An Untold Tale
In a completely new story, we get a look back in time to Matt and Elena’s first
date, a year before Elena will meet Stefan. Matt takes Elena to the most
expensive restaurant around, and finds that she isn’t the Ice Princess he’s
been expecting. Cuddly, romantic—the greatest danger in this story is the risk
of social humiliation.
A date . . . with Elena Gilbert!
Matt nervously opened his wallet
again and counted his cash. A ten dollar bill and six cents left over from what
the six neighbors on the cul-de-sac had given him to rake all the autumn leaves
from each yard into a giant bonfire-pile. The rest had gone into buying this
crisp new pair of casual/formal dress pants. Seven dollars and twenty cents
left over from cleaning attics and mowing lawns—the rest of that money had been
carefully invested in the jacket he was wearing right now—a letterman’s jacket
wouldn’t do, not on this occasion, and he’d heard that Elena didn’t like them.
A ten dollar bill from helping Mr. Muldoon carefully change all the light bulbs
in his house that the old gentleman couldn’t reach any longer.
Twenty-seven dollars and twenty-six
cents . . . plus . . .
He turned the wallet around and
pulled it out from its special place of honor—a concealed compartment in the
wallet’s side. And there it was, folded in half, as crisp and new-looking as
when Uncle Joe had given it to him.
A hundred dollar bill.
He could remember Uncle
Joe—Great-Uncle, really, but always called Uncle, pressing the bill into his
hand while the nurses were out of the room. “Don’t blow it on just anything,”
Uncle Joe had whispered in his grating voice. “Keep it till a special occasion
comes. You’ll know when the time is right. An’ fer God’s sake”—a pause, while
Uncle Joe had a long and racking coughing fit and Matt held him up—”don’t y’dare
spend it on cigarettes, right? Don’t you get the habit, boy, cause it’s only
going to bring you grief.”
Then Matt had gently lowered Uncle
Joe. The glass-shattering coughing was beginning and Matt wanted a nurse to
check on Uncle Joe’s oxygen saturation level. It was 85 when it should have
been 100—maybe Uncle Joe needed more oxygen.
That had been exactly two years and
two days ago. Exactly two years ago today, Uncle Joe had died.
Matt found that he was grinding one
fist into his thigh, painfully. It was hard, hard to remember how Uncle Joe had
gone.
But now, looking at the
hundred-dollar bill, all Matt could think about was the old man’s mischievous
smile and his rasping words, “You’ll know
when the time is right.” Yes, Uncle Joe had known, hadn’t he? Matt would
have laughed himself sick if Uncle Joe had told him what he’d be spending the precious money on. At just-sixteen young
Matt’s thoughts about girls and cooties had not entirely separated. Okay, so he
had been a late bloomer, a slow learner. But now he’d caught up. And he was
going to wear his new pants and an ironed shirt, a real tie that his mother had
given him last Christmas, and his brand new sports jacket to the most wonderful
event he could imagine.
Blowing over one hundred dollars in
one night with Elena Gilbert.
Elena . . . just thinking her name
made him feel as if were bathed in sunlight. She was sunlight. With that marvelous golden hair that floated halfway
down her back, with her skin, the color of apple blossoms, even after tanning
season, with her eyes like luminous, gold-flecked blue pools, and her lips . .
.
Those lips. Together with the eyes,
they could turn a guy upside down and inside out in no time. At school those
lips were always in a model’s slight pout, as if to say “Well, really! I
expected more than this!”
But Elena wouldn’t be pouting
tonight. Matt didn’t know where he’d gotten the courage—he’d as soon have
dumped an ice bucket over football Coach Simpson’s head after they’d lost a game—but he had managed to work
his way up to asking her out. And now, with Uncle Joe’s hundred-dollar bill, he
was going to take Elena Gilbert on a real date, to a real French restaurant: a
date that she’d never forget.
Matt glanced sharply at the clock.
Time to go! He certainly couldn’t be late.
“Hey, Mom! It’s quarter to seven! I’m
out of here!”
“Wait, wait, Matt!” Mrs. Honeycutt,
small and round and smelling of cookies, came at almost a run down the hall. “Going
without at least letting me see you?” she scolded, her eyes beaming. “Who
ironed that shirt, may I ask? Who heard about the sale on jackets in the first
place?”
Matt gave a mock-groan and then
stood, genuinely blushing, as she looked him over.
Finally, Mrs. Honeycutt sighed. “I
have a very handsome son. You look like your father when he was young.”
Matt could feel himself going an
even deeper red.
“Now, you’re going to get home on
time—”
“Yeah, of course, Mom.”
“You sure you’ve got enough money?”
“Yes!” Matt said. Yes! he thought jubilantly.
“I mean, this Gilbert girl, you hear
all sorts of things about her. She goes out with college boys. She expects the
moon on dates. She doesn’t have any parents to watch over her. She—”
“Mom, I don’t care who she’s been
out with; I’ve got plenty of money; and she lives with her aunt—as if it were
her fault that her parents got killed! And if I stand here another minute, I’ll
end up getting a speeding ticket!”
“Well, if you’ll just let me find my
purse, I’ll give you ten dollars, so you’re covered, just in case—”
“No time, Mom! G’night!”
And he was in the garage, smelling
the familiar smells of grease and oil and rust.
His car—well, he was sort of hoping
Elena wouldn’t look at his car. He’d hustle her into it and out of it. It was
just a junkyard collection of miscellaneous parts that Matt had somehow managed
to attach to the skeleton of his dad’s wreck and make use of as a vehicle. In
his own mind, he referred to it as “The Junk Heap.” But there was nothing he
could do about it, so he was just hoped Elena wouldn’t see too much of it in
the darkness. He had the way to Chez
Amaury memorized, so he wouldn’t have to turn on the map light.
Oh my God!
This was her street. He was here
already! With a sort of gasping gulp he couldn’t help, Matt loosened his collar
a little as he turned. He felt as if he were drowning.
Okay. Gulp. Outside her house. Off
with the ignition. Pull out the keys.
Okay. Gulp. Keys in his pocket.
Outside the front door.
Okay—gasp—finger on the doorbell.
Matt spent about a minute getting his nerve up and then he forced himself to
press the little round button.
Distant chimes . . .
And then he was looking at a thin,
rather plain woman, who gave him a bright smile and said, “You must be Elena’s
new date. Come in, come in. She’s still upstairs, you know these young girls. .
.”
The woman seemed as hospitable and
kind as his own mom, and she did everything she could to make him comfortable.
But eventually there was a pause in the conversation that couldn’t be ignored.
“Y-you’re Elena’s Aunt Judith, aren’t
you?” Matt managed.
“Yes! Oh, don’t tell me I forgot to
introduce myself again! Yes, you can just go ahead and call me Aunt Judith like
everyone else. Here, I’ll get you some chips or something while you’re waiting.
These young girls, you know. EH-LAY-NAAA!”
She hurried out as Matt cringed and resolutely refrained from covering his
ears.
