He winked. “I’m an optimist. A prepared one at that.”
I narrowed my eyes and glared at him as he headed to the front door and outside to his car. Was it normal to carry beer around in the trunk of your car? What did he do with it? Was it provisions in case his tire blew out and he was stranded at the side of the road?
Did he have an entire emergency kit in there?
I mean, I did, but there wasn’t alcohol. I had enough canned and dried food to survive a zombie apocalypse, though, so there was that.
I could also keep a football team in Gatorade that I switched out regularly.
Look, working in a library, you read a lot of books. Some of those are dystopian.
Also, Netflix.
Preston joined me back in the kitchen and held up a six-pack of beer. “See? Emergency stash.”
“Is that something you always keep in your car? Next to a flashlight and a radio?”
“You have a flashlight and a radio in your car?”
I paused. “No.”
I totally did.
“You do, don’t you?” Preston pulled one can out from the rings and popped the top. “You have an entire emergency kit.”
“You never know when you’re going to get stranded in the dark, in a place with no cell signal, and no civilization for miles. Also, there might be zombies.”
“Do you ever drive to places without cell signal and no civilization?”
“Of course not. I might get lost, though.”
“You could just use GPS.”
“I could get carjacked.”
“They’d spend five minutes with you and run away.” He leaned back against the counter. “All you’d have to do is talk to him about your randy raccoons and hope he isn’t a wildlife enthusiast.”
“If he were, I’d invite him over to see them.” I sniffed and put down my glass. “He’d probably appreciate it.”
“And then burgle you while you pee,” he finished dryly. “And to finally answer your question, no, I don’t always keep beer in my car. I ran by the store during our break earlier and bought some, just in case.”
“You can only drink two, or you can’t drive home.”
His response was to wiggle his eyebrows at me.
“I don’t sleep with people on the second date,” I said firmly. I hadn’t slept with anyone in a while, actually, but that wasn’t the point here. “You can sleep in my spare room, and I’m locking my bedroom door.”
Preston held up his hands. “I’m a gentleman, Halley.”
“Has the gentleman ordered pizza yet?”
“Wow. You are a hard woman to please.”
“Not really. Wine, yoga pants, raccoons, books… I’m fairly simple.”
“Sure.” His tone said he did not believe me. At all. “Pizza?”
“Pepperoni, please. With a cheese-stuffed crust.”
“Fancy,” he muttered. “One pepperoni with a cheese-stuffed crust and one Hawaiian.”
I froze. “You eat pineapple on your pizza?”
He paused, his finger hovering over his phone screen. “Oh, no. You’re a pineapple denier.”
I gasped. “You’re a pineapple warrior!”
“That’s not even a thing!”
“Yes! It is! It’s like those people who march the streets for what they believe in, except yours is pineapple on pizza!” I picked up my glass and shook my head. “This is a disaster. I can’t date someone who eats pineapple on pizza.”
I went out to the back porch. It was still too early for the raccoons, he was right, but it wasn’t for me to sit on the swing and drink wine.
And argue the toss about the atrocity of pineapple on pizza.
“There’s nothing wrong with pineapple on pizza.” Preston joined me, beer in hand, and sat on the other side of the swing.
“There’s nothing right with it.” I shifted so that one of my legs was on the swing. “Preston, pineapple is a fruit.”
“Shut up. It’s fucking not, is it?”
“I don’t think I like your attitude.”
“I don’t think I like your attitude,” he shot back. “Pineapple on pizza is the best thing ever.”
“Fruit does not belong on a pizza!” My voice was slightly shrill at the end. “Fruit is healthy. I’m not eating pizza to be healthy. You wouldn’t put strawberries or banana on a cheese pizza, so why is pineapple okay?”
“It just… is. I don’t know. Ask the Hawaiians!”
“Actually, fun fact, the Hawaiians didn’t create it.”
Preston frowned, the lines in his forehead becoming deep furrows. “Really? Then why is it called the Hawaiian?”
“There’s some Greek Canadian guy who claims he created the ham and pineapple pizza. I think his name is Sam something. He called it the Hawaiian after the name of the pineapple he used.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Well, French fries weren’t created by the French, either. They came from Belgium.”
“How the fuck do you know this random shit?”
I sipped my wine. “I’m a librarian. There’s an encyclopedia of random shit up here.” I tapped my temple with two fingers. “You overhear things. That was how I learned about the Hawaiian pizza. I heard two high school kids arguing over it.”
“Who won?”
“Nobody. They did a Twitter poll, and it was fifty-fifty. I kicked them out after finding them making out in the paleontology section.”
“Isn’t that the designated make-out aisle in the library?”
“No. T-rex deserves better than that, Preston. He was an icon.”
“He’s also been dead for sixty-five million years. Pretty sure all his fucks dried up when the asteroid hit.”
Fair point.
“I’m just saying. Libraries are for books about kissing—not actual kissing. Unless it’s a proposal.”
Preston’s eyebrows shot up. “A proposal in a library?”
“Yes,” I said slowly. “Is that insane? I saw someone in McDonald’s propose. It happened on a plane I was on once. If it’s normal at thirty-six-thousand feet, what’s wrong with a library?”
He took a moment before he answered. “That makes total sense. Wow, you really weren’t kidding about how often you’re right.”
“I don’t kid about being right. Just like you apparently don’t kid about kissing.”
He smirked. “I don’t.”
“You did. You kissed my cheek.”
“Are you still salty about that?”
“Yes. I thought you were going to kiss me properly. Way to tear a girl down.”
“I did kiss you properly.”
“After I had a bitch fit.”
He shrugged. “I was keeping you on your toes.”
“No, you were doing what I’d done to you the day before.”
“And that bitch fit, Halley, makes you a hypocrite.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I couldn’t. He was kinda right about that. “Except I went right in for your cheek, and you actually told me that you wanted to kiss me.”
“I’ve kissed you a few times since then. Can you focus on those instead?”