“You didn’t almost choke,” Everett said. “Come on. You got what you came to HighBall for. Let’s get you home.”
Gretel whined a bit, but Everett knew she’d be content as soon as she got up in her turret bedroom with her twinkle lights and her books. And then he’d go back out with Natalie and Lillian, get a little bit drunk in the street, and maybe eventually email Theodora. Or Teddy. Or whatever he was supposed to call her.
36
Dear Theodora, who I now know is also Teddy,
Should I keep calling you Theodora? Do you prefer Teddy? I don’t want to be rude. What I do want is to see you sometime, in a situation with no karaoke and no masks and also without my sister (who I love, but come on).
Do you want to go out sometime?
Awaiting your reply,
Everett
PS: I know that’s not a very clever sign-off, but I just got back from HighBall and I am drunk and also I’ve eaten far too many alligator bites. Please excuse any typos.
Even when he was drunk, he didn’t make typos. Ugh. He was perfect.
Teddy shook her head. No, she knew he wasn’t perfect. He had plenty of bad habits—maybe he didn’t clean the sink after he shaved, leaving tiny little prickly hairs everywhere. Maybe he wore his shoes inside the house, which everyone knew was disgusting (Teddy had once read an article that said “every inch of sidewalk has been peed on” and now she couldn’t get it out of her head). Maybe he smelled bad.
She wrinkled her nose. That ought to be enough to stop her from thinking about him.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t. She didn’t even care what he smelled like; she liked him, and she wanted to keep knowing him, but she was terrified.
She closed her laptop and didn’t respond for one day. Two days. Then three days. He didn’t email her again; he probably assumed she didn’t like him, which was so far from the truth it made her want to laugh, but she couldn’t stop thinking about his perfectly earnest face when they’d “met” at Colossal Toys. He hadn’t known who she was yet but he’d trained those deep brown eyes on her, looking at her like she was the only person in the shop. If those eyes ever looked at her like she was boring, or disappointing, or not enough, she didn’t know what she’d do.
So of course she didn’t respond. Who could blame her? She was barely holding it together.
But then, one morning when she was the only person working, the bell above the door jingled and Everett walked right in.
The second she saw him, the word “Oh” quietly left Teddy’s lips and floated out into the shop. At this point she’d met him in person twice, and she still couldn’t quite believe he was real. Real and right in front of her.
“I promise I’m not going to bother you if you say no,” Everett said in lieu of hello. “At this point you’ve run away from me twice, although I think that was situational and not because of me. And you didn’t respond to my email. And when I put it like that, actually it’s starting to sound like maybe I should get out of here and leave you the hell alone. I mean, that’s a lot of rejection, when I think about it.”
“No,” Teddy said.
“What?” Everett asked.
Teddy cleared her throat. “No, don’t leave.”
Everett smiled, and Teddy’s heart broke into a million pieces that she’d have to sweep up off the shop floor later. He had the best smile she’d ever seen in her life, like a baby animal and a classic Hollywood leading man combined. Like she wanted to hug him and grow old with him and also have sex with him. It was a smile that contained multitudes.
“Okay, then. So, Theodora . . . or Teddy . . . Wait. What should I call you?”
“Either one is fine,” she said. “But pretty much everyone aside from Josie calls me Teddy.”
Everett smiled again. “Teddy it is, then. Teddy, do you want to hang out sometime? Without your friends or my friends or my sister, someplace where we can talk about anything except Jazzercise because we said we were done with that topic—”
“Yes.”
“What?” Everett asked. “Yes?”
Teddy smiled, despite the unease currently roiling in her stomach. She said she was going to do one thing every day that scared her, and right now, more than skydiving or bungee jumping or getting a tattoo, what scared her most was going out with Everett St. James. And now that he was standing directly in front of her, staring at her with those expressive eyes and that mouth she desperately wanted to kiss and those hands she desperately wanted to hold, she was both calm and terrified.
“Yes,” Teddy repeated. “Let’s hang out.”
“Great.” Everett smiled. “So, uh, do you want to go eat somewhere, or . . .”
“Do you have a bike?” Teddy asked.
Everett held completely still for a moment. “A bike?”
Teddy nodded. “I want to learn how to ride a bike. Well, relearn, I guess. It’s been a while, because I have a bicycle fear. It’s on my list.”
She loved that she didn’t have to explain the idea of her list to Everett, because he already knew. He already knew so many things about her. Maybe all friendships/relationships/dates should start with several long, personally revealing emails, for convenience’s sake.
“Yeah,” Everett said, running his hand through his hair. “My best friend will probably let me borrow hers. I have one, in storage at my parents’ house, but it’s too big for you, I’m sure. But I think Natalie’s about your size.”
“Okay,” Teddy said. “Could you do tomorrow evening around five thirty? And you don’t mind? Being there for my first bike ride in years?”
Everett smiled and leaned forward until his face was maybe half a foot from hers. He decidedly did not smell bad—he smelled like a bed she wanted to climb into.
“Theodora Teddy Phillips,” he said, “it would be my honor to help you relearn how to ride a bike.”
Teddy couldn’t help it; she felt a smile bloom across her face like a field of wildflowers. She was a cliché screen saver picture and she didn’t even care.
“And you know what they say,” Everett said, leaning back. Teddy had to fight the urge to tell him to lean closer. “You don’t forget how to ride a bike. It’s ingrained in you, presumably like your knowledge of Jazzercise footwork.”
Teddy pressed her lips together. “I actually have to relearn the steps with every class. I’m terrible at Jazzercise.”
“We said we weren’t going to talk about Jazzercise anymore,” Everett said, walking backward toward the door without taking those big brown eyes off of her. He bumped into a rack of novelty socks and jumped. “Okay, sorry,” he said, grabbing the rack and righting it. “I . . . Oh, no. Great. I’ve showed you what a lumbering oaf I am. This didn’t come across in the emails.”