“So you must be from Florida originally, then.”
“Born and raised,” he said. “My dad’s a pastor in Hernando County. My sister lives here in Orlando, though.”
Lauren wanted to ask him more about his family, but something in his face had closed off, like he’d already said more than he meant to. She didn’t know the rules of the game. Were follow-up questions allowed? But then she thought about her own past and decided, no. Better not to set that precedent.
They went back and forth a few times, clearly taking it easy on each other. Lauren got Ask me anything and Asa only asked her if she’d ever ended up ordering those cat-print pants; Asa got I can’t stand again and revealed that he hated reading The Scarlet Letter in high school.
“The story itself sounds so good,” he said. “So much drama with Hester and Dim-dude or whatever that guy’s name was. And the symbols! Everything’s a symbol and I’m sure it’s brilliant, but I felt like I couldn’t understand an actual goddamn word of it.”
Lauren laughed, even though she felt like she was already starting to understand something about Asa. He often played down his intelligence, pretended stuff was over his head when she knew full well he was just as smart as anyone else. If she’d ever thought him a slacker, it was due at least in some part to the fact that he seemed to want people to see him that way.
Her next turn yielded a six, and she turned the phone to show him so he wouldn’t think she was making it up just to fish for a compliment. “You don’t have to,” she said.
“I want to.” His gaze raked over her slowly, from the top of her head to the toes of her shoes. She resisted the urge to check to make sure her hair wasn’t all messed up, that she didn’t have a mustache of hot chocolate on her face. She’d been sitting back in her office chair with her legs crossed, and only now did she realize the position made the swingy red skirt of her dress ride up a little on her thigh—not enough to be close to indecent, but definitely showing more skin than she’d realized. She shifted in her seat, pulling down the hem in a way that she hoped wasn’t obvious.
Gray eyes were supposed to look cool. But when Asa’s gaze returned to hers, his looked anything but.
Eventually, he cleared his throat. “I really admire that you took such care with that family’s picture, in the Snow Globe.”
Lauren blinked at him, unsure at first what he was even talking about. Already that felt like a lifetime ago. She had no idea what she’d expected him to say—had been holding her breath, waiting to see what it might be—but she never thought he’d go back to such a random event from last week. She felt oddly disappointed.
“It was just a photo,” she said.
“Yeah, maybe. But like you said—it’s a memory. And you wanted to make sure they had a good one.”
She shrugged. “I don’t have many pictures of myself, especially from when I was a kid. That’s probably why I put more stock in them than I should.”
“What about school photos? Those horrible ones where you can pay extra to have a jewel-toned background.”
No one had been around to spend money on wallet-sized mementos throughout the years, much less shell out extra funds to change the color of the backdrop. She’d known that so well she hadn’t even bothered bringing the envelopes of photos home, scared that if she forgot to bring them back they’d try to charge her anyway.
“Nope,” she said. “Not even those.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she was about to hand him his phone, just to keep the game moving and change the subject. But then he said, “I would always do the same goofy face in mine. Drove my mom crazy. I swear I wasn’t doing it on purpose, but it was like every time a camera was pointed on me from ages five to sixteen, my facial muscles automatically twitched into this weird dopey smile.”
“Let’s see it.”
“It feels like you should have to random-number-generate your way to this kind of gold,” Asa said. “But I’ll give this one to you for free, just because. The face went something like this . . .”
His eyes widened, his mouth stretching in what looked like half shock-surprise, half manic grin. It was so unexpected that Lauren actually choked on her own spit and ended up coughing through her laughter. Then, just when she’d started to recover, he did it again and she was back to a fit of giggles. It was several minutes before she was able to settle down.
“There’s no way you weren’t doing that on purpose,” she said. “Nobody’s face does that naturally.”