“I wouldn’t have thought that. I mean, why would you?”
“Right,” he said again, but this time the word seemed different. A little more up and down. A little less sure of itself. And when his eyes locked with hers she felt that goose-bumpy thing happen again—only this time it occurred lower down and more toward the middle.
A subject change was in order she felt. A nice, lighthearted subject change that somehow felt much less lighthearted once she’d gotten it out.
“It’s weird—I don’t even know your name.”
She wanted to kick herself as soon as she’d said it. Even in her limited experience of action movies, she knew it was the kind of thing the heroine said to Tom Cruise after he’d rescued her from a crashing helicopter.
She, on the other hand, had fallen over gardening equipment.
“I mean, I—”
“It’s Tyler. Vandervoort—but usually people just call me Van.”
She should have known he’d have a cool name. Not like Eve, all ready to do some stuff in the Bible with a stick in the mud called Adam and God breathing down her neck all the time.
He hadn’t even been saddled with a terrible first name, like Barry or George or Phil. He had Tyler, and he had a cool nickname, and it made her want to tease, for once.
“Not Voort then?” she asked, but couldn’t believe she’d actually done it a second later. The urge to apologize rose immediately, like an old friend—but then she saw his face. Surprised, over halfway to smiling, that rueful look again.
He wasn’t going to make her pay for it. He wasn’t at all.
“Ha ha. Very funny.”
“Hey—it’s better than my surname. Bennett. Might as well be Smith.”
He glanced down at the iPod he’d started turning over and over in his hands. The ones she couldn’t stop looking at, no matter how hard she tried.
“Evie’s pretty,” he said, and she immediately had to think about something other than those words. They just sounded far too much like he’d told her she was pretty, and nothing could make that idea sensible or sane.
She pointed to the only other noticeable object around them. Took the heat off herself, and her addled mind.
“What are you listening to?”
To his credit, he didn’t draw attention to what she’d just obviously done. He just answered, cool and casual.
“Portishead.”
Of course, she had absolutely no idea who or what that was. He could have said “bacon tastes like cheese” and it would have made the same amount of sense to her.
“Oh.”
“You like them?”
Honesty was best, she felt.
“I’ve never heard of them—but not because they’re not great, or anything. I mean, I’m sure they are. It’s just that, you know. I’ve not heard of a lot of bands.”
“There must be some music you like.”
She noticed he omitted the “you’re allowed to listen to”, and thanked him silently for it. It had been implied in her words, and was definitely implied in his, but no one had to come out and say it.
“I don’t even have a CD player,” she said, as carefully as she could. Something like a smile on her lips—though one that didn’t meet her eyes.
“You want me to make you a playlist?”
She hesitated then. There were a lot of things he could have meant, after all.
“I…uh…”
“I’ll make you a playlist,” he said, without waiting for her to fumble toward words that were probably all wrong anyway. She’d thought he meant making her a mix tape, or something like it, and now here he was messing around with the little sliver of metal in his hands.
“You want moody or uplifting?”
She answered without even thinking about it.
“Both.”
“Yeah—this one’s perfect. You’ll like this one,” he said, which just made her wonder how he knew. They’d only spoken a couple of times, and both conversations had been fraught with missteps and blunders and lots of hedging.
But the thing of it was…she had faith that he did. He understood, and the thought made her greedy for whatever songs he finally settled on.
“Are you going to…” she started, but he’d already finished with the iPod before she’d even gotten the words out. In answer to the question she hadn’t quite asked—Are you going to actually let me have that thing?—he passed it to her.
“Here,” he said. Just like that.
“I can’t borrow this. I can’t…I don’t even know what to do with it. I’ll break it.”
He leaned over the fence. Showed her the little wheel in the center and the buttons that made the screen light up.