“When’s your birthday?” I ask him.
“When’s yours?”
“I asked you first.”
“But what if you’re older than me? Isn’t that a turnoff for girls? Dating guys younger than them?”
“Isn’t it a turnoff for guys to date girls with scars on over half their face?”
His hand squeezes my waist and he eyes me hard. “Fallon.” He says my name like it’s an entire lecture in itself.
“I was trying to be funny,” I say.
He doesn’t smile. “I don’t think self-deprecation is very funny.”
“That’s only because you aren’t the self who’s doing the deprecating.”
The corner of his mouth twitches as he tries to hold back his smile. “July Fourth,” he says. “The whole country celebrates my birthday every year. It’s quite epic.”
“July 25th, which means you are officially older than me. I can safely pursue you now and not be considered a cougar.”
He runs his hand up my waist a couple of inches, and then his thumb moves side to side, slowly. “You can’t pursue the willing, Fallon.”
Oh, dang. He deserves a kiss for that comment, but there’s a guy with a tattoo gun two feet away and I’m not the type of girl who would make out with a guy in public. Apparently I draw the line at straddling them.
“There’s something I need to know about you,” he says with a poignant stare. “And when I ask you this question, I want you to think very long and hard about the answer, because it might make or break this connection we have.”
I swallow hard. “Okay. What do you need to know?”
He winces, just a little, and I’m not sure if it’s from the tattoo gun or because he’s nervous to ask the question. “Okay,” he says. “If you could only listen to one band for the rest of your life, which band would you choose, and why?”
I instantly relax. This is easy. I thought he was about to dig a whole lot deeper than my favorite band.
“X Ambassadors.”
“Never heard of them,” he says.
“I’ve seen them twice,” the guy with the tattoo gun says. Ben and I both look at him, but he’s focused on his work.
I look back at Ben and arch my eyebrow. “Why would my favorite band make or break us?”
“A lot can be said about a person through their taste in music. Pretty sure I read that in one of the books you gave me. If you would have picked a band I hated, it would have been a major turnoff.”
“Well, you might still hate them once you listen to them, so we aren’t in the clear yet.”
“In that case, I’ll never listen to them,” he says confidently.
“Not if I have anything to do with it.”
“What’s your favorite lyric by them?” he asks.
“It changes depending on my mood.”
“Well then, what’s your favorite lyric right now?”
I close my eyes briefly and hum one of the songs in my head until I get to the lyric that fits this moment. I open my eyes and smile. “You’re so gorgeous, ’cause you make me feel gorgeous.”
A faint smile works its way across his mouth. “I like that,” he says, brushing his thumb across the skin of my waist. We stare at each other for a while. I can see the rise of his chest becoming more prominent, and knowing he’s getting worked up despite having a needle piercing his skin makes me feel a little triumphant.
I think about maybe just leaning forward and giving him a small peck on the mouth, but before I can, the tattoo artist says, “Done!”
I slide off his lap and we look at the finished product before it’s bandaged up. It turned out great, but I still don’t know what prompted it or why he needed it tonight, but I’m glad I got to be here with him while he had it done.
He stands up and pulls his wallet out of his pocket to tip the guy. When he takes my hand in his to walk me to his car, every step I take grows heavier and heavier, because I know with each step, we’re closer to another goodbye.
On our drive to the airport, I’m on edge the entire way. I keep asking myself if this new urge to not want to get on that plane to go back to New York is a result of my feelings for Ben or for New York.
I know I told him at the beach that I’m happy in New York, but I’m still almost as unhappy there as I was here. I just don’t want him to know that. I’m hoping my involvement in the community theater will help me make a few more friends. After all, it’s only been one year. But it’s been a tough year. And as much as I tried to stick with the homework he gave me, going on audition after audition is exhausting when all I get are rejections. It makes me wonder if my father is right. I might be dreaming too big. And despite Ben having given me a lot of my confidence back, it doesn’t make an industry built on looks any less shallow.