“Here you go; some Fritos,” Aunt
Judith was bustling in with a bowl. But Matt’s eyes weren’t on her. They were
on the vision in blue descending the stairs.
Matt had heard of something so
stunning it knocked your eyes out, but he’d never imagined that he’d actually
see something like that metaphor in the flesh. And yet here it was, in front of
him, walking down the staircase.
Elena was an angel.
That was what this dress somehow
hinted at. It was . . . well, Matt didn’t know the right names for such things,
but it was strapless and sort of followed her curves at the top. The color was
a pale silvery-blue that made him think of moonlight on snow. The top was
embroidered with some kind of clear beadwork, and there was a silvery flower
low at one shoulder. The bottom of the dress was layers and layers of some see-
through material—chiffon?—and the layers foamed and bubbled almost down to
Elena’s knees. Her long gorgeous legs looked even longer and more gorgeous than
usual, and she was wearing adorable silver high heeled shoes with flowers on
them that matched her dress.
Elena smiled at him as she came down
the stairs and for just a moment Matt thought about all the other guys she had
smiled at that way. Coming down those stairs all dressed up was a regular
occasion for her, smiling down at a guy was a everyday thing. But then Matt put
the thought out of his mind. He and Elena were going to have a wonderful
evening together. Tonight that smile was just for him.
“Listen, I want you to make sure you
keep warm—” Aunt Judith was beginning, when Elena, never taking her eyes off
his, said, “Hello, Matt.”
Her voice was sweet, with just a
trace of a southern accent that lingered in your ears. It made everything she
said sound like a secret she was only telling you.
Something stuck in Matt’s throat. He
couldn’t get a word out, not while he was so close to her, so close that he
could smell her perfume. She smelled like roses in summer, and lavender from an
old dowry chest. And also like. . . another scent that must just be her natural
fragrance, eau de Elena. Matt was
glad he’d scraped the dirt and grease out of his fingernails with a toothbrush
and scrubbed the rest of himself lobster red in an effort to get rid of the
smells of old car and musty attic.
But he still hadn’t spoken. And then
somehow, old Uncle Joe, who seemed to live in Matt’s back pocket, gave him a
wallop and the words, “You look great, Elena,” came out in a rush.
She did look great. Her skin was
like magnolia petals, but always with that faint tone of rose over her
cheekbones. She wasn’t wearing any makeup that Matt could see—but how could you
know these days with girls? Her eyelashes were long and thick and dark and they
looked almost too heavy for her eyelids—as if, Matt admitted to himself, she
was slightly bored with what she saw. But the eyes that they framed were alive
with an eager flame. They really were blue
with little splashes of pure gold here and there in them. Her lips,
though—yeah, she was wearing lipstick. He didn’t know what name it went by but
it should have been called Invitation to Criminal Attack.
Suddenly Matt froze. There was a
sound of giggling nearby—multiple sounds of giggling—and they weren’t coming
from Elena. He turned slightly and saw, yes, the rest of the Top Four, Robert
E. Lee Highs’s most sought-after girls. Elena’s best friends. They looked like
a rainbow.
Dark-haired Meredith Sulez, wearing
something comfy-looking in lavender, glanced over at him and smiled. Caroline
Forbes, more formally dressed in turquoise—maybe she was going on a date
too?—smirked and tossed her bronze-colored head. And dainty, diminutive Bonnie McCullough,
the cute redhead in pale green, hid her mouth with her fingers, still giggling.
Their job, obviously, was to put him
through the gauntlet.
“Hey, girls,”—that was Caroline, “he
looks like a jumpy one to me.” Meredith: “Then he can’t take her out. Nobody
jumps Elena—”
Caroline: “I think I’ll go with him instead. He and I go
way back!”
Meredith: “Why should you have him? He’s
cute! And a quarterback, too. Although he hasn’t filled out yet.”
Bonnie: “He has blond hair and blue eyes. Just like a fairy tale.”
Caroline: “I say we kidnap him and
keep him for ourselves.”
Meredith: “It all depends on how
well he pleads for it.”
Pleads? Matt thought. What are they
going to make me do, get on my knees?
Elena, who had calmly been putting
on a silvery-blue bolero jacket and checking her face in a small compact
mirror, now snapped the mirror shut.
“They’re a nuisance,” she said to
Matt, nodding at the three girls hanging over the stairs. “But it’s easiest if
you just ask their permission to take me out. That’s what they want, but if we
don’t hurry we’ll be late. Try to make it flowery, too; they like that.”
Flowery? Make a flowery speech in
front of three of the harshest critics on guys that humankind had ever
produced? While Elena was listening in?
Matt cleared his throat, choked, and
felt a sharp slap from behind. Uncle Joe was helping him again. He opened his
mouth with no idea of what was going to say. What came out was:
“O fairest blossoms of the night . .
. help me in my desperate plight!
Please let me steal this flower
rare—to watch her with devoted care,
I need to beg your kind approval
Before I risk her quick removal.”
There was a profound silence. At
last Caroline shook back her bronze hair and said, “I suppose you had it all
made up before. That halfback Terry Watson told you. Or that other guy on the
football team—what’shisname—”
“No, they didn’t,” Matt said,
getting his courage from two places: his back pocket, and his long association
with Caroline Forbes. “Nobody told me and I don’t plan to tell anybody else.
But if we don’t get out of here, now,
we’re going to be late. So can I take her or not?”
To his surprise all the girls began
laughing and clapping. “We say: yes!” Meredith cried, and then they were all
yelling it, and Bonnie threw him a kiss.
“Just one thing,” Aunt Judith said. “Please
tell me where you’re going tonight, in case—well, you know.”
“Of course,” Matt said, without a
glance up at the girls. “It’s Chez Amaury.”
There was a rustle above him,
murmurings in all different cadences, the gist of which was, “Wow!”
Elena said softly, “That’s one of my
favorites.”
One of her favorites. Matt felt
himself shrink—then, with a kick in the butt from Uncle Joe, straightened up
and felt better. At least he’d picked a good restaurant.
And then, before Matt knew what was
happening, he was being hustled out the door. And then he was alone on the
porch . . . with Elena.
“I’m sorry about that circus,” she
said in her smooth, gentle voice, looking up at him like a little girl. “But
they insist on doing it to all new boys. It’s really juvenile, but we started
it back in junior high. Yours was the best poem I’ve ever heard.”
Who could be mad at her? Matt
escorted her to the car and opened the passenger door for her as quickly as he
could and got her settled in. Then he ran around to his side of The Junk Heap
and got in himself.
“Oh,” Elena said after he’d made a
turn away from town, “are we going somewhere before the restaurant?” She spoke
without even seeming to see—or smell—anything unusual about the vehicle.
“Yeah, our first stop—that’s a
secret. I think we may just make it by seven-thirty. I hope you like it.”
For the first time, Elena laughed
out loud, glancing at him sideways. And the laughter was warm and genuine and
like a soothing balm to all Matt’s senses. The glance was quick, intelligent
and merry. “You’re just full of surprises,” Elena said, and to his surprise, she slipped a slender,
cool hand in his.
