Page 74 of Angels Fall

“…O…K,” she says reluctantly.

“I paid him so that we can go down into the tunnels.”

“Jesus, Tyler—”

“What? It’s cool. It’ll be cool. I mean, yeah, we’ll do the drone thing and whatever, blah, blah, blah, but the TUNNELS! The tunnels are so COOL!”

I kinda do a little dance for her, like John Belushi does as Bluto in Animal House when he’s trying to cheer up Flounder.

And she is as unmoved by my attempt at frivolity as Flounder was.

“Fuck,” I say as I stop my jig. “Look, I—I haven’t been on a, y’know, a date in like…well…maybe ever, when I come to think of it. So—”

“You’ve NEVER been on a date?” she interrupts.

“I—Like, no. I don’t think so.”

“How is that possible?”

“What? How many dates have you been on?”

“Dates? I, uh…” She pauses. “Well… Shit. Have I never been on a real date?” she asks herself, presumably rhetorically.

“See?” I almost accuse. “Like, y’know, I’d just hook up, or like meet someone at a party, or, y’know… accidentally get it on with my friend’s sister in the VIP room of a strip club…”

Oh, shit. I was making a joke but that may have been a bridge to far. That’s what the look on her face is telling me. Gotta walk this back. Quick.

“Hell, I’m sorry. I’m…stupid.”

“Noooooo. Really?”

“Fuck. I was… I just… I just wanna show you some cool shit that meant something to me when I was a kid. That’s all. It was important to me, this place was. For a lot of reasons. And not to be too… whatever… but I had some really good times with Scotty and Evan here too. Like fun, innocent kid shit. And I know you can’t go home again, like Tom Wolfe said, but—”

“Thomas,” she interrupts.

“What?”

“Thomas. You Can’t Go Home Again is a book by Thomas Wolfe. Tom Wolfe wrote The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Not the same guy.”

“Oh… Well, which one were people supposed to be afraid of?”

“That’s Virginia Woolf.”

“Whatever! The point is…” I take her by the hands. “I wanna share something with you that was special to me. And that was special for me… with Scotty. And, like, we don’t even have to do anything sexy or whatever. I mean this is our first date, after all. Literally. Our first date.” (I don’t even care that she doesn’t laugh. I know that’s a solid joke.) “And so I just wanna be with you. Here. With you. That’s it. I mean it.”

She gives me a side-eye. But it’s accompanied by a little smirk, so I take that as a cue to start doing my little Bluto dance again.

“Don’t,” she says. “Just don’t.”

“K.” I stop.

She shakes her head. “You are just…”

I snake my head around to meet her eyes.

“Yeah? Something good?” I raise my eyebrows.

She laughs. “Show me the fucking tunnels.”