Dating Without Novocaine (9 page)

I dived in my car and slammed the door.

That vibrator had better be worth it.

“C
an I use your iron?” Cassie asked, standing in the doorway to my sewing room, her white work shirt over her arm.

“Of course.” I had a professional steam iron, and a sturdy ironing board that never came down. I appreciated that she asked: once she hadn't, and had somehow managed to get sticky gray gunk on the surface of the iron. The gunk had transferred to a client's silk dress the next time I used it.

“Are you making a wedding dress?”

I was on the floor, yards of white satin covering a wide swathe of the room. I was laying thin paper pattern pieces out over it.

“Yeah. It's this woman's third wedding, if you can believe it. How do some women get so lucky?”

“You call that lucky, being divorced twice?” Cassie asked, spreading her shirt on the board.

“I mean, lucky to have found three guys who want to marry you.”

“But what type of guys?”

“You take the fun out of things,” I complained.

“I'm keeping you rooted in reality.”

A funny thing to hear, coming from her. “How's this for unreality. She says her younger sister had a wedding dress made and booked a reception site while she was still single. And somehow a guy appeared and they fell in love and got married in time to use the reservation. Can you believe it?”

The iron huffed steam into the collar of her shirt. “She was ready, and she knew it.”

“But to have the dress made! And put a deposit down on a site!”

“It's like I've been saying. When you're ready, the right person will appear.”

“I wish I'd hurry up and get ready,” I grumbled.

“The more you want it, the farther from it you will be.”

“That makes no sense.”

She shrugged, finishing up on her shirt.

“Do you have any prospects, yourself?” I asked.

A hint of a smile teased her lips.

“Cass! Tell!”

“You wouldn't like him. He works at the pub with me.”

“Why wouldn't I like him?”

“He has long hair. And he's younger.”

“How much younger?” I asked.

“He's twenty-four.”

I curled my lip. “Twenty-four? Yuck. What do you want with a guy eight years younger than you? Jeez, it's bad enough when they're our own age. At twenty-four, they're practically still teenagers.”

“I knew you'd say something like that.”

I made a show of biting my lip. “Sorry. There must be something good about him, if you like him. Twenty-four, they're still near their sexual peak at that age.”

“I know,” she said, smiling.

“So what else does he do, except work at the pub?”

“He's a musician, and writes songs.”

I tried to keep my face serene and open.

“He's also in grad school at P.S.U., to be a teacher.”

“Oh. That sounds okay.”

She gave me a look, and I tried to appear innocent. She thought I put too much emphasis on a man's professional goals. She'd be happy staying in a tiny place like this rented house, listening to an occasionally employed lover strum out his songs on the guitar well into the future.

As usual, I didn't know if she was the crazy one, or I was.

“If it turns into something, you'll bring him home, won't you?” I asked. “We can have dinner or something.”

“Of course, Mother.”

“What's his name?” I asked as she was leaving.

“Jack.”

Jack, the twenty-four-year-old student and musician. Well, as long as she was happy.

I went back to work on the dress, pinning the pattern pieces into place and then cutting them out, double and triple checking that I had everything laid out right. The heavy silk satin was thirty-two dollars a yard on sale, and I didn't want to make a mistake.

The story about the girl who'd had the dress made and reserved the reception site preyed on my mind. Was
it so obvious when one was ready? Was it so instinctive? And if it was, why wasn't I as naturally aware of not being ready to meet my soul mate?

I felt past ready.

Maybe Cassie was wrong. Maybe it wasn't a matter of being ready and the person coming to you. Maybe it was a matter of making things happen, and sending out the vibe that if you were confident all would occur as you wished.

With a dress and a site waiting, that girl must have been one determined chick.

I put down my scissors and crawled over to the rickety bookcase against one wall, where my pile of inch-thick bridal magazines were stashed.

In all those pages there were maybe six or seven wedding dresses that I liked, and none that I would wear exactly as they were. I flipped the magazines open to the marked places, examining the gowns. I liked the high-waisted element of one, the lace-over-lining of another, the split sleeves of a third. And there was a pair of off-white shoes covered in Baroque beadwork that begged to be made.