Matt couldn’t explain the sensation
then. It was simply like lightning flowing up from her cool fingers into his
palm and up his arm and then on upward until it fried his brain with a million
volts.
It was the best thing that had ever
happened to him.
It was also lucky that his car knew
the way to the flower shop all by itself, because his brain definitely wasn’t
there to direct it. Elena talked without chattering, and without leaving any
awkward pauses when he had to gulp in air. She talked about decorating for the
Fall Fling, told an amusing story about how, while trying to disentangle the
colored spotlights for the Fling, she’d ended up caught in the rafters, and
finished up with a genuinely funny joke that wasn’t dirty or a putdown of any
culture, race or sex.
Matt Honeycutt fell in love.
He hadn’t realized he hadn’t been in
love before: only infatuated. Of course anybody could become infatuated with
Elena, the way that bees were drawn to flowers. She sent out pheromones; she
conformed with the perfect image of the perfect girl that was somehow woven
into every Caucasian boy’s genes, or else that was propagandized into them by
the time they were three years old. Elena’s beauty was perfect, absolutely
without flaw. But if that was as far as you went, you weren’t talking about love.
Love was when you got to know the
girl behind the mask—as he was sure he was getting to do now. Love was when you
saw that under the mask was an innocent, merry, amusing young girl, all of
which he saw clearly when she spoke. Maybe, just maybe she was a little bit
stuck on herself, but how could she not be, the way everyone treated her? Matt
didn’t think that was such a bad thing. Matt wanted to pamper her.
“Okay,” he said, “We’re coming up to
the first stop. Shut your eyes.”
Elena laughed. The very sound of her
voice was like birdsong. Matt got out of the car.
And then his heart started
pounding—and not in a good way. The door to The Flowery was closed and its
windows were dark. He’d planned everything out beforehand, had even paid
beforehand for a single, white rose. He was going to give it to Elena, with one
single piece of feathery fern behind it and a spray of baby’s breath in front
of it—and he’d even asked for it to be tied with a blue bow!
And now—the door wouldn’t open under
his wrenching hand. He’d wasted too much time. He’d blown it. The florists had
gone, and they hadn’t even left his rose in a box by the door.
Matt didn’t know how he got the
courage to get into the car again.
But Elena was smiling at him, her
eyes open.
“Elena, I’m sorry—I—just—”
“It’s not your fault—it’s mine for
making you late. Oh, Matt, I’m so sorry! But this isn’t a dance. You didn’t
need to get me flowers.”
Matt opened his mouth to tell the
story of the white rose, then shut it again. It was agony, how badly he wanted
to tell her, but wouldn’t that make him seem even more pathetic? In the end he
gritted his teeth and said in a voice he tried to make light,
“Oh, it was just something I was
going to get for you. Never mind. Maybe I’ll have another chance tonight.”
“Are we at least going to get there on
time now?”
Matt looked at the clock. “Yeah,
just barely. Make sure you’re strapped in.”
And then Matt had a
once-in-a-lifetime experience: seeing Elena do her comfort act. At first, she
said nothing, did nothing, just sat a little forward, smiling to show she liked
the song that was playing. And then, when he managed to gulp the ball of
disappointment down his throat and swallow it, he realized that she was looking
at him and smiling. And he couldn’t
help smiling back.
“Hey, we are going to be on time,” he said, and he realized that he was
saying it happily. The night had just begun. There might be one of those
strolling flower sellers at Chez Amaury. He’d
get Elena a whole sweetheart bouquet. How could he be unhappy when the
incomparable Elena Gilbert was with him?
They wheeled into the parking lot at
7:59 p.m., seatbelts already unfastened as they cruised up to the valet stand.
Matt hurriedly handed his key to a valet driver, and tried to turn away before
he could see the man’s reaction to Matt’s car.
He didn’t turn fast enough. But he
saw no revulsion, no sneer of disgust on the valet’s face. Instead he saw
fascination. Following the valet driver’s gaze, he saw a slim, swaying figure
in blue waiting for him.
That was when Matt knew that his
luck had changed. Elena had chosen to wear just the bolero jacket that matched
her stunning little dress. She must be freezing but she looked gorgeous. He
slipped around her and held the door open for her and they both entered the
dim, plush interior of Chez Amaury.
The employee who led them to their
booth was snooty. He smiled graciously and a little wonderingly upon Elena, but
when his gaze swung around to Matt he merely sniffed and looked sarcastic.
It didn’t matter. They were in a
bubble of their own little world together, Matt and Elena, and everything was
right. Matt had never been any good at talking to girls. He got by by being a
champion listener. But somehow Elena drew words right out of him without
seeming to try to. He liked to talk to her. She was fun. Her words . . .
sparkled.
And she had a will of steel behind
those lapis eyes and that magnolia blossom skin. When the waiter rather
deliberately gave them their large menus, and one small one, murmuring something
about alcohol and I.D.s, Elena let loose a volley of French which had the
effect of sending the man creeping—almost slinking—away.
“I’m studying French for this next
summer,” Elena told him, cheerfully watching the waiter depart. “I can already
insult people in it pretty well. I asked him why they’d kicked him out of
France where everyone our age drinks wine.”
“What’s happening this summer?” Matt
asked.
“I’m going to France. It’s not an
exchange thing; it’s just something I want to do. To stave off boredom, I
guess.” She gave him a smile that seemed to turn the whole world into dazzle. “I
hate to be bored.”
Don’t be boring. Don’t be boring.
The command thudded through Matt’s brain as Elena began to tell a story, while
his higher thought processes were in a whirl of confusion.
She’s so beautiful. . . delicate,
like fine china. . . her hair like old gold in the darkened restaurant . . .
and by candlelight her eyes are almost violet—with gold splattered across them.
Jeez, I can even smell her perfume in this tiny booth—I guess they gave us the
worst that they had . . . but it’s still pretty impressive to me.
Elena finished the story and began
laughing. He laughed with her, unable to help it. Her laugh wasn’t shrill; it
wasn’t sharp; it was as melodious as a brook winding its way in and out of a
forest glade. Wow, check it out, that was almost poetry, Matt thought. Should
he tell her he’d written a whole long real poem about her at home? Nah, he’d
bet dozens of other guys had said that to her.
“But I’ve been doing all the
talking,” Elena said, with a little side glance as if to say, And you’ve been doing all the staring. “Tell
me about you.”
“M-me? Well—I’m just an average guy.”
“Average guy! Quarterback and MVP
for the football team. Tell me how it feels when you win a game out there, with
everyone screaming and cheering.”
“Um. . . “ In all his years of
playing football, nobody had ever asked him this. “Well—” There was something
wrong with him; he was going to be honest. “Uh, well . . . Actually, really it
feels a lot like this!”
“Like eating French bread in a
restaurant?”
“Oh. . . “ Matt hadn’t even realized
that there was any bread. He’d completely missed seeing it put down. Now he
broke off a hunk and spread it lavishly with butter, suddenly remembering that
he hadn’t eaten any lunch.
