“I wouldn’t actually know,” Daniel mumbles.
Somehow, we keep moving forward. I’m becoming a true disaster zone over here and he hasn’t turned around yet. He’s probably just waiting for the first intersection he sees where he can do a legal U-turn. I might as well keep going, digging myself in deeper and deeper, because why not? Why not make the evening a full-fledged disaster before it even starts because I’ve been waiting for freaking forever to get these things off my chest.
“Do you ever thrift? I know that I’m rich so I don’t have to, but I do. I love it. I love vintage clothes, and the vintage stores get picked over and honestly, some of the best ways to discover some really cool things that can be made over or glammed up or left just the way they are because they’re astounding and magnificent, is to shop thrift. Anyway, if you do, you’d know that thousands and thousands of hours of people’s artistry just ends up getting donated or going in the trash, because you have to assume that for every donation that people are throwing as much or more away, or that there are people out there who would just chuck it because they couldn’t be bothered with donations. I’ve seen paintings, things people have sewn like quilts, woodworking, beading- that kind of thing, just sitting on shelves in thrift stores for little to money and it’s so heartbreaking. No one appreciates handmade things anymore. It’s exhausting, actually, to think about the time and love and the many, many hours that went into something and then it just gets abandoned. Left behind. Chucked out. Do people not think about those things? The people who do the chucking or other people? It makes my heart hurt because I feel like everything in this world is that way. People too. People get left behind. People get to be unwanted. Pets. Pets too. God, I follow so many rescues and the things that they put on there every single day is just heart wrenching. I know this is coming from someone who owns a boutique. I’m just a cog in the machine that I used to hate so much. This is who I am now. Someone who contributes to the problems of the world, who encourages people to throw things out and buy something better, just because they can. I’m shallow. I’m- I’m all the things I wrote about never wanting to be.”
Daniel grunts. He keeps driving and he grunts.
“I’m, uh- I’m done now,” I inform him placidly and I sag against the seat. “Sorry. I was reading all those things I wrote, and I guess I’m just- disappointed in myself a little. About other things too. This past year hasn’t been easy, and I guess I’ve become more than a little disillusioned.” I look askance at him, out from under lowered lids. My eyes are burning and my sinuses are prickling, and the one thing I’m not going to do after that outburst is go into full on melt down mode. “I understand if you want to take me home now and forget this ever happened. You didn’t sign up to take me out knowing I was going to get all philosophical and wild and uh- not normal on you first thing. If you want to bail while you still can, I get it.”
Daniel stops at yet another light, and when he looks over me and blinks those insanely long male lashes, his eyes are dark and soft and liquid. I could fall into them and drown in their dark depths, just about literally. They remind me of the night sky, deep, rich, black velvet. He drums one finger against the steering wheel like he’s keeping time to a song that isn’t actually playing. I can’t stop looking at his hands. I know it’s shameful, because I should at least have the decency to look him in the eye after that rant, but I keep staring at the veins in the back of his big, powerful hands.
It’s not at all appropriate, but the whole mouth dry, panties wet thing gets even worse.
For the love of hot dogs and bonfires and smores, I’m a mess.
“Not bailing,” Daniel says, and that’s it. Just those two words in his deep, elegant voice that booms through me like he’s yelling in the middle of a big, echoey canyon, not speaking softly right across from me in the car.
I narrow my eyes and turn them on him suspiciously, but all I find is genuine good humor dancing in his dark eyes, his sinful lips- which I suppose I have to class as sinful because I know how talented they are, but they’re also far too perfectly bow shaped for a man which is just way too erotic and unfair- turned up in a half smile. He’s all good humor and easy joy. I wonder if he’s found the sweet spot in the midst of all life’s bullshit and that’s why he’s able to smile so easily in the face of it.