Every part of me is screaming no no no no! While every part of me is simultaneously screaming yes yes yes!!! are you kidding? of course I will!
Again, I have to pause to let my thoughts catch up with my speech. And when they do, I show him that I’ve got no poker face at all. All I’ve got is a wide grin.
“If you’re free tonight, you could pick me up at seven,” I reply, and then his smile matches mine, watt for watt.
LEVI
I can’t remember the last time I was nervous before a date. In fact, I can’t remember if I’ve ever been nervous before a date. But as I stare into the mirror in my bathroom, trying for third time to tie my tie, I realize that this is what it’s like to really feel.
To actually give a shit about what happens in your own life.
“Get it together, Levi,” I mutter at myself in the mirror.
“Seriously, dude, you’re acting a little bit insane.”
I glance up and see Logan in the mirror, leaning in the doorway of the bathroom. I rarely lock my apartment door, and since I rarely have visitors, Logan and Julia have taken to wandering in and out as they please when they’re working in the evenings.
“Don’t you people knock?” I ask.
“Family doesn’t knock,” he retorts. He nods to my tie. “Having trouble there?”
“Where are you two going, anyway?” Julia asks, suddenly appearing behind her husband.
“Sportello,” I reply, naming my favorite Italian restaurant in Fort Point.
“In that case, ditch the tie. Sportello isn’t that fancy, and neither are you anymore.” Julia reaches for the end of the tie and gives it a yank, sending it whipping off my neck and pooling in a puddle on the floor.
I huff out a sigh, trying to release the tension that’s wound inside me like a spring. It’s no use.
“Julia, he looks terrified,” Logan says.
“He does,” she nods. “It’s sweet, isn’t it?”
“You better put that ring in your pocket for dessert,” Logan says with a wink.
“You two shut up,” I say, turning around to face the firing squad. “I’m not fucking this up again. We’re taking it slow, ok?”
“Sure thing, boss,” Logan says with a little mini-salute. “Best of luck to ya.”
“He doesn’t need luck,” Julie replies, the two of them now focused on each other as they wrap their arms around one another’s waists, pulling each other close. “He’s got love.”
“No sex in my house,” I say as I roll my eyes at the two of them. I squeeze past them through the door to grab my coat. I’ve got twenty minutes to get to the address Cadence gave me, an apartment deep in Somerville. “You two can let yourselves out.”
Her new apartment is just outside of union Square, a shabby neighborhood on the verge of getting cool. She lives on the top floor of a rickety triple-decker that’s been chopped up into way too many apartments. She told me to text her when I arrived, but I climb out of my car and head up onto the porch to ring the buzzer.
“I’ll be ready in a sec,” she calls through the ancient, crackly speaker. “Come on up.”
The door gives a low, electronic buzz, and I begin my climb up a dim, narrow wooden staircase to the top floor. With the dingy walls and the squeaky stairs, this place looks like it’s been staged for crime scene photos. Gruesome ones.
Cadence’s apartment is one of two doors at the top of the landing. I knock on number six, which she noted was hers. The door flings open, and as soon as she opens it, she’s darting across the floor back towards the bathroom. “Just one second!” she calls as she disappears behind a closed door. It gives me a moment to look around her place, which is a tiny studio with one bay window at the end, a narrow galley kitchen at the other. She’s got a bed, a shabby armchair, and a dinged coffee table that looks like it was picked up on the side of the road. In the corner by the window stands a small easel, a canvas rested on it and a palette of paints on the floor next to it. The canvas bears the image of a red line train as it whizzes across the Longfellow Bridge towards Cambridge.
Just behind the canvas I notice the blinds on one of the windows are detached and hanging at an angle. After standing there for a full minute, I can no longer take it, so I cross the floor and reach to fix it.
“Ugh, thank you. I’ve been meaning to fix that, but I’m too short, and I just haven’t had the get-up-and-go to slide my coffee table across the floor to stand on it,” she says. I turn and see that she’s dressed in a pair of dark wash skinny jeans, brown boots, and a soft gray sweater that hangs off one delicate shoulder. If this were four months ago, I’d cross the floor and gather her in my arms, planting kisses along that line from her shoulder, up her neck, and to the spot she loves behind her ear. Just the thought of it makes me hard, and I shift and shake my head to erase the image. This is, after all, a first date.