Elena watched him in amusement over
a glass of sparkling water.
“I would have thought you football
guys weren’t allowed to eat
butter,”
she said, twinkling her eyes at him. Yeah, that was it. She could make them
twinkle when she wanted! What a skill!
“It’s one of the four food groups,”
he informed her earnestly, hoping she wouldn’t think he was crazy.. “Sugar,
salt, fat and chocolate.”
“—and chocolate!” her voice chimed
in with his as he finished. They both laughed again together.
This was so easy. It was like being
with your favorite relative, only better. You could say anything, no matter how
dumb, and it wouldn’t matter. She’d turn it into something witty. He’d never
felt like this with any girl.
The waiter came back, but Elena
waved him off with a languid hand. She wasn’t intimidated by the guy in the
slightest. Matt added “courage” to the list of her virtues.
Suddenly he got goosebumps. This
year he’d had to take a drama class to fill out his schedule, and they were
performing “Two Gentlemen of Verona.” Matt just couldn’t get his mind into the
play. Maybe it was because the actress for Sylvia was Caroline Forbes, who in
fourth grade had done things like giving herself Indian burns and then running
to tell the teacher Matt had done it. But right now, looking at Elena, words
from the play—word- perfect—came into his mind:
Who
is Sylvia? what is she,
That
all our swains commend her?
Holy,
fair, and wise is she;
The
heaven such grace did lend her . . .
Who’s Elena? he thought. What is
she? That everyone commends her? Holy, fair, and wise is she, the heavens such
grace did lend her . . .
Oh crap, now I’m getting really sentimental, Matt thought. That
was awful. And from what he’d heard, Elena wasn’t too holy, either, but she
sure looked like an angel.
“Matt, can you tell me something?”
Elena asked, her finger tracing a tiny flaw in the tablecloth.
Matt’s heart jumped. He’d missed the
last few minutes of conversation. “Sure, what?” he said.
“What is it about boys and cars? Why
are they so into them?”
For a moment Matt flushed. Just
thinking of his ancient, battered, skeleton of a car made him wonder if she was
making fun of him.
But she wasn’t. Her face was
perfectly serious. She seemed to have forgotten what kind of car he had and was
asking a general question about all guys.
“Well”—he had an impulse to rub the
back of his neck but didn’t. “Cars are. . . the ideal car. . . um . . .”
“I wondered if it might somehow go
back to the days of horses,” Elena said, tilting her head.
Suddenly neurons lit up in Matt’s
brain. “Hey—that’s—well, that could be it—for me, at least. I spent a couple of
years on a farm when I was a kid—you know, just a rinky-dink, little farm, but
it had horses. And behind the stable where its
horses were kept, was a stable of thoroughbred horses, racing horse, right?”
She nodded and he sighed.
“I just loved to watch those
thoroughbreds moving. They were the most beautiful things you could imagine—for
animals, I mean,” he added hastily.
“How were they beautiful?”
“Well—just—I don’t know. They were
just incredible. They had these delicate long legs, and these heads that were
always up in the air, with these manes always tossing and flowing. They moved
in a way I just can’t describe—sort of always lazily, but you could just tell they had a lot of pent-up energy
inside them, too. As if they wanted to
be running as fast as they could, forever.” Matt reached for his Coke, suddenly
realizing that he’d been talking for a long time. “Sorry, got a little carried
away there. What I meant is that horses are speed, and so are cars. And I guess
that’s one reason I like to think about them.”
“Don’t apologize. I thought that was
really fascinating,” Elena said, and he realized that she was telling the
truth, that she was interested. She’d
been holding a bite of bread in her hand, forgotten.
“Thanks for listening,” Matt said. “They
. . . sure were pretty.” His voice got stuck somewhere in his throat as he
gazed at the beautiful girl just in front of him.
“So speed is a part of it,” Elena
said, smiling at him, her cheeks glowing pink in the candlelight.
“Speed, yeah. Like when I get to
drive a better car than The Junk Heap out there—like a convertible, and I put
down the roof, and I drive really fast on a straightaway or around little
sudden hilltop curves. Sometimes, somehow, you feel as if you’re part of the car and its part of you. It’s
like flying.”
Matt stopped, suddenly, overcome
with confusion. Somehow in his excitement he had picked up Elena’s hand and was
squeezing it. bread and all. He felt himself flushing and he was just going to
put it back where he’d got it, when Elena squeezed his fingers warmly and then
took it back herself. Thank God the bread hadn’t been buttered.
“So there anything more about
ʻreally good cars’?” she asked, almost teasing, but never breaking eye-contact
with him.
“Well, there’s—there’s something”—he had to break eye contact with her to say this—”there’s something sort
of physical about driving a car that lets you feel every bump in the road. When
you’re part of it—and it’s just you out there feeling the air and the ground—it’s
sort of—physical, you know? Sort of—sexy.”
He was almost afraid to look at her,
then. But rippling laughter made him flush and then two warm hands took hold of
his. “Why, Matthew Honeycutt, you’re blushing! But”—in a suddenly serious
voice—”I think I know what you mean. You mean something I’ve felt with cars—but
I’ve never been able to describe.”
She went on talking, but Matt wasn’t
even in the room anymore. He was circling the solar system somewhere around the
planet Neptune and comets and asteroids were sailing around with him, bonking
him on the head every so often.
When he came back she was laughing
about a parasailing experience she’d had once when the sailors had accidentally
landed her on the sand and not in the water. “But before that,” she said. “It
was perfect. Just the rushing wind, with the inlet big and blue underneath me,
and the feeling of traveling—fast—through the air. Almost like being a bird. I
wish I had wings.”
“Me too!” Matt blurted. If his heart
could have been pounding any harder, it would have started pounding. But it was
at its maximum limit already. “I’d love to go parasailing. That must have been
incredible.” He looked at his plate. “Tell the truth, I think the most
incredible thing that’s happened to me is
. . . tonight.”
Immediately, Elena’s mocking
laughter cut him down to size—but that wasn’t happening. Elena wasn’t laughing.
She was looking down at her round white plate and blushing. Then she raised her
head and Matt could have sworn that there was a sheen of unshed tears in her
eyes.
But she wagged her finger at him in
a scholarly way. “Don’t be silly, Matt. What about that game against the
Bullfinches, when you threw a 50-yard touchdown pass? Now was that incredible
or was that incredible?”
Matt goggled at her. “You like football?”
“Well, you’ve got me there. I don’t
like all the injuries, and I don’t like most jocks. But my dad—he was a tight
end with Clemson, and he helped them win the Orange Bowl. So I just had to learn about it. Dad has a lot of
records, you know, most passes caught in a game, most passes caught in a
season, most touchdowns caught in a season, most touchdowns caught in a career—”
Matt found himself staring. “Why
didn’t he go pro? Or did he?”
“No, he started a business instead.
But he left me his football instincts.”
