Forever, Interrupted(24)

I started laughing. “Before you even called me?”

“Yeah. I know. It sounds very stupid. But I just . . . I wanted to look good for you. I wanted to make it a special night and . . . to be blunt, none of my shirts looked good enough for that.”

“You’re not real,” I said.

“Pardon me?”

“You’re just . . . you’re not a real person. What kind of guy is that sincere about things? And that honest? No man has ever gone out to buy a new shirt just to take me somewhere.”

“You don’t know that!” Ben said.

The waiter came to take our order. I ordered pasta. Ben ordered steak. That’s how I could tell we both knew he would insist on paying for dinner. I wasn’t going to order anything extravagant on his dime, and if he’d really thought I might succeed in paying for this, he wouldn’t have ordered anything extravagant on mine.

After the waiter left, I kept at it.

“Well, sure. Okay. I don’t know that, but no man has ever told me he did.”

“Obviously. Only an idiot would admit it. It’s too obvious that I like you. I need to reel it in.”

“No, no. Please don’t. It feels great.”

“Being liked?” he asked, as he picked up a piece of bread and ripped it in half. He popped one whole half into his mouth. I liked that he would buy a new shirt for me but he wasn’t going to eat delicately in front of me. It showed that even if he wanted to put forward the best version of himself, he was still always going to be himself.

“Being liked, yeah. And liking someone so much. Being liked by the person you like so much, is maybe more accurate.”

“Do you feel like things are moving too quickly?” he asked. It jarred me. Obviously, I had been thinking about that and discussing it with Ana, but if he felt like things were going too fast, well . . . I wasn’t sure what I was afraid of. I just knew that even if they were going too fast, I did not want things to slow down.

“Oh. Uh. Do you? Were you thinking that?” I looked up at him from my wineglass, trying to sound carefree and blithe. I think it worked.

“No, actually,” he said matter-of-factly. I was relieved to hear it. “I think you and I are just . . . Yes, we are moving quickly but we’re moving at a pace that feels natural for both of us. I think?”

I nodded, so he kept going.

“Right. So, I don’t see an issue. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t coming on too strong with you. Because I don’t mean to overwhelm you. I keep telling myself to cut it out. But then I keep doing it. I’m typically a pretty low-key person, but I’m just . . . not low-key about you.”

I felt like butter in the microwave. I had no strength left to be cool or the type of dishonest you’re supposed to be this early on.

“Are we crazy here?” I asked. “I feel like you are such a different person than anyone I have ever met and I thought about you all day today. I . . . barely know you and yet I miss you. That’s crazy, right? I don’t know you. I guess I’m worried that we will be so into each other so quickly that we will burn out? Sort of an acute romance, as it were.”

“Kind of like a supernova?”

“Hmm?”

“It’s some sort of star or explosion that’s so powerful it can emit the same amount of energy that the sun will emit over its entire lifetime, but it does it in, like, two months and then it dies.”

I laughed. “Yep,” I said. “That’s pretty much exactly what I meant.”

“Well, I think it’s a fair concern. I don’t want to rush through this so fast that we run it into the ground. I’m not sure I think it’s really possible, but better to be safe than sorry.” He chewed and thought. When he was done, he had a plan. “What about this? Let’s give it . . . let’s say, five weeks, and we can see each other as much as we want, but no one can up the ante. We can just stop ourselves from being too intense up front. Let’s just hang out and enjoy each other’s company and not worry about too fast or too slow or anything. And then at the end of five weeks, we can really assess if we are crazy or not. If at the end of it, we are both on the same page, then great. And if at the end of five weeks, we have burnt out or we just aren’t jiving, we’ve only wasted five weeks.”

I laughed. “Jiving?”

“I couldn’t think of a better word.”

I was still laughing as he looked me, slightly embarrassed. “I can think of about ten,” I said and then immediately got back to the subject. “Okay. No moving forward. No freaking out about moving too fast. Just this. That sounds great. No supernova.”

Ben smiled and we shook on it. “No supernova.”

It was quiet for a moment, and I broke the silence.

“We are wasting our five weeks by being quiet. I need to know more about you.”

Ben took another piece of bread off of the table and spread butter on it. I was glad the intensity of the moment had worn off—that things were now casual enough for him to be spreading butter. He took a bite.

“What do you want to know?”

“Favorite color?”

“That’s what you’re burning to ask me?”

“No.”

“So ask what you really wanna know.”