“Okay. I confess about the game. I was just being lazy trying to get to know you. Something tells me you’re a challenge.”
“Something tells me the same about you.”
He smiled again. The tenseness of the moment passed, and he talked about safer subjects like the places he had been, the time he had been in Italy. I kept him busy answering questions about places.
“Doesn’t sound like your family does much traveling,” he said.
“My father’s always been a workaholic, and my mother’s not fond of traveling.”
I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t ask me if I had any brothers or sisters. Claudia and Marcy, and therefore all the girls in my class and my dorm, believed I didn’t. If he really was seeking information about me, which was what he revealed, he would just assume that was true, too.
“Are you really up for going to a movie?” he asked. He looked at his watch. “I’m afraid we might violate the curfew.”
“That’s okay. This was wonderful. Thank you.”
“I’d like to show you something else, a sort of visual dessert.”
“As long as I don’t have to eat another thing,” I said, looking down at my plate. “There’s nothing to take back to the dorm.”
“Didn’t think there would be. No, nothing more to eat.”
He signaled for the check. Mario, although still very busy, took a moment to say good night to us. I saw him give Troy the high sign about me and smiled to myself as we left.
Troy was unusually quiet when we were in his car and driving off.
“Thank you,” I said again. “That was truly special.”
“I’m glad you liked it. I was afraid it wasn’t posh enough.”
“Posh?”
“It’s a British expression. It kind of means high-class. Comes from the cabins used by the upper class on voyages from England to India. The most expensive cabins were port side on the way out and starboard on the way home, Port Out Starboard Home, POSH.”
“I bet you’d be great at trivia.”
“Au contraire, mon frére. I hate anything trivial. So now you see that I am a bit of a snob.”
“You’re not a snob, Troy. You’re just too serious,” I said.
He looked at me quickly. I was sure I had made him angry, maybe angry enough to end our night. “Do you expect me to take that seriously?” he countered. I started to smile with relief when he added, “Especially from you? Remember? Birds of a feather?”
“You said that. I didn’t.”
“But you believe it.”
“Oh, you’re so self-confident.”
“Does it bother you?”
I thought for a moment. “It’s . . .”
“Too soon to tell. I know,” he said, smiling and shaking his head.
He made another turn, and now we were on a road that really looked like the road not taken. After a short while, the macadam disappeared, and it became a hard dirt road.
“Where are we going?” I couldn’t hide the trembling in my voice.
“Just a minute more,” he said, and we started up an incline.