Boundless (Unearthly, #3)(44)

I pull my hair out of the ponytail and let it fall freely down my back. There’s a sharp knock at the door, and I run to open it. Christian’s standing in the hall wearing khakis and a blue dress shirt, sleeves rolled to the elbows. He smells like Ivory soap and shaving cream.

He holds out a bouquet of white daisies. “For you.”

“Thank you,” I say, which comes out as a squeak. I clear my throat. “I’ll put these in some water.”

He follows me inside. I rummage around for something to use as a vase, but the best I can find is a Big Gulp cup. I fill it with water and set the flowers on my desk.

Christian glances at Angela sitting on Wan Chen’s bed, scribbling away in her black-and-white composition notebook. “Hello, Angela,” he says.

“Hi, Chris,” she says, but she doesn’t stop writing. “Clara said I could crash here while you were out tonight. I need to get away from my roommates. They’re treating me like an episode of 16 and Pregnant. So. You brought flowers. Very smooth.”

“Yeah, I try,” he says with a smirk. He looks at me. “You ready?”

“Yes.” I fight the urge to tuck my hair behind my ears. “Bye,” I say to Angela. “Wan Chen will be back from her astronomy thing around midnight. You might want to get off her bed before then.”

She waves her hand at me dismissively. “Go,” she says. “Get swept off your feet already.”

When we’re both situated in his truck, Christian puts the key in the ignition, but he doesn’t start it. Instead he turns to me.

“This is a date,” he says.

“Oh, good,” I say, “because I was wondering, what with the flowers and all.”

“And as a date, there are certain ground rules we need to go over.”

Oh boy. “Okay,” I laugh nervously.

“I will be paying for all of our activities this evening,” he begins.

“But—”

He holds up his hand. “I know that you are a modern, liberated, independent woman. I respect that, and I understand that you are capable of paying for your own meal, but I will still be paying for the movie, and then for dinner, and whatever else. Okay?”

“But—”

“And even though I’m paying, it doesn’t mean that I expect anything from you. I want to treat you tonight, and that’s all.”

It’s cute that he’s blushing.

“All right,” I fake-grumble. “You’ll pay. Anything else?”

“Yes. I’d like us to steer clear of all angel-related topics tonight, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to hear the word angel, or purpose, or vision, or any of our other special terminology. Tonight I want us to simply be Christian and Clara, two college students on a date. How’s that sound?”

“Sounds good,” I say. More than good, even. It sounds perfect.

It was a great idea in theory, not talking about angel stuff, but what it really means is that an hour later, sitting in the dimly lit auditorium before the movie begins at this amazing little indie film theater in Capitola, we’re running out of things to talk about. We’ve already been through how the first week of winter classes went, and the gossip going around Stanford, and our favorite movies. Christian’s is Zombieland, which surprises me—I would have pegged him as a profound type, like The Shawshank Redemption.

“Shawshank’s good,” he says. “But you can’t beat the way Woody Harrelson kills zombies. He takes such joy in it.”

“Uh-huh,” I say, making a face. “I’ve always found zombies to be the least threatening of the scary monsters. I mean, come on. They’re slow. They’re brain-dead. They don’t plot evil or try to take over the world. They just—” I put my arms out in front of me and give him my best zombie groan. I shake my head. “So not scary.”

“But they just. Keep. Coming,” Christian says. “You can run, you can kill them, but more of them always pop up, and they never stop.” He shudders. “And they try to eat you, and if you get bitten, that’s it—you’re infected. You’re doomed to become a zombie yourself. End of story.”

“Okay,” I concede, “they’re kind of scary,” and now I’m vaguely disappointed that we’re not here to watch a zombie movie.

“Next time,” Christian says.

“Hey, I have a new rule for our date,” I suggest with a cheerful grin. “No mind reading.”

“Sorry,” he says quickly. “I won’t do it again.” He sounds so serious all of a sudden, embarrassed like I’ve caught him looking down the front of my shirt, that I have no choice but to throw a piece of popcorn at him.

“You’d better not,” I say.

He smiles.

I smile.

And then we sit in silence, munching popcorn, until the lights dim and the screen flickers to life.

Afterward he drives me to the beach. We have dinner at Paradise Beach Grille, this little upscale place on the shore, and after dinner we take our shoes off and walk along the sand. The sun set hours ago, and the light of the moon is playing off the water. The ocean gently shushes us, lapping at our feet, and we’re laughing, because I have admitted that my favorite movie is Ever After, this old and completely cheesy retelling of the Cinderella story where Drew Barrymore tries and fails to master an English accent. Which is embarrassing, but there it is.