“Two classes? That makes no sense. Their alignments alone would be all wrong. You’d have lawful good and chaotic neutral at best, and that’s not even talking about the armor. One wears plate and the other leather.” He said this without thinking, an automatic response to my statement.
“Is that right?” I gasped with delight. “That is the second nerd reference you’ve made in the last five minutes. Marco Kimball, are you a secret nerd?”
He looked uncomfortable. “We should go inside.”
“Wait, I have to know what you’re into. Like are you a Magic: The Gathering type of guy? Into Pokémon? Avatar? The Last Airbender or the blue-guys one? Or both?”
He grabbed his keys and got out of the car, slamming his door shut.
I scrambled out after him. “Star Trek? BattleBots? World of Warcraft?”
“I may have dabbled in some things when I was younger.”
“Like?” I felt almost giddy. No way would I have ever predicted this. It was too much fun to think that Marco might speak the same language as me. “Please tell me it was YA fantasy.” I would one hundred percent die if Marco was a secret Twilight fan. Hadn’t he just told me to enjoy what I enjoyed? Why wouldn’t he say what he liked?
But he didn’t answer, and my mind was totally racing with possibilities. There was something there—I just didn’t know what yet. But I was not the kind of person to leave a mystery unsolved.
We got to Catalina’s doorstep, and my mood shifted. This was it. I was about to see a bunch of people I used to work with. I wondered if it would be embarrassing—if Jerry had been bad-mouthing me since I left and everyone would stare. It had been only a few days since I’d quit—maybe it would just feel normal and I was overthinking this.
“Are you going to knock?” Marco asked.
“Give me a second.”
There was a loud popping sound—he was cracking his knuckles, and I felt it at the base of my spine.
“Could you please not?” I asked. “I really, really hate that sound. Knuckle cracking, popping, whatever it is, makes me nuts.”
“Sure.”
He waited a few moments and then said, “You really think I look terrible?” He was teasing, and I wondered if there was any real insecurity behind his ask or if he was just trying to distract me again. “I am about to meet your best friend.”
Catalina was going to love him. So much so that I might have to run interference because she probably shouldn’t date the CEO of her company. Whatever he said about nonfraternization rules, I couldn’t imagine that would be a good situation for either one of them.
And there was absolutely no jealousy involved whatsoever. At. All.
“You do look nice, but you already knew that.” Maybe he needed a little something extra. “And you really do have a nice axe. I wasn’t kidding about that earlier.” There. Good deed done for the day. Reminded the handsome man that he was handsome.
“Back at you.” He winked.
Did he really think that? Part of me was tempted to crane my head over my shoulder to see how my butt looked in these jeans to verify what he’d said. Although he’d probably just returned the compliment to be nice.
I hated that I couldn’t tell the difference. “This is hard to admit, but I’m going to need your guidance here. I’ve never fake dated anyone before.”
“Neither have I.”
“I think of the two of us, you probably have the, um, more colorful dating history.”
“Just what are you insinuating?” he asked jokingly.
“Nothing. Only that you might have more knowledge in this particular area.”
“I haven’t dated that many women.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “We must collect data and arrive at logical conclusions differently.”
“Very funny. I’ll take the lead here. But if there’s a Lord of the Rings movie trivia challenge, I’m going to depend on your skill set.”
I blinked a couple of times at him. “I know you’re joking, but do you think something like that exists?”
“You never know. I’m curious, though. Do you think there’s a lady of the rings?”
“Galadriel,” I said immediately.
“It was a joke,” he told me.
“Yeah, I don’t joke about Lord of the Rings.”
“Understood,” he said. “By the way, we have been standing on the porch for an uncomfortably long amount of time.”
“I know, I know. Do you have any gum?” That would make me feel calmer.
“No. Why? Did you need fresh breath for something?” Again with that smolder and sexy smile of his. This man was going to be the death of my ovaries.
“I chew it when I’m nervous. Or to help me concentrate. Some of my best work has been done while chewing gum.”
“Sorry,” he said. “Shall we?”
“Okay.” I nodded.
Then he reached down and took my hand in his.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I jerked my hand back so fast that I smacked myself in the mouth. “Ow!”
“You can’t keep jumping every time I touch you.” He sounded frustrated, and I couldn’t blame him. I knew my reactions weren’t typical. “And now you’re injuring yourself.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, although I wasn’t sure why I was apologizing to him. I was the one with a sore lip. “It just surprised me.”
“No one’s ever going to believe that we’re together if we can’t touch each other, least of all Craig. One step at a time. Deep breath. That’s why we’re here. To practice and get to know each other. I’m going to hold your hand. Don’t punch me or yourself, okay?”
“Okay,” I agreed. I tried to breathe in deeply, but then I would just smell him, and I was pretty sure that was going to make everything worse.
He took my right hand in his left one, and I willed myself to feel nothing. To be oblivious to him and whatever pheromones he secreted that were currently taking up residence in my hypothalamus. Again it was like being struck by an electrical charge big enough to power a city. He was warm and strong, and the touch of his skin against mine made me feel faint.
Definitely not typical. I should probably date more.
“Are you good?” he asked.
At first I wanted to laugh, to tell him that I might never feel like myself again. Then I wanted to ask him if he felt it, too, that connection between us, but I knew he didn’t, and I couldn’t stand to see a pitying look in his eyes.
I could take a lot of things from Marco, but not his pity.
“I’m fine.” I half expected him to call me out on it, but he didn’t.
“Hey, what did one proton say to the other?”
What? I wasn’t sure why he would ask me that, but my physical reaction was admittedly messing with my ability to think clearly. Talking protons?
“Stay positive,” he said.
His dumb joke should have calmed me down, but I was pretty sure that I might never be calm again if he kept touching me. “My dad used to do that. He was an environmental scientist, too. He was one of my grandma’s graduate students. He told me science jokes all the time.”