If you sew it, he will come.

The thought drifted through my mind like a whisper from the gods.

If it worked for Kevin Costner and baseball players, why not for me, and a fiancé?

And it was a mentally healthy thing to do. Sometimes I thought the only reason I wanted to get married was to get the dress. This would take away that desire, and leave me free to pursue marriage for all the right reasons.

It would save me a lot of time, too, when I had to plan my wedding. With the dress taken care of, I would be free to concentrate on flower arrangements and catering.

I grabbed pen and paper, and began sketching out my dream gown.

It was an eminently sane thing to do.

“S
he'd had this bit of popcorn shell wedged beneath her gum for at least a month,” Scott said. “The tissue was inflamed, there was pus and blood oozing out—”

“For God's sake, stop it!”

“You really should get a cleaning and a checkup.”

“When I can afford it,” I said, tearing off a piece of cinnamon roll, my pinkie raised as if that could save the other fingers from getting coated in syrup.

We were sitting on stools at one of the tiny tables in a bakery at Pioneer Place, the shopping center in the center of downtown. Scott had a couple hours free, and had asked me to go clothes shopping with him. He claimed to be helpless in the men's department, and in need of my expertise.

Not that he always took my advice. In one of the bags at our feet was a sweater in an atrocious mix of earth tones, squiggled together like the matting of threads on my sewing room floor.

“I'll give you a discount,” he said.

“I don't want you looking in my mouth.”

“Then Neena. She can do it.”

“I'll think about it,” I said. I'd met Scott's dental practice partner, a petite Indian woman, once, and I'd liked her. She had a soft voice and a calm air, although she also, according to Scott, had an enthusiasm for doing work that was not absolutely necessary. It was perfectionism that led her to it, not greed.

I, however, did not want anyone messing around in my mouth at all, much less more than they had to. I still had the cold-sensitive tooth, but was doing a good job of persuading myself I didn't need to do anything about it. There was no reason to invite visitors with sharp metal tools.

“So what's going on with you and this prosecutor woman?” I asked to change the subject. “Louise said you'd been out three or four times.”

“Twice.”

“And?”

“And what? She's smart, and seems interesting, but I don't really know her yet,” he said.

“But you're going to see her again?”

“Yeah, why not?”

“You don't sound too enthusiastic,” I said.

“I don't know. It could work out. I'm just not sure yet.”

“We always know, though, don't we? Even from the beginning,” I said.

“I don't.”

“Sure you do. It's always the thing that you wondered about at first, the thing that made part of you doubt. It builds and builds until it tears the relationship apart, and you're left wondering why you just didn't listen to your gut in the first place.”

“I don't think you can know that quickly. I think there's instant attraction, but it takes a long time to know if someone is a good match,” he said.

“Maybe that's a difference between guys and women, then.”

“Have you ever fallen for someone you weren't instantly attracted to?”

I squished cinnamon roll between my fingers, thinking back on my sorry dating history. “How many guys have I ever fallen for, period?” I said, meeting his eyes. “What, maybe two? I mean really fallen for, not just dated for a while. Two guys, in nearly fifteen years of dating. That's a sad record.”

I was beginning to feel depressed. It had been less than a year since my last relationship had ended: did I have another six years to go before I was due my next allotment of love?

“Sounds about average to me.”

“How many times have you been in love?” I asked.

“Three or four times. Not that it was always mutual.”

“Aw. How could someone not love you back?”

“Beats me. They'd get free dental care for life. How could anyone pass that up?”

“And there's the manly car, too.”

“Maybe I need to work a little harder on my package,” he said.

“Your what?”

“My package. My act. The things I have to offer.”

“For God's sake, Scott. There's nothing wrong with your ‘package.' You're in shape, you're a good provider, you're clean and polite and don't have any bad habits except that obsession with Tater Tots. The lawyer
chick wants you. What makes you think there's anything wrong with your ‘package'?”

