dumped its content onto my bed, too: foundation, blush, lipstick, little jars of loose makeup and about fourteen makeup brushes of various sizes. The rest of it I didn’t recognize, which made me nervous. “Close your eyes,” she ordered again. I did. “Does he have a brother?”
“No,” I muttered, “he’s got a sister.” Wretched petite curvy redheaded Barbara. I could remember her name easily enough. It didn’t make sense that it’d taken numerous repetitions for me to remember Mark’s.
“That’ll do,” Phoebe said saucily enough as I opened my eyes. She nearly poked me with a brush and scowled. I closed my eyes again. “Where’d you meet him? How long’ve you been dating?”
“I just met him last night, Phoebe.”
“Ooh, first date. Good thing I’m here. What about Gary?”
My eyes popped open again. “What about him?”
“Does he know you’re seeing a younger man, too?”
“I’m not dating Gary! He’s seventy-three years old, Phoebe!”
“Uh-huh,” she said, full of polite disbelief. “Sure. So’s Sean Connery.”
I screwed up my face, feeling like words wanted to explode out and not knowing what I was going to say. “Anyway, he thinks I should go out with Mark. That’s practically the only reason I am.” Somehow that didn’t sound like it helped matters any.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s okay, because I’m going to get all the prurient details afterward. You’ll feel too guilty to hold out on me. Open your mouth.”
“I hate lipstick.”
“I didn’t ask. Open your mouth.”
I opened my mouth. A moment later Phoebe gave me a tissue to smack on, then pointed me toward the bathroom mirror. “Go on. Go look at yourself.”
I eyed her, then got up and went to look.
Even if the mirror hadn’t told me so, Mark’s expression when we came back out of the bedroom said everything that needed saying. The ridiculous little gold shirt had strings that criss-crossed through half a dozen loops from my shoulder blades to the small of my back, where the shirt stopped entirely. Phoebe’s makeup job gave my skin a startling warm golden glow. I’d dug a pair of three-inch strappy gold heels out of the closet, finally glad for the rare bout of shoe lust that had prompted me to buy them years ago. I’d never worn them. Mark did a double-take at my feet when he realized I stood as tall as he did, then developed a slow, astonished smile that made me self-conscious and pleased all at once. Phoebe looked insufferably smug.
“My plan,” she told Mark airily, “had been to get Joanne a social life, but she seems to be managing it on her own. I’ve got a new plan. Now Joanne helps me get a social life. She said you had a sister.” Her grin was bright, and Mark laughed.
“I do. Look, I didn’t mean to bust in on you two having a night out. Can I make it up somehow? You could come to dinner with us, Phoebe.”
“Absolutely not.” Phoebe waggled a finger at him. “But if you can get Joanne out to Contour in Pioneer Square for a few hours after dinner, I’ll call it even.”
“I can’t dance, Phoebe,” I protested. “I really can’t. And this is a fluke. If I need to help you get a social life, you’re a disaster.”
Phoebe turned the waggling finger on me. “I, personally, am coming off a very bad breakup, which you don’t know because we’ve never really hung out before. So, see, you’ll be good for me. It’s a whatchacallit, parasitic relationship.”
Mark and I said, “Symbiotic,” at the same time, and I lifted an eyebrow at him before turning back to Phoebe, curiosity getting the better of me. “When was the breakup?”
“I thought cops didn’t know words like
“I’ll try,” he promised. “Who said that?”
“Dave Barry. It was one of his life lessons. Right after ’Do not take a sleeping pill and a laxative on the same night.’ Now go.” Phoebe beamed at both of us. “See you guys later.”
I left the apartment with Mark, feeling somehow like I was walking half an inch in the air.
I’d hit the earth again by the time we went down five flights of stairs to get to my car. I hadn’t been on a date in so long I had absolutely no idea how to conduct myself on one, which didn’t go a long way toward creating the casual bantering atmosphere one tends to hope for on a first date. If that’s what this qualified as, anyway. I wasn’t sure, under the circumstances. Mark, however, was apparently much better at this sort of thing than I was, and put an appreciative hand on Petite’s roof as I unlocked her doors. “You did all the work on this yourself, huh? What year is she?”
The way to my heart was through my car. A blind man could see that. Morrison couldn’t, but a blind man could.
Morrison was really not the point here. I smiled at Mark and nodded. “Yeah. She’s a 1969 Boss 302. There were only about seventeen hundred built, and about half of them are automatics. Someday when I’ve got a lot more time and money I’m going to convert her to a manual. That’s my big dream for her.” Mark didn’t look glazed over yet, so I went on happily. “She was just a junker in somebody’s barn when I found her. They let me take her for the price of hauling her out of there. It’s been her and me ever since.”
“She’s beautiful.”
Mark was obviously a genius. I beamed and nattered on about my car all the way down to the restaurant. Unlike Morrison, Mark knew enough about cars to not embarrass himself, and unlike most men, he didn’t seem to feel it necessary to try to out-guy me on the topic. I noticed I’d been talking nonstop as we walked into the restaurant, and reined myself in with an effort and a surprisingly easy laugh. “You kind of found my Achilles’ heel. Get me started on cars and I can’t shut up.”
“Nah.” Mark waved his hand. “I like hearing what people are passionate about. You learn all kinds of things that way. Everybody’s got something they’re geeked about.”
“Geeked?” I laughed again. “I didn’t know
“Sure.” Mark actually held my chair for me as I sat down. What fascinating and bizarre behavior the courting male displayed. I wondered if he’d try ordering my dinner for me, too. “I’ve got this theory,” he said as he sat down. “Used to be that being a geek was a bad thing, like being a dork or a nerd, right?”
I put my elbows on the table and folded my fingers under my chin. “Sure.”
“Right.” He nodded. “But then computers got to be everyday appliances, people needed geeks, and now it’s pretty cool to be a geek. And I think the word has adapted. Now you can be a computer geek, a car geek, a cooking geek—”
“Those are called foodies,” I interrupted, smiling. Mark made a face at me and I laughed out loud again. “Sorry. I think I got that word from the Food Network.”
“You’re not sorry.” He didn’t look in the slightest bit upset, though, turning his face-making into a laugh of his own. “My point is if you’ve got a hobby or a job or a passion that you know a lot about, that other people don’t, you’re that kind of geek, and you get geeked about your topic.”
“So
His eyebrows quirked. “It shows?”
I made a loose fist and put it out, palm down. Mark, who knew a cue when he saw one, did the same and bonked his knuckles against mine. “Fellow English majors of the world, unite.”
“Bad spellers of the world,” Mark said, half under his breath, and together we said, “Untie!” Mark’s grin went so wide it looked fit to split his face. He put his menu aside—I hadn’t even noticed the waiter handing them to us —and said, “Know what really drives me insane? Misused quote marks on signs. ’Big “sale”’,” he said, complete with air quotes around “sale.” “’Price “reduction”’. ’Lasagna “special”’.”
“Oh, my God. Me, too.” I actually leaned forward and grabbed his hand in sympathy. He was too good to be true. Not only was he cute and willing to listen to me babble about Petite, but he had the same language issues I did. I wanted one of my very own.
