“So, I’m going to call you by your name, and you’re going to call me ma’am like we’re onDownton Abbyor something?”
“I don’t know that show.”
“We’re the same age, Theo.”
“No, ma’am, we’re not.” He was probably ten years older than me, which meant he was still young. We were both young. And now we were alone in the front seat of this car. As far as intimacy with a man, this would have ranked pretty high if Ronan hadn’t come along and blown the curve by putting his mouth on me.
“Can I pay you to call me Poppy?” I asked.
He laughed and then tried to cover it up with a stern sounding cough. “You are very—” he stopped himself. Shook his head.
“I’m what?”
“Different. This morning.” Oh, how helplessly he said that. Like he wished it wasn’t true. Or that he wished he didn’t notice. But he wasn’t wrong—Iwasdifferent. And it was time for my life to look a little different, too.
“You know something,” I said, opening the driver side door to get out. “I would like to drive the Porsche.”
Theo’s eyes went wide and his smile—if you could call it that—was very nearly approving. “It’s a stick shift,” he said.
“That’s fine,” I said, though it probably wasn’t.
Ten minutes later I was grinding my way down the hill from my house.
“Clutch,” he said. Again.
“Right, right.” There was a small hill and a stop sign ahead. “Oh no. Should we go back and get the town car?”
“Don’t be scared,” he said. “And you’re doing fine. No one is great at driving a stick shift right away.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not, ma’am.”
“I’m going to stall it.”
“Clutch, shift, gas. You can do it.”
Seamlessly, I shifted out of first into second. No stalling. No grinding.
I gasped with delight.
“Nice,” he said.
Instantly I did something that made the car shudder and grind. “Oh my god, this is awful. Is it me? Is it this car?”
“It’s the stick shift and you’re doing great. You really are.” Theo was a very enthusiastic teacher and surprisingly calming. “On this hill, careful you don’t...”
The car stalled.
“Do that?” I asked.
Theo actually laughed, which cut my nervous energy in two, and then I was laughing.
I put the car in park and restarted it just as a man in black training pants and a sweat-stained shirt ran across the road in front of us. At the sound of the car starting, he glanced over, and our eyes met.
“Ronan,” I breathed.
He stopped in the middle of the road, facing us. His unreadable eyes traveling from Theo’s face to mine.