He looked into the remains of his coffee, and shrugged.

I snorted. “And they say women are the insecure ones.”

“Y
ou like to fish?”

“Huh?” I said, turning away from the giant tank of salmon. A young guy with shoulders broad enough to sleep on was, unbelievably, talking to me.

“Do you like to fish?” he asked again.

“Oh. I haven't gone since I was little. I like watching them, though. They're pretty, all silvery and undulating,” I said, stretching out the word, unnnn-ju-late-ing. Then I realized I sounded like an idiot. Could I have thought of anything more stupid to say? Maybe. The guy was gorgeous, and my IQ was dropping into my panties.

I was at the Sportsman's Expo, alone. I'd seen the ads on TV and in the newspaper, and guessed it would be prime hunting ground for men. Neither Louise nor Cassie had wanted to come with me, and I'd thought myself too shy to go alone, and had put it out of my mind, deciding there'd only be rednecks there anyway.

But then, driving back into town after an appointment, I'd passed the Expo Center and seen the parking lot full of cars, and the same insanity that had struck me in front
of The Purple Palace struck me again, and not believing I was doing it, I turned off into the lot.

I could only hope this adventure would be less embarrassing than The Purple Palace had been. Thank the merciful gods, the interview with me in the parking lot had not been part of the story that aired.

I hadn't used the vibrator yet. Just thinking about the thing brought on flashbacks, not to mention concerns about the bacteria on that clerk's hands.

Now here I was, a single female in a sea of aluminum fishing boats and forests of hunting gear. There was a trout pond for kids to fish, demonstrations of hunting dogs retrieving decoys, tent cities and enough outdoor gadgetry to make Scott a happy camper.

And now there was this guy who looked younger than me, leaning one hand against the base of the raised salmon tank and standing close enough I could smell his aftershave.

Ohhhhh, baby.

I remembered my discussion with Scott about instant attraction. I had never felt it as strongly as I was right now. What would it be like to touch those shoulders?

“I don't fish, myself. I came with some buddies of mine. They've got some good hiking gear here, though. Have you seen it?”

Obviously an invitation. “No, not yet.”

He took my arm, and I barely restrained myself from leaning against him as he pulled me toward the gear. He was so good-looking, it seemed that even having him touch my arm should send me into convulsions of sexual pleasure. It didn't, but just breathing in the scent of him was better than a vibrator.

He had dark ash hair and blue eyes, a square jaw that was a little too wide and a nose a little too flat, but my God, his body. I let him drag me over to the backpacks and boots, wool socks and hiking poles.

“Do you hike much?” he asked.

“Just day hikes, Forest Park, the gorge, sometimes Silver Falls.”

“Those trails in Forest Park, you can't really call those hiking,” he said. “You have to go out into the national forests, and I don't just mean around Mt. Hood, although there are plenty of beautiful trails there. Have you heard of the Pacific Crest Trail? I did about three hundred miles of it a couple years back, before I joined the Bureau.”

“The Bureau?” I emerged long enough from my stew of hormones to inquire into his profession. A girl had to have standards, however beautiful the body.

“I'm with the Portland Police Bureau. Does that bother you?”

Ohhhh…uniforms. “No, it doesn't bother me at all.” Big man with gun. Protector of the innocent. Catch bad guys, run down muggers and rapists, save damsels in distress.

A whole future flitted before my eyes. We'd live in a suburban home, holding summer barbecues in the backyard where a dozen hunky cops would hang out drinking beer from the bottles, their wives in white cotton tops and brightly colored capri pants, grouped together talking about the kids.

We'd have two kids of our own, and he'd be one of those dads who is great playing with them, and looks adorable feeding one a bottle, but is too much of a guy
to turn into one of those feminine fathers who gets pasty and pudgy and walks around with a towel to catch spit-up thrown over his shoulder.

Then the novelty of the baby would wear off, and he'd be too caught up in work to spend time with them until the boy hit the teens. Then there'd be shouting matches, fiery hot testosterone floating through the air, our daughter and I keeping our heads low. Family vacations would be filled with tension, more work than pleasure, creating the memories that would keep a kid from coming home for Thanksgiving once he or she was grown.

