Not Quite Perfect

“I had a little something on the plane.”

He grabbed her hand. “Then you can grab a little more something here.”

She snagged her purse, which she’d just left on a hall table, as he dragged her away from the room. “You’re pushy.”

“I’m thoughtful and a pushy kinda guy. Especially when I’m hungry.”

They rode the elevator holding hands.

When they exited the hotel, Glen held her hand tighter.

“What are you in the mood for?”

The beauty of New York City was that you could walk two blocks in any direction and find the flavors of the entire world, or close to it.

“I’m not the hungry one.”

He ignored her and rambled off their options. “Burgers?”

She shook her head.

“Chinese or Thai . . . Korean barbeque?”

“Salty.”

“Deli . . . maybe tomorrow for lunch,” he suggested. “Fish tacos?”

“You pick,” she said.

“There’s a great Italian place around the corner. Pizza?”

“Ohhh, pizza.”

Glen pulled her in a circle and started walking the other direction. “Pizza it is.”

Mary sat back, holding her stomach, after eating not one, but two pieces of the giant pizza filled with dough, sauce, and cheese cooked to perfection. “You’re trying to make me fat.”

Glen was tearing into his third slice. “You eat like a bird.”

She tapped a finger on her empty plate.

“Well, maybe not with pizza,” he said with a wink.

The tiny pizza joint was loud and crazy busy. They’d ordered at the counter and brought their box to a small table by the window. They classed it up by drinking wine from a screw-cap bottle.

She pushed her paper plate aside, rested her chin in her hands and her elbows on the table. “Have you ever done this before?”

He had just opened his mouth to take another bite. “Eaten pizza in New York? Yeah, all the time.” Glen shoved a fourth of the thing in his mouth.

“No. Not the pizza. Dated someone who lived on the West Coast?”

He finished chewing, picked up the red and white checkered napkin, and wiped his mouth. “Hmm, uh, no. Well, not as far as California.”

She made a little rolling motion with her hands.

“What?”

“How far have you gone for a date?”

He stared up at the ceiling before waving his pizza in the air. “France.” He popped more sauce, cheese, and dough into his mouth.

“France is farther than California.”

Glen was not going to give up his meal for the conversation. “You asked how far I flew for a date,” he said around his food. Talking with your mouth full was usually a complete turnoff for Mary, but Glen was the poster child for cute doing it. “That would be France. Dated . . . as in more than one date . . . Detroit.”

“So you flew to France to get laid and Detroit for a relationship.”

He cocked his head and stopped chewing when he took in her words. His slow nod of acknowledgment was followed by him shoving pizza in his mouth.

“What happened between you and Miss Detroit?”

He held his pizza but didn’t bite this time. “Miss Detroit, as you call her, came from money . . . I thought great, someone who has it won’t be using me to get mine.”

“I guess that isn’t how that turned out.”

He waved his pizza. “Daddy was cutting her off.” He took a bite.

He left the part that she was searching for someone else to support her unsaid.

“What about Miss France?”

He finished chewing, chased his food with cheap wine. “That was just fun.”

Mary knew her eyes were wide.

“We both knew it was for fun,” he quickly explained.

“Oh.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“Flown to France for fun? Ah, no.”

He smiled. “Flown, drove . . . taken a walk, just for the fun?”

Inside she cringed. She’d been asking personal questions, and Glen had answered with sincerity . . . she should probably follow his lead.

“College . . . once. It didn’t work out well and I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.”

“So what was wrong with Mr. College?”

Mary tipped back the last of the wine. “I was seeing someone from my modern lit class . . . it wasn’t serious . . . just college, ya know?”

“I went to college.” His smile told her he had all kinds of knowledge on the subject.

“One day Mr. College came along . . . asked me out. I was interested, but I put him off.”

“Because of Mr. Modern Lit?”

She shrugged. “Because I’d never dated two different guys at the same time. Eventually my girlfriends were in my face about how if Modern Lit and I didn’t have a conversation about exclusivity, then why was I treating our time together as exclusive. Then they went on about how did I know if Modern Lit wasn’t dating other girls. After all, we were in college.”

“So you listened to the girls and went out with Mr. College.”

“I did. Mr. College and I went out for fun, as you say it. Don’t look so impressed,” she teased. “It didn’t end well.”

“So what happened?”

She could almost see the inside of her dorm when she repeated the series of terrible events.

“Mr. College was leaving my dorm and Modern Lit was surprising me with Starbucks.”