Alex, Approximately
Page 44

I slide into the passenger side of Porter’s van and smooth the hem of my vintage-patterned skirt as he speeds out of the alley, making all the rubber sea monsters on his dash bobble comically. It’s sunny and clear, a beautiful summer day, and we haven’t said all that much to each other. We’re both nervous. At least, I know I am, and I’m pretty sure he is too, because he’s exhaling deeply an awful lot and not his usual chatty self. He hasn’t told me where we’re going yet, only that I should be prepared to do some strolling. “It’s air-conditioned, don’t worry. I wouldn’t subject you to Hotbox temperatures on your day off,” he told me yesterday in the parking lot after work. I’ve been in the dark about everything else.
“You really aren’t going to ask where we’re going?” he finally says when we’re headed south on Pacific Coast Highway, following the ocean past the boardwalk and the Cave.
“I like a good mystery.” I have a couple of flashbacks of our last trip this way, when we were looking for my lost scooter, but I’m not going to bring that up. Instead, I’ve been trying to solve the puzzle on my own, deducing things from the direction we’re headed and the time we’re leaving—not exactly primo romantic date time—and what he’s wearing, which is a pair of jeans with an untucked wine-colored shirt that fits obscenely well across his chest. I can’t stop sneaking glances at his arms. Because, let’s face it, they are great arms. Great arms that lead to great hands . . . and I wish those hands were touching me right now.
Once you’ve had an amazing kiss, can you die if you don’t get another one? Because I feel like that’s what’s happening to me. Maybe I like him way more than he likes me. God, that thought makes me feel off balance and a little queasy. Or maybe I don’t like him at all. Maybe our relationship is being held together by the thrill of a good quarrel and raw sexual attraction, and my initial instincts about him were right. I hope this date wasn’t a mistake.
“I’m glad you trust me,” he says, relaxing for the first time today and showing me a hint of that beautiful smile of his. “Since we’ve got some miles ahead of us, let’s test your musical tastes.”
“Oh, brother.” We both break out our phones, and he lets me scroll through his music library, finding we have little in common there—big surprise. But, and I’m not sure why this is, I’m almost glad about it. Because we spend the next half hour debating the merits of the last few eras of music history—disagreeing about almost everything—and it’s . . . fun.
Really fun.
“This is going to sound weird,” I say after some thought, “but I think we’re compatible arguers.”
He considers this for a moment. “You enjoy hating me.”
“I don’t hate you. If I hated you, things would be much simpler, believe me. I just think we’re good at arguing with each other. Maybe it’s because we respect each other’s point of view, even if we don’t agree.”
“Maybe it’s because we like the other person so much, we’re trying our best to convince them to come around to our way of thinking.”
I snort. “You think I like you that much, huh?”
He holds his palms upward on the steering wheel, gesturing toward the open road in front of us. “I’ve planned this for an entire week like a complete loser. Who’s the one who’s whipped here?”
Warmth spreads up my neck and cheeks. I quickly stare out the passenger window and hope my hair shields the rest as I listen to him exhale heavily again. I’m happy and embarrassed at the same time when I think about how much trouble he went to arranging this. He argued with Cavadini for both of us to get the day off. And I wonder who’s covering for him at the surf shop—his sister?
“I was beginning to worry you’d changed your mind about me this week,” I say to the window.
I feel a tug on my sleeve. Porter pulls my hand across the seat and offers me a tentative, unsteady smile that I return. It feels so good to finally touch him again, and now I’m the one exhaling deeply. I’m still nervous, but it’s a different kind of jitters. Before, my anxiety was singing solo. Now all this weird anticipation and jumbled excitement has added some strange harmonies into the mix. I’m a barbershop quartet basket case.
It takes us almost an hour to get to our destination, which is the closest nearby city, Monterey. It’s about the same size as Coronado Cove, but it has a different feel. Fewer surfers, more boats and bicycles. Porter points out a few things, shows me Cannery Row, which was made famous by local legend John Steinbeck, in the book of the same name. We didn’t read that in school—it was The Grapes of Wrath—but Porter’s read everything by Steinbeck, which surprises me, until he starts talking about tidal pools and a marine biologist named Ed Ricketts who was immortalized in Steinbeck’s book as a character named Doc. Then it starts to make sense.
We park a few blocks from the beach near a Spanish-style building with a terra-cotta roof and a stone whale sculpture out front. The sign on the wall reads: PACIFIC GROVE MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY.
Porter clips his keys onto a leather strap that dangles from his belt against his hip as we stand across the street. He’s examining the blank look on my face, which I quickly try to disguise. “I know this may seem strange. You’re thinking, Hey, we work in a museum all day long. Why would we want to come here?”
“I wasn’t thinking that.” Maybe just a tiny bit. “I like museums.”
And I really, really do.
“That morning on the Lifts you told me you wanted to work in a real museum one day,” he says softly, shoving his hands in his pockets.
I nod, suddenly more than a little embarrassed and wishing I hadn’t shared so much of myself with him—yet, at the same time, touched that he remembered.
“Anyway, this isn’t really part of the date. We have an appointment.”
“An appointment,” I repeat, confused.
“Just . . . come on.”
The building doesn’t look all that big from the outside, and when we head past Sandy the Whale through the front doors and Porter pays the optional meager entrance fee, it doesn’t pull a Doctor Who trick and look any bigger on the inside, either. But it’s two stories and brightly lit. And it’s packed full of natural specimens collected in glass cases—stuffed birds and animals, artifacts, dried plants, rocks—all from central California. And even though natural history really isn’t my thing, it has an old-school museum vibe that immediately makes me fall in love with it.
Yeah, totally digging this.
“My parents used to take Lana and me here when we were kids,” Porter tells me as we stroll into the main room and pause in front of an eight-foot-tall brown bear that stands into the second story.
“It’s fantastic,” I say, craning my neck to glance at the bear’s face. And before I realize how geeky I sound, I add, “The lighting is excellent.”
He’s pleased. “Unlike the Cave, all this stuff is the real deal. And the docents are cool. They know their stuff.” He glances at his surf watch. “We’re a little early. We’ve got half an hour, which is almost enough time to do a quickie tour of the whole museum, if you’re interested, that is.”
“Half an hour until our appointment with . . . ?” I ask.