“Scavenger hunt first,” she said quickly, eyes glittering with excitement, “That sounds like fun.”
“Deal,” I agree, then reach into my jacket pocket to retrieve the scavenger hunt list I’d found online.
I unfolded the sheet of paper and showed it to her. “Hmm…” she mused as she looked it over, “Okay, so how do we do this? Maybe we each get five minutes to try and find something that fits each clue here?” she suggests.
“We could do it that way, or I printed another copy, we could each take one, take…I don’t know, thirty minutes, then meet back up?”
“That works. What other rules should there be? I’m thinking no smartphones, for sure.”
“Agreed,” I nod, “We could end it in five minutes with a little bit of googling.”
She glances over the paper. “Oh, one thing, this clue,” she points.
I glance at it. The prompt is to find a book featuring a character whose first name is your own middle name. “Yeah, what about it?”
“I actually don’t have a middle name,” she says sheepishly.
“Oh, no biggie. We can skip that one. Or you can use my middle name,” I offer.
“Which is?”
“Antonio.”
“Hmm, Sofia Antonio Reyes has a decent ring to it,” she joked.
I laughed. “It actually doesn’t sound too bad,” I admit, “Although you’d probably be better off doing Antonia, with an a.”
“Yeah, sure, but where’s the fun in that?”
I grin. “Well, come on, let’s get to the hunt,” I say, and get out of the car.
I hastily sweep around the front of the car to her side so I can open her door for her again, offering her a hand to help her up.
She takes it and rises to her feet, smiling and blushing a little, and I can tell the little acts of chivalry are charming her. It’s not the only reason I do it. The primary reason is because I can still hear my mother’s voice yelling at me in the back of my mind if I don’t, like a guilt-trip car alarm. She had gone to great lengths to teach me “the right way to treat a lady.” Although I’m not above doing it for a male date, either.
I lead Sofia into the bookstore. “Okay,” I tell her, “Let’s both set timers and meet…” I glance around, then select and point to an area near the café, “Right there in a half hour?”
She nods, and we both pull out our phones and set 30-minute timers. “On the count of three?” she asks, looking up at me.
Those golden eyes are glimmering with excitement, and I can feel it rolling off of her in waves. I’m glad she’s not just kind of tolerating the idea, but that she’s really, genuinely looking forward to it.
“You count it down,” I tell her, smiling.
“Okay. You ready?”
I nod.
“One…two…three!”
In unison, we hit the start button on our timers, and in a flash. Sofia darts away in search of a book for the first prompt. I glance down at it and head off to look for a copy of a book in English and its Spanish translated version.
There’s a part of me that’s kind of kicking myself for choosing an activity that splits us up like this, but I rationalize it by reminding myself of how popular movie dates are, and it’s not like those involve massive amounts of interaction with the other person.
And over the next 30 minutes, I still see plenty of Sofia. The bookstore isn’t tiny or anything, but it’s small enough that I run into her at a number of the shelves.
Each time I do, she flashes me a grin and makes a big show of hiding her answers and taunting me with playfully competitive smack-talk that I’m happy to dish right back at her.
It’s a blast, even though I’m almost positive that I’m losing. I can hardly focus on the task at hand, honestly, and more often than anything, I find myself looking for her, rather than a solution for the next clue.
The half hour flies by faster than I’m expecting, and when I hear the quiet beep of the timer, I head for the meeting place by the café. Sofia’s already waiting for me, bouncing on the balls of her feet.
“How’d you do?” she asks immediately when I approach.
“Well enough to wipe the floor with you,” I tease her with a big cocky grin.
“In your dreams,” she counters, “What do you think, we could grab a table, order some food, and tally up our scores?”
“Perfect,” I agree.
And we do just that. The scavenger hunt has a maximum possible score of 60, and after tallying up what we each found, I end with a whopping 38 points to Sofia’s 54.
“So, uh, remind me again,” she says, as a server drops off our orders, “Who was wiping the floor with who again?”
“I’m a big enough man to admit when I’ve been bested,” I laugh, “You kicked my ass.”
“Those decade ones were harder than I was expecting,” she tells me, “When I was looking for something from the 40’s, I literally found like ten different books that were published in 1939.”
“Well, you did better on those than I did, I got like two of the decade ones,” I laugh.
“Since I found a book with the middle name prompt and you didn’t, does that mean I get to keep the name now? Claim the ‘Antonio’ throne now that I’ve toppled the king?” she jokes.
I laugh. “I guess so. Does that make you a fairy?”
She furrows her brow in confusion. “Do you…know a lot of fairies named Antonio?”
This cracks me up all over again. “No, the whole thing about never giving a fairy your name because they’ll steal it or something? I don’t know, maybe I’m fucking up my folklore.”
“Oh,” she laughs in a mixture of amusement and embarrassment, “I was wondering if there was some kind of pop culture reference I was missing, like a character from one of those Disney Tinker Bell movies maybe.”
“I don’t know what it says about me that you think I’ve watched cartoon fairy movies that even you haven’t seen,” I muse.
“Hey, no judgement,” she says, holding up her hands, “I’ve got an uncle who’s a fan of all things animated who says they’re cute,” she shrugs, “Especially the one with the pirate, apparently. And besides, you teach fourth graders, so it would stand to reason that you might have seen more kid-friendly movies than I have.”
“Valid point,” I admit, “And I actually have seen the pirate one, I’ve got a seven-year-old niece.”