Matt made himself laugh. He didn’t
know how he was feeling. His heart was soaring in twelve different directions
at once. But somehow he made himself look mock-stern and waved a finger back at
her. “Well, I bet you don’t know about my
real moment of glory,” he said. “We were playing the Ridgemont Cougers and
the score was tied and I was desperate. The clock was running down and suddenly
I had this crazy, grandiose idea, and I—”
“Ran to the right to fake giving the
ball to Greg Fleisch, the halfback,” Elena interrupted smoothly. “But you kept
the ball yourself and ran it—and ran it—and ran it for an amazing touchdown
just before four Cougers tackled you at once.”
“Yeah; they broke my collarbone,
too,” Matt said, grinning. “But I didn’t even feel it. I was soaring somewhere
over the clouds.”
“People were screaming and kissing
and throwing things,” Elena said. “Even the Cougers’ fans went crazy. One of
them grabbed me and tried to French kiss me.”
And I bet his mind wasn’t on the game, Matt thought, and surprised himself by
saying, “Tell me his name and I’ll break his jaw for him.”
“Oh, I already kicked him in the
shin,” Elena said calmly. “Backward, so I could scrape all the way down the
shinbone with my heel.” She added the last with a sweet little smile that a
Spanish Inquisitor—Torquemada himself, maybe—would have envied.
“Well, I can see I’d better keep you
from getting mad at me,” Matt said, and Elena laughed again, showing the even
white pearls of her teeth.
“I don’t think,” she said, “that anybody could stay mad at you for long.”
Matt didn’t know what to say. All
those idiots, he was thinking. All
those losers who only want to go on
dates with her because of her looks, are just missing the whole damn ballgame.
Sure, she’s a knock-out, but more important, she’s like . . . the world’s
perfect person: smart, and witty, and fun, and . . . well, just perfect. The
way she makes everything easy, and how she makes you feel so good about
yourself, and . . .
Matt had a crazy impulse to go down
on one knee and ask her to marry him right then and there.
Then he burst into laughter at the
absurdness of it all. He was just going to say something when someone behind
him coughed with malice aforethought.
“Were Monsieur et Mademoiselle
zinking of ordering at zis point?” the waiter ground out, obviously irritated.
“I guess it’s about time to look at
our menus,” Elena said, putting her hand over her mouth to not-quite hide a
giggle.
“We’ll be ready in a few minutes,”
Matt said, in his most princely dismissive tones.
The waiter almost stomped off.
Matt looked at Elena. She looked at
him over her curled-up hand and then they were both laughing hysterically,
fighting for air.
“Poor guy,” Matt said.
“Oh, well,” Elena raised her
eyebrows indifferently. “He is just a
waiter, after all. Waiting is what he’s paid to do.”
This was the first time Matt had
seen the ʻIce princess” side of Elena Gilbert, and he didn’t know what he
thought about it. But, he figured, if Elena were really perfect, she wouldn’t
be human. And if anybody at Robert E. Lee had a right to have an attitude like
that, Elena Gilbert was that person.
“Shall we?” he said and handed her a
menu.
“By all means,” Elena said in a
mock-19th century gracious manner, and they opened the menus.
Despite all his preparation, the
prices still took Matt’s breath away. A New York steak was $39. But if Elena
ordered a steak, he could have the chicken, which was only $23. That would be
$62. The entrees came with vegetables, but there was also the appetizer to
consider. He could suggest they share the spinach salad, which was only $10.
That made $72. Then even if she wanted a desert, he’d have plenty to indulge
her—but wait, there were the drinks. He’d had two; she’d had one. That
sparkling water was $7 a bottle—each Coke was $2. And the tax. And the tip. And
the valet’s tip.
Well, he’d just have to drink
regular water from now on, and hope that maybe Elena didn’t want both an
appetizer and a dessert.
“What do you want to start with?”
Elena whispered. “I usually like half a Caesar’s salad. They make it at your
table here. It’s really good.”
Matt nodded vigorously so he wouldn’t
have to look her in the eye. At least it was only one Caesar’s, at fifteen
dollars. Hey, wait! He knew. There was some kind of smoked salmon on the
appetizers list. He could have it for his entrée—Matt knew you could do
that—and it would only be six dollars. He’d just make himself a sandwich when
he got home. Everything was going to be all right.
The waiter was back, looking
snootier than ever.
Matt spoke up, “I—I mean we—we—we’d
each like half—”
“We’d like to split a Caesar’s,”
Elena said calmly, barely glancing at the waiter. She smiled into Matt’s eyes. “Right?”
“That’s right,” Matt said heartily.
When the waiter had stalked off,
Elena’s smile changed, became a mischievous grin. “He’s not going to forget us
in a hurry,” she said. The light from a chandelier shone over her left
shoulder, framing her in rainbow light.
Matt wished he had some way to
capture the image forever. There was something about Elena—as if she were
sparkling at the edges—that he’d never seen in a girl before. It was as if
light constantly danced around her, as if sometime she might just disappear
into the light. Hell, he thought, I can just “get a stomach-ache” and not be
able to order any entrée, he thought.
Then I’ll recover in time for dessert or something. But she can have the
lobster for all I care!
Now he was getting embarrassed,
though. No one was saying anything.
“Do you have a pet?” Elena asked
suddenly.
“Um.” Matt’s first impulse was to
check if there were dog hairs on his jacket or something. Then he looked up to
find her smiling into his eyes again.
“Well, I had an old Labrador
Retriever,” he said, slowly, “but she got cancer and—well that was about six
months ago.”
“Oh, Matt! What was her name?”
“Britches,” he admitted, feeling
himself flush. “I named her when I was four. I have absolutely no idea what I
was trying to say.”
“I think Britches is a perfectly
respectable name.” Elena said. She touched his hand lightly, with one finger. A
feeling like slow, sweet molasses, crept out from her touch and into his veins,
sustaining him. He wished she wouldn’t take her finger away.
She didn’t. She said, “We keep
losing cats. Margaret brings them home half-starved, Aunt Judith slaves over
them and then they run around the neighborhood—” She made a slight, meaningful
gesture.
Matt winced. He had a low tolerance
for furry animals getting squashed, but he had to be macho about this. “Cat au
vin?” he suggested, miming pouring a glass of wine.
Elena’s eyes wept but her mouth
gurgled. “As in—a cat’s that been run over by a . . . yeah, that’s about the
size of it.”
Matt couldn’t help but laugh, and
then he told the story about how one year Britches had put her paws on the
counter and picked up a half- eaten Thanksgiving turkey in her mouth and
wandered into the family room holding it up like a trophy. Elena laughed and
laughed at that. She laughed as the waiter made up a Caesar’s salad beside
their table too, and told a story about Snowball, who loved to sleep in boxes
or in open drawers, and who had been accidentally shut inside one when she was
a kitten.
“The noises she made!” Elena
exclaimed. Matt laughed with her. He would have thought you had to sit at
attention and watch the salad being tossed, but no—Elena clearly had seen
enough of such sideshows. She accepted her plate with a cheerful “This looks
great!” and a waving away of the Fresh Ground Pepper Shaker, as if she’d done
this all her life.
Maybe she had. Maybe, going out with
so many other boys . . . but what difference did that make? Tonight she was his.
