“You know, I really like that you didn’t suggest we watch a movie or have a drink. That’s what everyone else would do. Let’s play a childhood board game. Why the hell not?” He leaned forward and brushed the feathers on her hat. “I like this hat, too. It’s cute.”
“You don’t think I look like a bird?” Teddy asked.
Everett thought about it for a moment. “Maybe a very sexy bird.”
“I don’t think birds can be sexy,” Teddy said, standing up.
“I don’t know. You ever see a flamingo? Legs for days,” Everett said, grabbing her hand. “Let’s go play some Candy Land.”
48
As it turned out, Candy Land wasn’t exactly the thrill-a-minute ride Teddy remembered from childhood. In fact, it could be more accurately described as boring.
But it could also be, she discovered, a hotbed of sexual tension, although that might have had more to do with who she was playing it with and less to do with the Crooked Old Peanut Brittle House.
“This is great, actually,” Everett said, drawing a red card and moving his gingerbread man. “Damn. I’m stuck in a cherry pitfall until I draw another red.”
Teddy pressed her lips together. Everett’s dedication to playing Candy Land was admirable, and it made her like him more. But she was much more interested in studying the lines of his face than the moves on the board.
“What?” he asked, looking up. “It’s your turn, and if you’re trying to psych me out by giving me bedroom eyes, you’re going to lose. I have an amazing poker face, and you’ll never figure out my strategy.”
Teddy laughed. “There is no strategy in Candy Land. It’s all luck.”
Everett cracked his knuckles. “That’s what you think.”
“Do you have any snacks?” Teddy asked. “I’m starving.”
“This seems like a strategy to avoid losing to me, but I’m hungry, too, so okay,” Everett said, standing up and walking to the kitchen. “Where do you stand on Bagel Bites?”
“It’s a contentious issue, but I’m staunchly pro,” Teddy said, following him into the kitchen.
“Great,” Everett said, pulling them out of the freezer and putting them on a pan. “Because that’s about the only food I have here.”
Teddy looked around the kitchen. “I take it you don’t cook a lot,” Teddy said, noting the absence of any sort of equipment or stubborn tomato sauce stains on the counter. She also noticed that Everett hadn’t been kidding earlier about his place being basic. Teddy looked over the half wall into the living room and saw a couch, a chair, curtains—all of the basic things a person needed to exist in a space. There was artwork on the walls—paintings that looked like they probably had some personal meaning, a bulletin board with all sorts of clippings tacked on—and a full bookshelf in the corner, but there wasn’t a lot of stuff.
Everett smiled wryly. “The thing is, I like cooking. And I love eating. But I don’t end up having a lot of time for either.”
“You don’t end up having a lot of time for eating?” Teddy asked. “I’m not sure I understand.”
Everett leaned against the counter. “You know when you’re really lost in work and you forget to eat two meals in a row?”
“No,” Teddy said slowly. “That has never in my life happened. I can’t even imagine a situation in which my growling stomach wouldn’t be my number one priority.”
As if it had been waiting for a sign to make its presence known, Teddy’s stomach growled so loudly that Everett’s eyes widened.
“See?” Teddy pointed to her stomach. “She’s not some retiring wallflower. She makes her needs known.”
“Okay, new plan,” Everett said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “That aggressive stomach growling means you’re too hungry for mere Bagel Bites. They’re just the appetizers now. I’m ordering pizza.”
“A pizza-based appetizer and a pizza main course? I like the way you think,” Teddy said, nodding approvingly.
They ordered an almond pesto pizza and a fennel sausage pizza from Harvest Pizzeria, and by the time they arrived, Teddy had already had one glass of wine on an empty stomach and was feeling pleasantly loose-limbed. She loaded up her plate and sat on one end of the couch, while Everett sat on the other. She crossed her legs and faced him, propping her plate on her lap.
“So,” she said, taking a bite. “Oh, geez, this is good. So what made you decide to get into puppets?”
Everett winced, chewed, and swallowed. “When you say it that way—into puppets—it sounds like a fetish.”
Teddy laughed. “Okay. Uh . . . what prompted your interest in puppetry?”
“Better. I guess . . . television. Jim Henson. I was obsessed with the Muppets as a kid, at the way he could use these sometimes goofy-looking animals to relay complex things. The way they seemed human, even though I logically knew they weren’t. And Mr. Rogers, who was weird in a different way, but weird all the same. That brazen, open, earnest trust and love of children? The ability to talk to them and relate to them on their level, the way he could use puppets to explain concepts like divorce and war, all while never talking down to kids or dismissing their feelings? That was what I admired.”
Teddy stared at him, then grabbed another piece of pizza. Two feelings fought each other to the death inside of her. First was her sheer attraction to Everett and the way he lit up when he talked about feelings in a way that no man in her life ever had—not her dad, wherever he was. Certainly not Richard. None of her teachers or relatives, all of them models of male stoicism who thought that admitting a feeling was the same thing as admitting failure.
But then there was another, less admirable feeling, one snaking its way through her guts. Jealousy that Everett had always known what he wanted to do, that he’d had a clear path since he was a child. Well, maybe not a clear path—he’d had to whack away some overgrown brush to get to his destination, but at least he knew a path was there. Teddy felt like she’d been born in the middle of a forest, nothing but trees everywhere blocking out the light, stumbling around and trying to figure out where to go.
“What’s that like?” she asked softly. “Always knowing what you want to do. Having a passion.”
“I don’t know,” Everett said simply. “This is the only way I’ve ever been.”
Teddy sighed. “I wish I was like that. I wish I had neon lights and a big blinking arrow pointing toward my life’s purpose.”
Everett smiled and put his pizza plate on the coffee table. “But isn’t this more exciting?”