Then he'd get shot on duty, and I'd be a grieving widow living off his pension.

“Good. Some people get weird about it, you know what I mean?” he said. “They think I'm going to arrest them for something.”

“Even women?”

He grinned, showing white, wide teeth that belonged on a model. “Nah, guys mostly. Every guy has
something
he doesn't want the cops to find out about.”

“Like what?” I asked, taking the bait.

“Unpaid traffic tickets, pot in his sock drawer, a gun under the front seat of his car. Maybe he picked up a hooker once, or downloaded something he's not sure is legal from the Internet.”

“All guys can't have secrets like that,” I said, thinking of all the men I had exchanged e-mail with, and considered dating. Maybe they were all freaks, and two or three were stalking me, and I was too innocent to know it until some night they sprung out of the bushes
and attacked. “Picking up prostitutes? No one our age does that, do they?”

“You'd be surprised by the scum out there. I'll bet there are at least a dozen guys in here with outstanding warrants, and another dozen who are out on parole.”

I inched closer to him. “Really?”

“When you're a cop, you have to stay alert all the time. Some of these guys, you bust them, then you testify against them in court, and when they're convicted they swear they're going to come get you when they get out. I never know when I'm going to come across someone I put in jail.”

“What would you do?” I asked, looking around me at the men who had started to take on a sinister air.

“I'm always ready.”

“What, do you carry a gun?”

“Always.”

“You're kidding,” I said, leaning away from him now.

“No way am I kidding.”

“Where is it?” I asked, looking him over.

“Ankle holster. I have a knife, too.”

“Why?”

“You see the things I have, you want to be safe. Something happens with the gun, I want a backup.” He looked at me, and seemed to catch that he was not being reassuring. “Hey, I'm one of the good guys. You never have to worry about
me.
”

“No?”

“Hell no. Mr. Clean, that's who I am. You gotta have self-respect. You see the dirt bags out there, and you
don't want to do anything to put you in the same category.”

“You never even speed?”

“I don't get caught,” he said, flashing me another cover-boy grin.

“And you never download porn from the Internet?”

“You show me a guy with access to a computer, and I'll bet you a hundred bucks he's downloaded porn at least once. Some things you gotta accept as normal. But only a loser is going to spend his nights alone in front of the screen, getting off.”

“Not you, huh?”

“I prefer real life,” he said, looking me in the eye.

The conversation had degenerated to sexual innuendo, and it was my own fault. I knew better: you mention anything sexual, then a guy knows you're thinking about sex, and he assumes he's got a chance of getting it.

Which this guy might. He seemed to have pheromones oozing out his pores.

“I'm Pete,” he said, stopping and holding out his hand.

I shook it. “Hannah.”

“Do you have a pair of good hiking boots, Hannah?” he asked as we stopped in front of a display.

“No. I usually hike in old tennis shoes.”

“Let's find a pair. I've gotta take you hiking, on a real trail.”

I let him lead me to his favorite brand, and hold up options. Who was I to protest? But then I did want to protest, when I saw the price tag.

“A hundred and seventy-five dollars? I don't know, that's a little too much. I'm self-employed.”

“Are you? Well, how about this pair,” he said, holding up a pair of royal-blue mesh-and-suede boots. “They're lightweight. Not one hundred percent waterproof, but they should dry quickly.”

It seemed a little odd he hadn't asked me what I did for a living. Most people, you say you're self-employed, and they want to know what you do. But he was a guy, after all, and he was at least paying me attention by trying to find me a good pair of shoes.

The blue boots were only eighty dollars, which seemed a bargain considering the prices on the others, so I gave in and bought them. That new hemming machine would have to wait a little longer.

“You want to go get a bite to eat?” Pete asked. “I'm starved.”

“Sure.” The guy moved at lightning speed. A meal, vague plans to go hiking…was he always like this, or had I swept him off his feet?

Ha, ha. Yeah, right.