A girl was walking around the room
selling little sweetheart bouquets and single roses. Elena talked to Matt
without once giving the girl a glance. There was no reason to do it—it was a
stupid impulse—but something inside Matt burst as he saw the girl, who was
dressed like a gypsy, turn away.
“Wait,” he said. “I’d like to get that.” He gently touched one rose that
was in almost full bloom. It was mostly white but the inner petals were touched
with pink and the outer petals with a color that was almost golden. It reminded
him of Elena: her skin, her cheeks, her hair.
“Very nice; perfect choice,” the
gypsy girl said. “A genuine Florentine rose such as Botticelli painted. And
only fourteen dollars.” She must have seen Matt’s look of shock—the single rose
he’d bought at the florist’s had been only five dollars. The gypsy added
quickly, “And of course it comes with a love fortune—for each of you.”
Elena was opening her mouth, and
Matt could tell that she was going to send the flower seller away. But he
instantly said, “That’s great!” and she shut her mouth, and looked a little
sober for a moment before smiling.
“Thank you so much,” she said taking
the rose, while Matt wondered suddenly if he should have bought her a whole
bouquet—he could see the sign on the basket now, and they were only a dollar
more because the rose in them was a miniature—or maybe an all white rose to go
with her outfit. God, he was dumb. Why not just buy her a red rose and make the
colors clash completely?
“One fresh, long-stemmed Florentine
rose,” the gypsy girl said “and a double love fortune. Show me your palms, both
of you.
Flushing, Matt did as she asked.
Then he was caught with a case of the snickers. He knew he couldn’t laugh,
either roaring or giggling—but he almost couldn’t hold it in. Oh, God, he
thought, don’t let me fart! Not now, while the gypsy lady was poring over their
out-thrust palms, going, “Hmm,” and “I zee,” and “But yez, of course,” in a
fake French accent.
Finally, he sneaked a peek at Elena and
from her hand over her mouth and her crinkled up eyes he saw that she was
having the same problem, and that immediately made it twice as bad.
Finally, the gypsy lady stopped
muttering and spoke to Elena. “You will have nearly a year of sunshine. Then I
see a darkening—there will be danger. And in the end, you will prevail over the
darkness and shine anew. Beware of dark young men and of old bridges.”
Elena bowed gravely in her seat. “Thank
you.”
“And you,” the woman said to Matt,
still looking at his palm, “you have found your lady love, half-child and
half-woman. Now that you have fallen under her spell, nothing will tear you
apart from her. But I see a time of darkness of the heart for you, too, before
you move on. You will always be ready to put your love’s interest ahead of your
own.”
“Um, thanks,” Matt said, wondering
if she expected him to tip her, but she said, “For potions, love or hex, visit
me in Heron, at my shop ʻLove and Roses.’”
She handed Matt a card and went
ambling on with her bouquets.
And then Elena and Matt could laugh
as hysterically as they wanted, which was quite a bit. Matt only calmed down
when he remembered he probably should have gotten the white rose, to go with
Elena’s outfit. He felt dumb. But Elena was still laughing.
“Meredith would have taken her to
pieces,” Elena gasped finally. “ʻA time of darkness before you move on . . . ‘ But
the rose. . . it’s the prettiest I’ve ever seen.”
“Really?” Matt felt a rush of
passionate relief that came out as rather silly laughter. “Um, better than a
white one?”
“Of course.” Elena stroked her cheek
with the bloom. “I’ve never seen another one like it.”
“I’m so glad. It, well, it reminds
me of you.”
“Why, Matt Honeycutt! You flatterer!”
Elena tapped him gently with the rose, and then began caressing her lips with
it.
Matt could feel another flush
beginning, but this one was for two reasons. Normally, there would have been a
third, an embarrassment about how to word what he needed to say, but his need
to figure things out was so urgent that he simply said, “Would you excuse me a
minute, please?” and scarcely waiting for her gracious nod, he hurried off in
the direction of the bar to find a restroom.
The men’s room was right down a
little corridor. Matt went in and took a stall, pulled his wallet out and began
to calculate frantically.
Hey, relax, he told himself before
he started. You’ve got plenty. Just don’t do any more impulsive things like the
rose, and don’t plan on giving big tips.
Now, if she had, say the chicken and
wild mushroom piccatta—he felt he had the menu memorized by now—that would be
$25. And then he could have the salmon cakes appetizer, which was only $12. And
then they could even have desert and coffee, too, if he cut the tips to the
bare minimum.
“Get back out there and entertain
yer girl,” he swore he could hear Uncle Joe saying, while at the same time the
feeling of a boot to the backside seemed to come from his back pocket. And it
was good advice. The only problem was that it made him need to take a look at
the hundred- dollar bill, to touch it for good luck, and to gaze at it for
comfort.
Shaking his head at himself, he
twisted the wallet sideways so as to expose the secret compartment and felt in
it.
And felt in it.
And felt frantically in it and
around it, managing to almost turn the wallet inside out.
At last he had to let the words
surface in his brain.
The hundred-dollar bill wasn’t
there.
It was gone.
It
was gone.
Where? When? He’d last seen it when
he was playing with his wallet at home, day-dreaming about the date. He knew he’d
seen it then. What could have happened to it?
Desperately, he searched the rest of
his wallet. Nothing, His other money was there; he hadn’t been robbed, but . .
. no hundred-dollar bill.
Matt spent the next ten minutes in
the most frantic and most intimate skin search of his life . . . on himself. He
looked everywhere. Could he have slipped it into a sock? Could it have somehow
got taken in with his laundry? No. Other compartments, anywhere? No.
Finally he had to admit that nothing
else but the bare fact mattered. The hundred was gone.
And the terrible thing was that it
hadn’t had to happen this way. There was a rumor that Elena Gilbert never went
out if she didn’t pay half. She’d actually confirmed that to him when he’d
gotten up the courage to stammer out the words, “Will you go out with me next
Saturday?” He remembered exactly how her blue eyes had lit up and how she’d
said, “Yes, but I always go Dutch.” And he, idiot of idiots, had puffed out his
chest and said, “Not this time, you won’t.”
Hoist on his own petard. Whatever
that meant.
Now, what to do about it? God, what could he do? Most of his buddies were
practically broke in autumn—besides it was a half hour drive for them. His
mom—he glanced at his watch and winced. It was after 9:00—no wonder that waiter
was so mad—and his mom would be asleep by now. Her shift at the bakery started
early.
Damn! He could almost cry. This
was—how was he going to walk up to Elena and tell her that he didn’t have the
money to buy her dinner when they were
already there eating it? Oh, God, she wouldn’t speak to him for the rest of
his life. And he’d be arrested, locked up as a conman . . . or whatever you
called it . . .
He couldn’t do it.
But he had to.
It just had to be done.
And telling himself that, the way a
soldier on the night of his very first battle might, he made himself march back
to the table. There he made himself sit down facing Elena.
She was bubbling with good cheer. “Monsieur
Garςon came by but I sent him away. He’s going to be back in—” She suddenly stopped, her whole manner
changing. “Matt, what happened?”
