“Great.” He yawns and sits up, but doesn’t push off the blankets. “Last night was amazing.”
“You always say that.”
“It always is.”
Then why don’t you want me,
I want to ask. I meet his eyes. His inky hair is sticking up in places. I resist the urge to jump back in bed and smooth it down, since I know where that will lead.
“I should probably get home,” I say instead.
“Are you sure? I don’t have to work until three. I could take you out to breakfast.”
“David, that’s not—”
“Not what?”
How does he not get it? He’s the one who said he doesn’t do girlfriends. He’s the one who made it clear we are not a couple, just people who sleep together sometimes. So why does he keep trying to act like we’re a couple?
“Not necessary.”
“Hannah.”
“I’ll see you, okay?”
I leave before he can say anything else.
Katy must still be asleep because the house is quiet. I shut the front door of Huan residence and walk quickly to the nearest bus stop.
I text Zach and make plans for that afternoon. The best way to break my David habit is to find a real boyfriend. At the very least, I can attempt to date other people.
Zach and I both arrive in front of Coffee Harbor at the same time, five minutes earlier than agreed. He’s in jeans and a button up shirt, but wearing his leather jacket over it. He put silver rings in his ears rather than the studs. I admit, the piercings are growing on me. Normally I’m not a huge fan but on him they’re extremely sexy.
He’s holding two separate bouquets of flowers.
“Rob a florist?” I ask.
“You’re supposed to say, ‘you look dashing today.’” He offers me that crooked smile that makes his lip ring stick out.
“I thought that was the guy’s line.”
“How antiquated of you. But you also look stunning.” He winks.
I felt like a bit of mess when I left the house. Trish had me try on five different homemade skirts before I decided to go with jeans. I compromised by agreeing to wear a blue blouse she made with ruffles on the neckline. The way Zach looks at me, though, makes me feel like a million dollars. Like someone who deserves a lot of flowers.
He thrusts one of two large bouquets at me. It’s spring flowers with yellow daffodils, white tulips, and tiny pink flowers wrapped in green paper. “Those are apology flowers for showing up at your work place like a stalker yesterday.”
I laugh. “Apology accepted.”
“And these,” he hands me the other bouquet, one of red and white roses, “are date flowers.”
“Thank you. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I find the best things in life aren’t obligatory.”
I run inside Coffee Harbor and put both bouquets in one of the plastic tubs our coffee arrives in. It’s rinsed out and I figure any residual caffeine can only help (I don’t know much about flowers but when does caffeine hurt?).
Zach and I walk to the aquarium. He tells me about his job working part-time security for a large office park. “They pay me to sit in one place and call the real cops if anything actually happens.”
“Does it?”
“Never,” he says, with a look of disappointment. He’s so expressive. David, despite being the lead singer of a rock band, is fairly quiet and usually wears one of three expressions: neutral, happy, or horny. I’m a fan of all three but it’s hard to tell what he’s thinking. With Zach, it’s like he can’t help but broadcast his feelings all over his face. It makes a nice change.
We walk to the aquarium and Zach buys our passes before I can protest. “I’ll buy the drinks after.”
“So I haven’t scared you off yet. Excellent.” He steeples his fingers together and grins.
“’Yet’ being the operative word.”
Zach doesn’t pause to study the signs or the map. He heads straight for the otters. We squeeze in between other onlookers and watch the otters carry toy balls around and float on their backs. They’re adorable and it’s hard to tear myself away, but eventually we wander inside to see the tanks filled with colorful fish and tiny seahorses.
“So what’s with the accent?”
“You don’t find it irresistible?”
“You know what I mean.” I elbow him in the side. He feigns a wound and claps his hands over his side. “Have you been here long? Where are you from? Why’d you leave?”
“My American cousin needed a roommate, and I needed to get away from things.”
We reach a tank filled with jellyfish. They swim up, propelling themselves with their stringy limbs, and then let themselves sink. It’s mesmerizing, a living lava lamp. Zach gently tugs my arm and takes me into the next room. One whole wall and the ceiling are made of glass. Large fish and sharks swim around above us.
“I can’t believe I’ve never been here,” I say.
“You haven’t? And you call yourself an artist.”
“You called me that. And what’s marine life got to do with art?”
“Everything has to do with art. That’s the thing about art.” He watches a large tuna swim by and then gives me a side-long glance. “Want to see the seals?”
“They have seals?”
He grins and takes my hand. His hand is warm, even the metallic rings. We walk through the dark hallways back outdoors, where the large seal tanks are. A chain link fence separates this part of the aquarium from Puget Sound and wooden piers that lead to the open water. I wonder how the seals feel, being able to see the world just out of their reach. But the seals seem happy. One of them swims around while another sleeps on a rock.
After we walk through the whole aquarium one more time, stopping at the little tanks we missed, we head outside. It’s bright but the sky is Seattle-gray and the air smells like rain. The ground is wet. We probably missed a light sprinkle.
We head a few blocks over to a bar inside a restaurant on the pier. I order a cosmopolitan and show the bartender my ID. Zach orders a beer.
“I had fun.” I sip the drink. It’s fruity but there’s no missing the alcohol like in Brian’s pina coladas. “I mean, I’m still having fun. This is fun.”
“How do you usually spend your days off?”
“Trying to dig my television out from beneath a mountain of fabric so I can be lazy and watch something brainless.” I explain about Trish and her fashion design ambitions. I tug on my blouse. “She made this.”
Zach looks down and admires the shirt, or maybe my cleavage which the blouse does nice things for. “She’s got talent. What about you? You design stuff right?”
“Only for the band and that doesn’t count.”
“Why not?” He flicks his lip ring with his tongue which should not be sexy but it sort of is.
“Because. It’s not like they pay me.”