“You don't mind driving, do you? I came with my buds, and my car's at home.”

“No, that's fine,” I said, and a second later regretted it, realizing I'd just agreed to let a strange guy toting both a gun and a knife into my car. He must have seen the look on my face.

“Hey, if it'll make you feel better…” he said, then dug his wallet out of his pocket and showed me his badge. “I'm not a freak.”

It could be fake, but I believed him anyway. I was even more reassured when he dragged me over to his friends, who looked like clean-cut guys. They looked like the type I would have hated in high school, wearing
baseball caps with the brims bent into a perfect arch, wraparound mirrored sunglasses resting against the crowns. They were smirky, cool guys, brains for nothing but sports, but they probably weren't psychotic criminals.

Probably.

“This is Hannah, we're going to get out of here and go grab something to eat.”

“Nice to meet you, Hannah,” one of them said, and shook my hand in a surprising display of manners and apparent warmth.

The others grinned, their posing postures showing they thought they were pretty adult at their vast age of twenty-two or twenty-three, or however old they were. “Don't let Pete sweet-talk you,” one of the snotty-looking ones said. “He's one smooth dude when he wants to be.”

“Dude”?

I grinned sickly back, knowing they were thinking I was about to be Pete's latest conquest. My enthusiasm for the impromptu lunch faded.

“Hey, don't let them get to you,” Pete said, leading me toward the doors, and showing a perception I'd assumed he lacked. “They're good guys, but they need to grow up.”

“You know that I'm older than you, don't you?” I asked, feeling insecure and uncertain about all of this.

“I guessed. What are you, twenty-seven, twenty-eight?”

“Almost thirty. How old are you?”

“Twenty-five.”

Only a year older than Cassie's fresh catch. Now I
couldn't hassle her anymore. I knew I should listen to my own advice and drop the acquaintance right now, only he was
sooo
cute. And seemed so interested.

“What is it with younger guys, going out with older women?” I asked as we wound our way through the parking lot toward my car.

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah.”

“You've got your shit together. Girls my age, they're so needy, they cling to you like an octopus, you can never get them off. Older women, you're more independent.”

I wondered if that meant he thought we needed less attention. “I'd think you'd want those younger bodies,” I said. “No cellulite, no droop.”

“The bodies are good, but they don't know what to do with them. Older chicks, they know how to work it.”

“I always thought it would be fun to play Mrs. Robinson, just once,” I said, somewhat lacking in enthusiasm. “Who?”

“Never mind.”

We found my car and got in, and he fiddled with the radio, switching stations and messing with the speaker settings as I drove out of the lot. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“How about pizza? There's a place on Broadway I like.”

“Sure.” Pizza didn't seem like date food—nothing you ate with your hands and risked getting stuck in your teeth was date food, not to mention the garlic—but I
suppose pizza is what one should expect from a twenty-five-year-old.

We talked about music and movies on the drive, and books once we were at the restaurant and waiting for our food.

“I love to read,” Pete said.

“Real books? Not just magazines?”

“Oh, yeah. I'm reading
The Grapes of Wrath
right now.”

I was impressed. Maybe there was more to him than the body and the aftershave. Not that there had to be—I was still enjoying letting my eyes slip from his face to his shoulders, the same way a guy had a hard time keeping his gaze off a woman's breasts. He was wearing a blue chambray button-down shirt over a white T-shirt, and the cotton looked more than warm and soft enough to touch. My hands would just barely span the thickness of those shoulders.

Ohhh…

“Are you from around here?” he asked, breaking into my lustful musings.

“Roseburg. I've lived in Oregon all my life.”

“I'm from Ohio. I like it out here, especially the mountains. But I'm thinking of moving up to Seattle, or maybe down to San Francisco.”

“You are? Why?” I asked, faintly alarmed. I didn't want to think of this lovely piece of manhood leaving anytime soon.

“There's just not enough happening here. In my work, I mean. Not enough excitement. That's why I became a cop to begin with. I've got ADHD, Attention
Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, and I thought it would provide the right type of stimulation.”