Matt opened his mouth but nothing
came out, not even the dry brown moth he imagined being inside. What could he
do? Did they even let you wash dishes to make up for it if you couldn’t pay for
a meal? Or was that just an urban legend? He couldn’t imagine Elena, in her
sparkling moonlight-blue dress, washing dishes.
What if he just let the meal
progress to its conclusion, and then tried to have a word with the manager in
private? Things were tight around the Honeycutt household right now, but when
weren’t they? Surely, his mom would lend him the money in the morning? But one
thought of how the waiter’s face would look and that plan bit the dust.
Besides, Elena would be humiliated. Elena! His perfect precious angel would be—
“Matt, you’re sick. You’re freezing. We need to call a doctor.”
Matt blinked, the world slowly
coming into focus. He could just imagine how he must look: blue-white in the
face, with icy hands and a constant tremor going through him. Hell, maybe that
would work. Maybe if he acted really sick—
“I lost the money,” he heard himself
telling Elena.
“Matt, you’re delirious.”
“No, it’s the truth.” He found
himself pouring out the story of his Uncle Joe to her, of the way he’d worked
to make this date perfect, and of the horror it had become. He watched as Elena’s
face took on a different look—he couldn’t tell if it was a good look or a bad
look. It was a look of quiet, lonely, suffering.
Finally, he finished the story.
He stared at the spotless white
tablecloth.
And then he heard the most
incredible sound. He had to turn his head to make sure he had heard it.
Elena was laughing.
Laughing at him? No, laughing with him, her head tilted to the side
and tears of sympathy in her eyes.
“Oh, Matt, what you’ve been through.
What you’ve done just to make all this happen! But you can stop worrying now. I
should have plenty to tide us over.” She scooted and picked up a little purse
that matched her blue outfit. “Here, let me see—oh!” Suddenly she was biting
her lip in chagrin. “I forgot; I blew it all on this purse and some new makeup.
Oh, I’m sorry.”
That “I’m sorry” was enough to rip a hole in Matt’s side and hull him.
But then again, he heard melodious, mischievous laughter. He looked up dully,
not really caring what happened to him anymore.
“Matt, it’s okay.” Under the table a
warm hand found one of his and gave it a quick squeeze. “It’s all going to be
fine. Now listen to me, because I’ve got a plan—”
Years later he learned to be wary of
that phrase “I’ve got a plan.” But
this was the first time he’d heard it. So he listened. And his mouth dropped
open. And then kept opening and shutting, like a goldfish’s.
“You really think we can do that?”
“I know we can, because of this blank space here.” She pointed at the
menu. He stared.
Then, slowly, he looked up at her
and smiled.
“Okay, now wipe your face off,
because you look as if you’ve just run a marathon. You lost your napkin? Here
take mine.”
It had to be his imagination, but
Matt actually thought he could smell her fragrance on the napkin. He wiped
himself down just in time for the waiter to return. Elena immediately entwined
her fingers with Matt’s on the tablecloth.
“Have Monsieur et Mademoiselle
vinally decided to eat here tonight?” the waiter asked, heavily, looking at
Elena, who nodded, “Mademoiselle?”
“ʻMadame,’ si’l vous plait,” Elena said sweetly. “And I’d like a chocolate
soufflé, with two spoons, merci.”
“Mademoiselle—” The waiter looked
about to explode.
“ ʻMadame’ “ Elena reminded him.
“Madame, you cannot—cannot—” The
waiter’s face was brick-red.
“But we can,” Elena answered in her
sweetest voice. She pointed to the menu. “There’s nothing that says there’s a
minimum charge per customer.”
“That,” the waiter said as if he
were trying to keep his haughty attitude, but was blowing up like a balloon
ready to hit the ceiling “is because—is because—because ze clientele we serve knows better without being
told!”
Elena put her free fingers to her
lips. “Monsieur, people are starting to stare.”
The waiter controlled himself,
obviously gathering all the dignity at his command.
“And monsieur?” he said in a voice
like ice, turning to Matt.
“Oh, um. me? I’d like, um, two
scoops of vanilla ice cream. And two spoons,” Matt found himself saying, and
curbing equal urges to flee and to burst into hysterical guffawing. “Oh—and two
cups of coffee.”
“You want—”
“Two scoops of vanilla ice cream.”
Matt was afraid he the waiter would burst.
“C’est impossible . . .” murmured
the waiter, but he wrote something on his pad. The crisis seemed to be over
now. The man had gone from red to pale, and he managed to turn away from them
without detonating. “It weel take ʻalf an hour for ze soufflé to cook,” he
said, with his back to him. “Meanwhile . . . Bon appétit!”
Once he was gone, Matt and Elena
collapsed into out-of-control laughter.
“Oh, God, did you see his face?” Elena gasped. “The poor man—we’ll
have to give him all we have left for a tip . . .”
“Tip, nothing. He was rude to you.
As far as I’m concerned he gets no tip, and I’m gonna ask him to ʻstep outside’
if it happens again.”
“Oh, Matt. You really are a knight
in shining armor. But can I tell you something? My favorite restaurant is Hot
Doggles—yes, the hotdog place back in Fell’s Church. And my favorite thing to
do on a date—now, I don’t want to sound spooky—but I like to walk around the
graveyard or the Old Woods in the moonlight. I—I don’t really care about fancy
stuff. If I like a guy”—and here her eyes seemed to be saying something Matt
could hardly let himself believe—“I’d rather just go to his place and listen to
music, or bring him over to eat dinner with the family. The rest is just—” She
made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Just for the idiots I have to put up
with sometimes. The jocks who need jockstraps for their brains.” She tossed her
head, so that her beautiful, waving. golden hair flew from side to side.
Matt opened his mouth and again
nothing came out. There was no Uncle Joe to kick him in the behind.
But somehow there was. In spite of
the missing bill he felt a kick, and words just dropped out of his mouth, “If I’d
known you were that kind of girl, I’d have asked you out a long time ago,” he
blurted. “I thought you were—some kind of pampered princess.”
The next minute he could have bitten
his tongue off. But Elena wasn’t mad. Instead she was saying sadly, “Lots of
guys think that. I guess I am, really. I know what I like when I see it. And I
want what I want when I want it.” And once again her eyes said something to
him. And this time he couldn’t help but believe it. And he knew that his eyes
were saying something back to hers, too.
“So that’s why you never asked me
out. I guess it’s up to me to set the record straight.” She sat up and smiled
again, this time brilliantly, “And when I take you out on our next three dates—”
“Three dates!”
She nodded solemnly. “They’ll be
dates at places like Hot Doggles or something like that—have you ever tried
Midge’s, right at Main Street and Hodge? It’s great—and we’ll talk and just
have fun. When spring comes we’ll go on picnics. Have you ever flown a kite? I
know it’s for kids, but it’s really exciting to run and run and suddenly feel
the wind bite. Then you let go.” Her expression went dreamy. “Sometimes I don’t
want to let go. I want to go up with the kite.”
