Page 19 of Dating and Other Theories
“Wait. He kissed you?”
“I kissed him. He was a little shy at first, but once he got into it, it was pretty great. Really great, actually.”
“Huh,” Esther said.
“Yeah, it makes me wonder what he’s like in bed. Based on that kiss, I’d say pretty damn good.”
“Wow. Okay.” That must have been some kiss. Good for him. And for Jinny, apparently.
So the plan was still on track. Jonathan just needed to up his conversation game a little. No problem. They could work on that before the next date.
“It sounds like there was some chemistry after all,” Esther said. “It must not have been completely terrible.”
“No, not terrible,” Jinny conceded.
“Well, I’m glad. Maybe your second date will be better.” There was still time for them to actually hit it off. With a little coaching, Esther was convinced, Jonathan could make a good boyfriend for Jinny. And Jinny could be good for him too. They could be good for each other.
“If there is a second date,” Jinny said. “He might not call.”
He was definitely going to call. And the next time, he’d be a better date. Esther would see to that.
A little past noon the next day, Esther knocked on Jonathan’s door. It took so long for him to answer it, she’d just about decided he wasn’t home when she heard the deadbolt turn.
The door opened a crack and he squinted at her. “Oh. It’s you.” He sounded about as thrilled to see her as she was to be there.
“It’s me,” she said, and waited.
He pulled the door open wider—but not wide enough to invite her in—and ran his hand through his hair. He wasn’t wearing a beanie for once, and he had a truly impressive case of bedhead. His half-hearted attempt to smooth the unruly locks only succeeded in making them fluffier.
“Did I wake you?” Esther asked. He had the rumpled, bleary-eyed look of someone who’d just crawled out of bed.
“No,” he said, clearly lying. He was wearing sweatpants that hung low on his hips and a plain white T-shirt that was so stretched out it was nearly see-through.
“I can come back,” she offered.
“No, it’s fine.” He stepped back and held the door open, waving her inside. “Come on in.”
Esther stepped inside and peered around curiously. It was dark except for the slits of sunlight leaking in through the closed mini-blinds. The layout of his apartment was the mirror opposite of Esther’s, and his furniture all looked like it had been rescued from a curb. There was a hideous plaid couch, a set of bookshelves constructed out of cinderblocks, and a cheap footlocker doubling as coffee table. An old Formica dinette table had been pushed against the wall to serve as a desk. It was stacked with precarious towers of books and papers and scripts, with a MacBook Air squatting in the center of it.
“I just came to see how last night went,” she said.
“You want some coffee?” he asked, wandering into the kitchen. It was full of dirty dishes, at least half of which were coffee mugs.
“No thanks.” If she had more than two cups a day, she got jittery, and she’d already had her allotment this morning.
Jonathan filled an electric kettle with water and switched it on. “I’m sure you already heard all about it from Jinny.”
“Yeah, but I wanted to hear how you thought it went.”
He shrugged. “It wasn’t as bad as I was afraid it was going to be.”
“That’s a ringing endorsement.” Esther watched him scoop coffee beans out of a brown paper bag into a burr grinder. There was a layer of coffee grounds all over the counter. “You grind your own beans?”
“Yeah. It’s a fair-trade organic blend from a co-op in Peru that I special order from a small-batch local roaster.”
Of course it was. And of course he did.
He switched on the grinder, which made an ear-piercing racket as it pulverized the beans. That explained the weird sound Esther heard coming through the wall from his apartment every day. She’d thought maybe he had a power tool fetish. Turned out it was a coffee fetish.
