There ensued the kind of relieved silence that often followed ripping off a Band-Aid fast.
“Like to keep your options open, huh?” She sounded chirpy and insincere and even a little mean in her own ears.
He looked startled and maybe even ever-so-faintly offended. “No.”
Eden sighed.
She felt like the old rototiller her dad would whip out every spring in order to get the garden ready. It would cough and sputter and shudder when he tried to start it, then speed away from him, then abruptly stall, nearly sending him ass over teakettle.
Her flirting carburetor was clogged.
“Sorry,” she said. Glumly. “I was just... saying things.”
He laughed. “Boy, this is some scintillating banter, Harwood.”
“Hey!” she said with feigned indignation. “I haven’t learned to ‘weaponize’ my ‘strengths’ the way you have.” She heartily air-quoted the words.
“But I was including myself in my own sarcasm!”
“Courtly of you, but... well, let’s put it this way. If PTA moms are cobras in baskets, then you’re the guy with the flute.”
“I swear to God, it’s different when it’s someone who I... Someone who’s... I mean, when I...”
He stopped.
Took a breath.
Exhaled, with a sort of resignation, and the exhale turned into a short laugh.
And something like lovely spangles raced along her skin. A fierce sort of tenderness that robbed her of breath.
“Okay, so youcando awkward with the best of them,” she teased gently.
He quirked his mouth wryly.
Honestly, had sheeverknown how to talk to a man when she wasn’t trying to sell him flowers? It seemed like a skill belonging to the distant past. It felt awkward. Like that time she’d seen her grandmother attempt to break-dance.
“Um, you ever look at those dating apps?” he asked, after another of their now patented Awkward Silences™.
“You know...” she said, haltingly. “I looked at Tinder, but only once. I just wanted to tell all those boys to put their shirts back on, for God’s sake. Do they really think that’s what a woman is looking for? I look at every girl making a kissy duck face and I think, what if that weremydaughter? I’m barely thirty, and I see everything through a mom filter now. And... maybe an experience filter. It’s just... so muchposturing. It seems dishonest and needlessly difficult. It’s hard to conceive at this point in my life of having time for that sort of thing. I want to tell them, c’mon, cut to the chase, kids.”
She felt like she’d said too much, but he listened to this with the sort of somber, flattering intensity one listened to his commanding officer’s orders.
“Ah. So you’re saying I should keep my shirt on in my photos if I give Tinder a shot?”
“For you, I’d make an exception.”
Those words had just popped out, special delivery straight from her id, utterly, frighteningly sincere.
It shocked both of them into momentary speechlessness.
And he smiled.
It started with one corner of his mouth. And then it spread to the other. Slowly, the way a fire took over a coal. Until it was a wicked little curve. Above it his eyes kindled in a way that ought to come with a mature content warning attached.
Hoooollyshit, was that ever sexy.
She wasn’t viewingthatthrough a mom filter.