Or maybe that was why this was weird. Friends trying to pretend to be lovers.
He stood there, and I realized that his smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, so I attempted a joke. “You don’t have to worry about whether or not you have game. If your game were any sharper, you could shave with it. If I learn how to do what you just did, Craig won’t know what hit him.”
But he didn’t laugh like I hoped he would. Instead he said, “We should take a break. Are you hungry? We can order something in.”
“Sure.”
He went and sat on his couch, and not knowing what to do with myself, I did the same. He threw out a couple of options nearby, and we settled on a burger place. He used an app on his phone and passed it to me, where he had pulled up the menu of regular hamburgers for me.
“No cheeseburgers, right?” he verified.
“Yeah,” I said, touched that he’d remembered. Although after our lengthy vegan discussion at the pizzeria, it shouldn’t be surprising. I added what I wanted to the order and handed it back to him to finish it up.
“Thanks for dinner,” I said. “In case I forget later.”
“You’re preemptively welcome,” he told me.
Unsure what to do with myself and worried I might try to edge closer to him, I swung my legs sideways and knocked a manila folder off the coffee table. “Oh, sorry,” I said, leaning forward to pick it up. I viewed a couple of the pages. It was a marketing discussion about names. “Is this for the new line?”
“It is.” He nodded, putting his phone down.
I read the submissions out loud. “Vixen, Harpy, Tart. It’s too bad you can’t pick something nice and inspiring. Oh! Maybe Heroine.”
“Like the drug?”
“No, not heroin. Heroine. With an E on the end. Like an amazing woman.”
“Yeah . . . I’m not sure people will be able to hear the distinction. But I bet heroin cosmetics would sell for a lot. Maybe even find us a new audience.”
I smiled, putting the folder and papers back on the table.
“Earlier . . .” He trailed off, and my heart came to a complete and total stop. Earlier? Dancing earlier? Wanting to kiss him earlier? A lesson in seduction earlier?
“With the team,” he continued. “Did all that making over go okay?”
His question was both a relief and a disappointment. “They were great. But they had some requests that I was not okay with. Do you know where they wanted to wax me? I explained that we are mammals and that we’re supposed to have hair.”
At that he laughed, and it was nice to feel comfortable again after feeling awkward and unsure, so I kept going. “They also wanted me to get rid of my glasses. I told them it was nonnegotiable. I am not in a Superman situation. I don’t suddenly become a sex goddess by taking my glasses off. My only superpower is poor vision. My eyes are basically just ornamentation at this point.”
“I think your glasses are cute,” he said. “But Craig is just . . . well, Craig. They’ve all worked with him before, so they know what they’re talking about.”
I didn’t particularly want to explore or think too much about his statements. That Marco thought my glasses were cute, because that would just lead to a rabbit hole of did he mean cute in an attractive way or cute like a blue-haired elderly lady walking her teacup poodle way, and that Craig would not define it as cute with either definition, putting us back into that Craig-is-shallow territory that I was determined to steer clear of. By his own admission, Marco hadn’t spent a lot of time with Craig since they were kids. People just didn’t know him the way I did.
“I had to tell them that I can’t do contacts because I will not stick things in my eyeballs, and they suggested Lasik. I’m not letting anyone point lasers at my eyes for any reason. Not even for your brother.”
“Makes sense,” he said. “I don’t let people point lasers at my eyeballs, either.”
I pointed at his gaming setup. “So do I get a demonstration? Or am I just going to have to imagine you doing it in the nerdiest way possible?”
“I can do better than show you. You can play with me.” He got up and turned on his flat-screen TV. “I have just the game for you.”
He grabbed a controller and handed me one. “I’ve never done this before,” I warned him.
“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a good teacher.” Why did everything out of his mouth have to sound like the sexiest thing ever, even when he meant it in just a regular way? “I’ll show you the ropes.”
The game he chose started up, and I recognized the music. “Lord of the Rings?” I gasped.
“Yep.”
He explained to me what each button did on my controller, but I was so eager to start that I wasn’t really listening. He helped me create a character, and then we entered the game together.
Marco tried to show me what I should be doing, but I was enjoying twirling, taking in the landscape. He did get me to move forward, and we just kept slashing things with our swords.
After doing that for a bit, I announced, “I don’t get this game. We’re just running around and hitting anything that moves.”
“Seems like you get it,” he said.
We played until the food arrived, and then we sat at his table to eat. “Before we start, I have something,” he announced.
He got up to go into his room, and I called after him, “I could make you a cream for that!”
Instead of responding to my joke, he came back with a large binder and put it on the table. “This is for you.”
I took a big bite of my hamburger, pulling it toward me. “What is it?”
“It’s a binder of information about Craig. Likes, dislikes, things like that.”
I swallowed my food and said, “You made a binder with color-coded tabs about your brother?” He really was dedicated to the cause.
“My assistant made it.”
“You should give her a raise,” I said as I flipped it open.
“Sorry about the homework.”
Not able to help myself, I immediately responded, “I love homework.”
“I suspected as much,” he said, popping a couple of french fries in his mouth. “There’s ketchup here. If you want it. Because it goes with everything.”
I did want it. That was the problem. I turned away from him and ran my fingers along the tabs of the binder, stopping at the last one. I read the title out loud. “Sports.”
“He’s a big fan of the Portland Jacks.” He paused, like he was waiting for a response and then added, “They’re a professional football team from Oregon.”
“I know who they are,” I protested, indignant. I did know that, right?
Marco didn’t seem to believe me. “What do you actually know about sports?”
“There’s balls and some type of head gear and butt slapping, from what I understand.”
“I thought your grandpa was a big Dodgers fan.”
“He is. But my parents were on their way home from a game that night and I’ve just . . . never really wanted to watch baseball since then.”
“That’s understandable.”
“But you did the opposite. You run the company that your mom modeled for.” He hadn’t walked away from it, even though there had to be painful memories associated with Minx. Especially when they ran that retro campaign with his mother’s image.