“I love cream cheese. Cream cheese with chives, cream cheese with strawberries, garlic cream cheese.” River lets his tongue loll from his mouth for a few seconds.
I cringe, not at his tongue, but at the flavor mention. “Garlic is unacceptable.”
“As what? As a garnish? A flavor? A spice?”
“As anything. It’s unacceptable as literally anything,” I say as he cruises up Fillmore on the way to the bridge.
“So you won’t kiss someone with garlic breath?”
“Not if I can help it.”
River mimes checking off an item on a list. “Note to self: no garlic.”
My heart speeds up. My mind jumps too many steps ahead. To kissing, to fresh breath, to how his lips might taste. So I do the thing I do well. Needle him. “Anyway, the retching was for your podcasts.”
He arches a questioning brow. “My podcasts? What’s wrong with my podcasts? Are they red velvet podcasts to you?”
“Yes, they are. Red velvet and raisins.”
River’s jaw drops. “I’m just learning this now? You equate my podcast taste to . . . raisins? The mutant form of grapes?”
I nod several times. “Because you listen to all those murder shows.”
“You don’t like murder podcasts?” he asks, as if I said I don’t like chocolate or champagne, when I love both.
Clearly.
“I don’t like murder,” I correct as we reach the Golden Gate Bridge.
River cracks up. “No one likes murder, Owen.” He tilts his head, takes a beat, then raises a finger. “Wait. Hold on. Do murderers?” He curls both hands tighter around the wheel as we cruise across the bridge, concentration etched in his brow perhaps from the driving, or perhaps from the questions he’s asking himself. “They must, right? At least, serial killers do. They probably dig murder. They probably relish murder. I mean, the mind of a serial killer is a fascinating place. But even so, do they actually love murder? Can they love anything? Even something evil? Or is it about their own twisted makeup? Hmmm. So much to think about.”
Exasperated, I toss up my hands. “And this is why I hate your podcasts. They make you think about murder, and talk about murder, and wonder about murder. I don’t want to think about murder. I also don’t want to think about politics, or the national debt, or global warming, or news, for that matter. So I don’t listen to those podcasts either.”
“I like news. And politics.” He taps his temple. “But I like you too. And I get you now, cutie. You want podcasts about cats or cake or maybe even something quirky and fascinating. Well, don’t you worry. I’ll find something perfect for you. Also, I said that as P-U-R-R-F-E-C-T, since you love cats.”
“You’re ridiculous,” I say, rolling my eyes, but laughing too much as he hands me his phone.
I take it.
“Just look in Pocketcast. I downloaded some stuff for you.”
I turn to River, study his face. “You did?”
“This surprises you?”
It sure does. “A little,” I say, but it excites me too. The idea that he picked something for me in advance, that he researched something I might like. Was he in his apartment looking up podcasts late last night? Did he check them out on his hike?
I’ll take any of the above options.
Like I have a spring in my step, I open the app, scrolling through his endless list of true crime and unsolved murder podcasts.
“There. At the bottom. Found three just for you,” River says, sounding pleased, but a touch nervous too. Almost like he’s worried if I’ll like them. Or that he wants me to like them.
It’s possible I’m reading way too much into this moment.
But I also don’t care. I want to read the world into it, and so does my hummingbird-fast-beating heart as I slide my thumb to the bottom of the app.
A stupid grin spreads across my face as I find the trio. I try, truly I do, to rein in the grin. But it’s futile. “How to Tell if Your Cat is a Certified Asshole. This is a podcast?”
“That’s an important life lesson. I thought we could get to the bottom of Goldilocks’s issues.”
“Newsflash—she’s a cat. Ergo, she’s an asshole.”
We cruise past the seaside town of Sausalito, mid-November sunlight reflecting off the crisp blue of Richardson Bay. “Maybe she’s just picky. Certifiably picky, to be precise,” River says.
I click to the next one. “Everything You Wanted to Know About Cake But Were Afraid to Ask,” I read, then scratch my chin. “I dunno. Is there that much I want to know about the subject?”
“Admit it. You have tons of questions swirling in your pretty head about cake. Can I have it for breakfast tomorrow? Does it taste better with milk or coffee? Will cake marry me someday?”
I roll my eyes. “Please. Cake and I have been promised to each other for years. Obviously, I’m marrying cake, but . . . shhhh,” I say, whispering. “I’ll have a thing on the side with coffee.”