blood began to circulate rapidly below his waist. She could have said she wanted to fuck him right then and there, and her choice of words wouldn’t have sounded any more erotic.
“Yes.”
“I think I know the place.”
Emmy needed to escape her own head, where thoughts were colliding and buzzing around like fat confused bees on a hot summer day. She needed to understand better what it was she wanted from Tucker before she went and did something stupid like calling it quits on a perfectly amiable four-year relationship.