Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock(32)

“I’m not going to kiss you.”

“You have Jackson to kiss, right?”

“I’ve never kissed Jackson either.”

“I thought he was your boyfriend.”

“I’m saving myself for my husband.”

“Saving yourself?”

“Yep.”

“So you won’t even kiss someone before you get married?”

“Not the way you’re thinking of kissing. A peck on the lips or cheek doesn’t count.”

I must say, her never having been kissed was really attractive to me for some reason. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe I was drawn to Lauren’s innocence. Maybe it reminded me of who I was before all the bad stuff went down.

I said, “You owe me one cup of coffee for getting the homeless man off your back. I know this place around the corner. What do you say?”

“We’ll talk about our religious beliefs. Like an exchange, right?”

“Right.”

And then we walked to this coffee shop that had crazy huge couches that were random geometrical shapes like triangles and rhombuses and circles. It was like being in a day-care room for giant babies.

We got a seat and I ordered a double espresso, because I thought that would sound really sophisticated and cool and was the most Bogart-like thing I could order since I couldn’t order gin or scotch. Lauren ordered a peppermint mocha, which made her seem like a child again, and I also liked that about her,48 so I called the waiter back and said, “I’ll also have a peppermint mocha.”

Lauren looked around the shop and up at the ceiling like she was examining the construction of it, making sure the roof wouldn’t fall on our heads, and then said, “So why are you wearing a suit?”

“I do that sometimes when I take a day off school to do research.”

“What are you researching?”

“Aging and the possibility of adult happiness.”

“Jesus can make you happy.”

I laughed and said, “Do you talk about anything else besides Jesus?”

Lauren smiled and said, “So why have you been ignoring me for a year?”

“I haven’t. You’ve been ignoring me.”

“I have not been ignoring you! I try to catch your eye whenever I see you at the train station, but you walk by so quickly without looking. I’ve actually been quite hurt by your snubs.”

I noted that she was doing the cat-face femme-fatale thing again. She was now back in trap mode. “What about Jackson?” I asked.

“What about him?”

“I bet he doesn’t want you talking to me.”

“He would be happy if we talked about God. He believes we should save everyone too.”

“Then why doesn’t he help you pass out Jesus pamphlets?”

“He used to, but he’s at college now. And he’s not my boyfriend anymore.”

That bit of news got my heart pumping. “Is that why you’re having coffee with me today? Because you no longer have a boyfriend?” I said, hoping for the right answer, but the waiter came back with our peppermint mochas.

Lauren sipped hers and said, “Yum!”

That made me smile. I sipped mine and it tasted just like a melted York Peppermint Pattie.

“Maybe I could take you to dinner sometime, what do you think?”

“Are you asking me out on a date?” Lauren said.

“Okay, scratch that,” I said, because her eyebrows got all scrunchy and her eyes got all squinty, and not in the sexy cat-face Bacall way either. “Maybe this right here could be our first date, and then we won’t have to worry about the asking and saying yes part. We could just start now.”

“Well, I only date boys who are Christian.”

“Oh,” I said. “I see.” I wasn’t really that daunted at first because it seemed like such a silly thing to me—something we could easily overcome. I didn’t realize how limiting her Christianity actually was.

“Do you want to talk about Jesus?” she asked.

“That’s your favorite topic, huh?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t you have any other interests at all?”

“Sure. But we have to clear this hurdle before we move on to those. I don’t want to waste your time or mine.”

“But doesn’t your religion tell you that everyone is important? I mean, that bum obviously didn’t believe in Jesus and you still gave him a sandwich.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to date him!” Lauren kind of rolled her eyes at me all adorable and then sipped her peppermint mocha.

God, I loved her so much at that moment, mostly because she had just implied that she’d consider dating me—that my dating a girl was actually a possibility.

“Leave it to me to fall in love with a Jesus freak,” I said, and then laughed to make it seem as though I was only being playful and kidding.

“You don’t even know me,” she said.

“But I’d like to.”

She sighed and looked out the window.

Then we just sort of sipped our mochas and watched people pass outside for fifteen minutes or so.

Afterward, we walked to the train station together and then sat side by side on the ride back to Jersey. Our elbows were touching through our coats and that gave me an embarrassing hard-on, which would have been a problem if it were summer and I had no coat to hide under.