Unspoken(48)

“I’m paying for my own meal,” I told him after we had both placed our orders and moved to the cash register with our trays. He gave me a slightly amused glance and shook his head.

“I asked. I pay.” He leaned past me and handed his debit card to the cashier. “You ask. You pay. But thanks for offering.”

Short of causing a scene, there was nothing to do but accept the free dinner. The cashier goggled at Bo’s tray, laden with three bowls of chili and two bottles of milk. You’d think he was working hard labor, given the amount of food he planned to put away.

“It’s difficult for the male to navigate the waters,” Bo complained as we sat down. “Do I hold the door open and stand until you’re seated?”

“Why not just treat women like you’d treat a guy? You don’t ever hold a door open for a pal, do you?”

Bo contemplated this for a moment, untwisting the top of one milk bottle. “I have, but generally my momma taught me that you stand when a woman enters a room, you open her door, you carry her bags. I’d have wrestled the tray away from you if I’d thought I could’ve gotten away with it.”

“Good thing you didn’t try. I’d have stabbed you with a fork.”

“This is why I like you, AnnMarie. You speak the same violent language.” Bo gave a shout of laughter, drawing the eyes of the patrons nearby. I saw a couple of older ladies’ eyes linger on Bo’s expressive face. I wouldn’t blame them if they were thinking naughty thoughts about him. Bo looked like a walking sex machine. He had large hands and muscular arms that looked like they could hold you up against the wall, if you liked that sort of thing.

His whole face was engaged when he talked. That damn indent on the left side of his mouth deepened when he laughed and I itched to press my finger against it. I wondered if you hit the right place, you could jack into that smile and capture the owner of it. But for all his easy smiles, sometimes his blue eyes would flatten out and the ocean there would look stormy and dangerous. Those moments were transitory, but they were part of the package that mystified and intrigued me.

“How old are you, Bo?” I asked, suddenly realizing how little I knew about Bo outside of class.

“Twenty-three,” he said. “You?”

“Twenty,” I replied. “Where’re you from?”

“Is this twenty questions?” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Asking where he was from was out-of-bounds? I raised my eyebrows at him. He sighed. “Little Oak, Texas. If we’re playing the get-to-know-you game, I can hurry it along so we can get to the good stuff. I’m twenty-three, born August fifteenth, of Beauregard the Second and Sarah Beth Randolph. I’m an only child and said to be a sore trial to my momma. Your turn.”

I twisted my lips up on the side and contemplated asking another question, but Bo shook his spoon at me. “Don’t be a welsher.”

“I never agreed to anything,” I protested.

“It was implicit, now go.”

“Fine,” I huffed with mock indignation. “I’m twenty, only child, born June tenth, of Roger Price and Margaret West.”

“Your parents divorced?” Bo asked.

“No,” I said with finality. I didn’t want to talk about Roger and my mom’s relationship.

Bo nodded at me and didn’t press, for which I was grateful.

“What else do you want to know?” Bo asked. He leaned forward. “You can ask me anything.”

“Would you rather fight one hundred ducks or one horse-sized duck?” I asked, determined to keep our conversational topics as light and impersonal as possible.

“One horse-sized duck. He might be big, but he’d be ungainly. A hundred small cuts could take you down better than one large one,” Bo answered promptly.

Didn’t I know it. It wasn’t one big scene that had driven me into off-campus exile. It was the culmination of weeks’ worth of insults, both whispered and baldly stated. Mostly it was the general feeling that I wasn’t safe half the time when I went out after dark, as if I had some sign saying “open, all hours” on my back.

“How come you aren’t on campus much? Ellie says you’re a campus vampire.”

“Meaning do I drain the blood of coeds? Because that only happened once and it was totally an accident,” Bo quipped.

“You drank the blood of some chick even by accident? Does Health Services treat for that?” I gaped at him.

“I’m not sure what Health Services offers and I didn’t realize I drank her blood. I said it was an accident.”

“I can’t keep up.” I shook my head in disbelief. “You really drank some girl’s blood?”