“They should. They make money at their gigs, right?”
“I guess. I never really thought about it.”
“Have they even offered?”
“No, but…” I trail off, suddenly uncomfortable. This is dangerously close to talking about David, and that’s a subject I’d rather avoid. “I don’t mind.”
“Sorry.” Zach rubs the back of his neck and lets his hand drop. “My mum was a musician and people were always trying to get her to work for free. It’s sort of a touchy subject. What you do for your friends is sweet.” He leans forward and spins his pint of beer around. “And none of my business.”
“It’s nice that you care,” I tell him. I don’t miss that he spoke about his mom in the past tense but it’s the wrong time to bring it up, so I don’t ask.
I excuse myself to the ladies’ room. When I return, I notice his beer is still completely full. “Is your drink okay?”
“Oh, yeah, it’s fine,” he says, but he runs his tongue over his lip ring and I can tell he’s lying.
“You haven’t touched it.”
“Yeah, well,” he gives me the same sheepish look he did when he showed up at my work, “the thing is, I don’t actually drink.”
I gape at him, not sure whether there’s a joke on me and what the punch line could be. “Then why did we come here?”
He shrugs. “I didn’t want the date to end.”
“We could have gotten ice cream or something. I just assumed.” I think back to the bar two nights’ ago. “Hold up. You were drinking at the show.”
“I was holding a beer. Key difference.”
“Why not just order a Coke?”
He shifts on the barstool. I’m about to apologize when he speaks, “If I’m holding a beer, no one asks what I’m drinking or why I’m not drinking or if I need a drink. It saves me the trouble of having to explain or endure people trying to push it on me. Is that weird? It’s weird.”
“It’s not weird.” I wave the bartender over and get the check, putting down cash for the drinks including tip. “Let’s go get some ice cream.”
There’s an ice cream place a block down. Zach orders a double scoop of chocolate and strawberry and I get mint chocolate chip. He insists on paying. It’s a little chilly for a stroll, so we go inside of the one pier’s buildings and find a bench. I tell him about art school, how I got a scholarship for the first year and when it ended, I didn’t want to take out the loans necessary to continue, so I got a job instead. When we finish, we walk outside. The sun has poked out from behind the clouds and the air has warmed.
“Thanks for everything,” I say.
“I really like you,” Zach says and then turns away. “Sorry. I feel like I’m writing the book of how to be a creep over here.”
“I really like you, too,” I tell him.
We stand there awkwardly. He leans in and pecks me on the cheek. “So I’ll see you again?”
“Absolutely. I’d love that.”
He beams. “Me too.”
“I really wish she’d go home,” Katy says, pointing the blonde on the television screen with curly hair.
Katy, Alice, and I sitting in the living room of her house watching one of those dating shows where fifteen woman or men compete for the love of one woman or man. In this case, it’s one guy with woman vying for his attention. It’s ridiculous. Strangers profess deep love for someone they hardly know and fight with each other for a chance to bask in his presence. No matter how much my incurable crush on David Huan persists, I can’t imagine inflicting this kind of misery on myself. Surely most people go on these shows to be on television, not to find love.
The show cuts to commercial.
“Hey, how was your date?” Alice asks. “You went on one the other day, right?
Katy’s carefully studies the mushrooms on her plate that she picked off the pizza.
“Yeah,” I say.
I do not want to be talking about my date in David’s house when he could walk in the door any second. It makes me feel skeezy, like one of the contestants on the show. Like I’m cheating. Which I’m not. And I definitely don’t want to talk about it with Katy, who’s not exactly thrilled I slept with her brother—again—and then went out with another guy. She claims to understand David’s refusal to commit but it’s obvious she keeps expecting him to change his party line.
“Well, how was it?”
Alice doesn’t know there’s a problem, bless her.
“Good,” I say. I pick up my plate and eat another bite of pizza. It’s my third slice and I shouldn’t have taken it, because my stomach is bursting at the seams full, but it’s from the gourmet pizza place that doesn’t deliver to my neighborhood and I can’t stop.
“Just good? What’s the guy like?”
Zach is handsome, attractive, funny. He has a job. He likes art and marine mammals. He bought me flowers, which David has never done. He makes facial piercings and guy liner impossibly hot. But while I’d love to do very bad things with him, I don’t get the little flutter in my stomach I get whenever David walks into a room.
But I can’t say that. I shrug and eat more pizza. If I’m chewing I can’t talk.
“We don’t really discuss date details,” Katy says, getting up from the couch and heading into the kitchen to put her plate away.
“We’re watching a dating show,” Alice points out as she goes.
“It’s complicated,” I say.
Alice chews her lip for a second. She leans in to me and whispers, “Did you, like, date Katy once or something?”
“No.” Alice looks expectant. “Her brother. But we didn’t really date. Just hooked up.”
“Ah.” Alice sits back, pulling her striped socking covered legs up onto the sofa. “Got it.”
I don’t know if she really does, but the show comes back on. The three of us snark about the fake dates on screen and stop talking about my love life. When it ends, Alice helps us clean up.
She’s on her way out the front door when it swings open and David stumbles in. Literally stumbles and nearly falls, clearly drunk. He bumps into Alice, who helps him right himself. “Whoa, partner.” He giggles. David never giggles. He must be wasted.
She makes sure he can stand, and then she waves at us, winking at me. I don’t like that wink but David’s losing his fight with gravity, so I grab him.
“Had a little too much, huh?” I ask.
“You wouldn’t believe this drink,” he slurs.
“Oh, I believe it. I’m seeing the evidence of it right now.”
Katy laughs and shakes her head, but doesn’t get off the sofa to help.
“Come on, partner,” I mimic Alice’s tone on the last word. “Let’s get you somewhere you can’t hurt yourself.”