Page 12 of Double Dared
“You look like you forgot the next step,” he said.
I opened the cupboard and took out two wineglasses, poured us each some wine, then turned back to Taylor while avoiding being struck down by his deep-set, liquid-brown eyes. “Here, it’s one of my favorites.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why is one of your favorites? Do you have a speech about the earthiness or something?” he asked. He was teasing me, I was almost sure.
I smiled at him and inclined my head. “It’s nutty, actually, but no, I don’t have a speech about it. I’m not as refined as you think I am. I just like how easily it goes down, and it’s not so dry to give you a headache.”
“Good enough for me,” he said.
“No offense, but I think any craft beer would have done the trick for you.”
Taylor put a hand on his heart and gave me his most adoring look. “You know me so well.” He swirled the wine in his glass, almost spilling it over the edge. “Cheers.”
I lifted my glass, letting it touch his gently before we each had a sip of wine. His eyebrows, dark and expressive, rose high as he judged the wine and nodded his approval.
“Come,” I said. I lifted the tinfoil off a platter of snacks I’d prepared earlier and carried it into the living room with Taylor following.
When I flicked the light on, all the lampslit. It had taken me three days of rewiring, filling, mudding, sanding, and painting to get this room to be the way I wanted it. I had a secret switch for the overhead light that was only there for emergencies, but otherwise existed outside the bubble universe I had made for myself.
The room came to life with its warmth and vintage coziness, a particular mixture of maximalism and mid-century modern design.
“You have a lot of stuff,” Taylor said, a small frown furrowing the space between his eyebrows. He let out a falling whistle.
“I’ve been alive for twenty-three years,” I said. “It piles up.”
“It never piled up for me.” He walked up to a large bookshelf in the corner. “My family moved a lot when I was a kid, so I learned to leave things behind. Well, I say things, but it wasn’t just things I had to abandon. People, friends, a pet turtle named George, who lived a long and happy life at my grandparents’ place, and habits, too.”
“We come from such different worlds,” I said. “Did you have things that made you feel at home?”
“Had my parents,” Taylor said. “They were always there. That never changed. But I didn’t carry my trophies or my comics when we moved once again to another continent.”
“Mine never moved. They just vacationed with their laptops while I wandered around, imagining I was in a different world. They mostly left me to it.”
“I don’t think I envy either one of us,” Taylor said. He moved over to the corkboard and looked at the photos and notes pinned to it. “This looks like a detective’s board. Or a criminal’s.” He shot me a devilish look that made me feel naked for a moment. It was a board I’d made with Emma, although most of the things that belonged to her were gone from it, leaving gaps in the notes, and the ones that remained were more related to our friends than to the two of us. Except for the photo in the center of the board.
“Yeah, I see how it could look like it,” I admitted with a laugh. “You ready to do this?”
Taylor nodded and took out his phone. I positioned myself on the long terra-cotta sofa, sinking into it, and Taylor joined me. The plate with rolled eggplants stuffed with feta cheese and herbs sat on the coffee table, and I held my glass just in front of it.
Taylor clinked his glass to mine, framing it so that the photo he took showed two glasses, the snacks, and both our hands. He had elegant fingers for an athletic guy who spent his weekend playing football.
“Perfect,” he said as he posted it to his story. “I’m expecting subtle questions to start tomorrow and a face-off by the weekend.”
“We’re on track, then,” I said.
“Except that we still haven’t crossed paths with Emma,” Taylor said.
My heart sank a little. No, we hadn’t seen Emma yet. “We will. There’s an outdoor reading picnictomorrow on campus. You’ll need to bring a book. Or should I find something?”
Taylor grinned and looked into my eyes. “I own a book, thank you very much.”
“Just trying to be helpful,” I said, taking a longer sip of my wine. It really did go down easily. “Want some music?”
Taylor glanced at the corner under the window, where another pothos spread its vines low into my record player and the collection of vinyls stacked in the shelves below. “Let me see what you have.”