“Like skydiving,” Matt said,
watching her face eagerly. He loved to look at her when her cheeks flamed and
her blue eyes took fire.
“Oh, yes, like skydiving. Wouldn’t
that be fun to do together? Or a balloon ride. . . I hear they have those over
in Heron. We’d have to save up, though—in winter we can make snow people!”
“Snow ʻpeople’?”
“Oh, that’s Meredith. She says we
always say ʻmen’ when we mean ʻmen and women’ so we’re all used to using
ʻpeople’ for everything by now. I want you to meet them all: Meredith, and
Bonnie, and Caroline.” She held up a finger sternly. “No dating them though.
Bonnie’s got a crush on you. But I have first dibs.”
Matt didn’t know where he was going.
He didn’t care, either, because it felt as if he were headed straight for
Heaven.
“I’ve known Caroline for years and
years,” he heard himself say. “I thought you were like her, only, like,
multiplied by ten.” Then he saw her glance at him and wanted to clap his hand
over his mouth.
“Well, sometimes I am,” Elena said. “You’ll
just have to find out in what ways, won’t you?”
Just then the dessert arrived. Matt
watched as the waiter solemnly placed a chocolate something-or-other in front
of Elena—and two spoons, and two round balls of vanilla ice cream by his
place—and two spoons. Then he poured them coffee, put down a little folder with
the bill inside it, and turned on his heel as if he never wanted to see them
again. He didn’t even say ʻBon appétit.’”
“Did we make it?” Elena whispered as
Matt frantically calculated the tips for waiter and valet.
“With a dollar to spare!” he
whispered back, and again they broke out into laughter together.
They each wanted to let the other
one have the first bite of chocolate soufflé. Finally to save the ice cream
that was melting, Matt took a heaping dessert spoonful, dabbed it in one of the
melting ice cream balls and smiled at Elena. Then, while Elena opened her mouth
to ask if it was good he swiftly brought the loaded spoon to her mouth and
pushed. Elena had only a fraction of a second to decide. Either eat the dessert
or get soufflé all over her silvery-blue dress. She made the right decision,
almost too late and by the time large drops of brownish white were falling off
the spoon it was safely over a napkin that Matt was holding with his other
hand.
“I can be stubborn, too,” Matt said.
And then, hoping she wasn’t mad, “Is it good?”
“Delithious,” she said a little
indistinctly, finishing up with a sip of water and a last dab. The, before Matt
knew what was happening an object loomed out of nowhere at him and cold steel
touched his teeth. “Open wide,” a
sweet voice chimed in his ears and he quickly opened as wide as he could to
take in a huge sticky bite of delicious hot chocolatey-goo mixed with sweet
cool vanilla ice cream.
He was sure that he looked like an
idiot as he sat there chewing on the giant mouthful, but it was so good, and
Elena looked so pleased with herself, leaning forward as she did to scoop
dollops of gloop off his chin as carefully as a barber.
“S’wonderful,” he managed, swabbing
his face with the only napkin in sight.
“It is, isn’t it?” Elena twinkled
back. Then her face looked serious. “No, it’s not.”
“It’s not?” Matt’s heart almost
stopped.
“It’s . . . perfect!” And she
laughed, showing white and shining teeth despite the chocolate. Matt could only
hope that his own relieved grin was as free of goo.
“You know what?” Elena said, then,
looking him deeply in the eyes.
“What?” Matt barely breathed.
“We’d better eat all this quick
before it melts.”
And so they did, laughing and
feeding each other an occasional bite. The dessert was wonderful, but more
wonderful was the look in Elena’s eyes every time Matt looked up. Of course, he
had a hard time believing the look, so he had to look up frequently. This
resulted in a number of small spills of chocolate—fortunately none on the
silver-blue dress.
They were just drinking the last of
their coffee when a shadow loomed over Matt’s left shoulder. What do you want
now? I paid the bill, Matt thought, but it wasn’t the waiter.
It was an elderly couple, perhaps in
their sixties. Oh, no, God! Matt thought. They’re going to ruin everything by
complaining about the noise, by complaining about how long Matt and Elena had
stayed, or by complaining about . . . something.
“We’ve been watching you two young
lovebirds,” the man said, in a slightly quavering voice that made Matt readjust
his age by maybe ten years up. “And I have to say—”
“—it brought us both right back to
our first date again,” the old woman said in a fluty voice that made Matt
readjust again up to maybe late seventies or even eighties. Normally he liked
old people, loved to listen to their stories, loved to see their old attics
full of memoirs. But now he was gut-sure that this couple would say something
that would take all the shimmer off the date, like rubbing a butterfly’s wings
with dirty fingers.
“You two obviously have something
very special,” the woman fluted, smiling at Elena. “You’re a very lovely young
woman.”
Elena blushed charmingly and said
nothing.
“And you, young man,” said the
gentleman, “obviously have money to burn.”
Matt could feel his face turn red.
He’d known they’d spoil it. They were making fun of him.
“Or at least to step on, anyway.”
The old man nodded toward Matt’s shoe. “Do you realize you’ve got a bill stuck
there?”
Everything went very sluggish and
hazy. Slowly, with a dark mist obscuring most of his vision, Matt pulled up one
foot and then the other, looking at the soles.
And there, on the bottom of his
right foot, was the hundred-dollar bill.
It was almost like a message—a
joke—from old Uncle Joe. You think I’d
really leave ya in the lurch, kid? Nah. But the way to this girl’s heart isn’t
through showerin’ her with fripperies—yes, Uncle Joe actually said that: “showerin’
her with fripperies.” It’s through showin’
her yer own heart. What, now are you gonna pout? Just look at her!
Matt looked through the dimness at
Elena’s shining face.
“I—I’m so sorry,” he managed. “It
must have fallen out when I first opened the wallet and then I stepped on it
and then I couldn’t see it—but—everything that I put you through—”
“Matt, isn’t it wonderful!” Elena
was saying. There were tears in her eyes. “And thank you, sir, for noticing it
before we got outside and it got all muddy.”
“To tell you the truth, I’d have
mentioned it before,” the old gentleman whispered. “But you were managing so
well yourselves—we were in the booth right here”—he indicated a booth behind
him—“that I couldn’t bring myself to spoil the dream.”
To
spoil the dream.
And that was what this had been in
reality—a dream date.
Matt looked at Elena and Elena
looked back and then she laughed and hugged the old man. “Thank you,” she said.
“Thank you for not spoiling it. I’ve been here to this restaurant”—Elena
shrugged—“twenty times or so, but tonight was the best.”
“And I say that any boy who can wow
a girl while feeding her only bread, lettuce and chocolate must have something
special.” The old man chuckled, looking at Elena appreciatively. “Hang on to
this one, my dear.”
“Thank you,” Elena said again, and
she added, “I think I will.”
And she took Matt’s hand and held on
to it all the time it took to ask the valet driver if he had change for one
hundred dollars—and only let go to hug the driver when he said soberly after
looking at The Junk Heap, “This time’s on me.”
