Crushed by Laura McNeal Page B

Audrey was afraid that using only the space heater would make the house—and, indirectly, her—seem cold and stingy.
    Wickham had said “sixish,” but the doorbell rang at 5:55, and though Audrey came to the door dressed, she was still drying her hair. “Hello, you,” he said.
    As she smiled and said hello, she knew she was beaming and wished she weren’t. “You’re early,” she said, and gave her hair a final toweling. “I just got out of the shower.”
    Wickham laughed and, after glancing around to be sure no one else was present, drawled, “Then I should’ve come a few minutes earlier.”
    Audrey felt her beaming turn to blushing. “Where’re your books?” she said, and then, seeing no car under the portico, “Where’d you park?”
    â€œForgot my book and I got a ride,” he said. He smiled at her for a second or two. “I know what you’re thinking.”
    What Audrey was thinking was how she wished her hair weren’t wet, and how amazing it was that a boy this handsome had knocked on her door, and how strange it was that he hadn’t brought his book if he was planning on studying. What she said was, “Okay, what am I thinking?”
    â€œYou’re thinking I forgot the promised vittles.”
    Audrey laughed. “Nope. I’d forgotten the vittles completely.” Then she said, “It’s okay, I can make soup and sandwiches.”
    He leaned forward, and she smelled the sugary smell again. For one preposterous, fleeting second, Audrey thought he was going to kiss her. He didn’t. He simply said, “The vittles is on their way.”
    She laughed again. “They is?”
    â€œThey is.”
    â€œWhat kind of vittles is they that can be on their way?”
    Wickham made a low laugh. “The kind that leave Little Dragon in little cartons.”
    This is easy,
Audrey thought.
I’m here with wet hair talking to
Wickham Hill with nobody in the house, and it’s easy.
    As they walked down the warm hallway toward the warm dining room, Wickham Hill said, “So what
were
you thinking?”
    She pointed him into the dining room. “When?”
    â€œWhen I thought you were worried I’d forgotten the vittles.”
    â€œI don’t remember,” Audrey said, “other than wishing my hair was dry.”
    He reached out, touched a strand of her damp hair, and said, “I liked that it was wet.” He was looking at her hair, and then he was looking at her eyes. “You have nice hair.”
    In the next moment, while he held her with his eyes, Audrey inhaled the sweet, sugary smell. Was it cookies? She wished it were Christmas already, and that snowflakes were piling up on the hedges and trees. She made herself break away from his gaze, opened her book to the chapter on Schrödinger’s Cat, and said, “Maybe we should get started.”
    Audrey and Wickham’s first hours together slipped easily by. He said he had a little headache, so they put off talking about Schrödinger’s Cat until they’d eaten cashew chicken and considered each other’s fortunes (his was “Untended friendships bear hard fruit,” and hers was “Protect that which is yours and yours only”). Audrey tried to discuss physics then, but he kept slipping amiably to other topics, and they spent most of their time talking.
    He asked about her parents, and after she’d talked awhile about them (her father worked all the time, she said, and she only really remembered her mother from photographs), she asked about his family (he was an only child, his mother was a nurse and his father was a doctor, but they were “kind of separated” right now). He was still talking when the phone rang. Audrey looked at her watch and said, “Oh my gosh.” It was already nine o’clock.
    She picked up the phone and said, “Hi, you guys,” and then,