She knocked on his door at 78 on a Friday night wearing a red dress that could stop traffic and the first words out of her mouth nearly stopped his heart. I need a boyfriend tonight. Andre Bennett didn't move, didn't blink, just stood there holding a wrench he'd been using to fix his kitchen sink, staring at the most beautiful woman he'd ever had the misfortune of living next door to for almost 2 years. He could have said no. He should have said no.
Instead, he set one rule, a rule so simple, so honest that neither of them realized it would destroy every wall they'd spent months building between themselves. The wrench hit the kitchen counter with a sound that was louder than an Andre intended. Not because he was angry, because his hands had simply stopped working. The moment Clare Morgan said those words through his screen door, her voice carrying that particular combination of desperation and dignity that he had learned over 22 months of neighborly proximity was uniquely hers. He set the wrench down carefully, deliberately.
The way a man sets something down when he needs his hands free to think. "Say that again," he said. Clare crossed her arms. She was standing on his porch in a dress the color of a Georgia sunset red, fitted, built for a woman who knew exactly what she looked like, and had decided tonight required armor. Her natural hair was up, her earrings were gold.
She had a small clutch bag in one hand, and the expression of a woman who had already rehearsed this conversation three times in her bathroom mirror and hated every version of it. I need a boyfriend, she said again. Slower this time, like she was explaining a utility bill for tonight. Just tonight. My parents anniversary dinner is in 2 hours, and my mother has apparently told everyone at the table that I've been seeing someone, which I haven't, which she knows.
But she, you know what, it doesn't matter. The point is, I need someone to walk in there with me and look like he belongs next to me. And I need him to be someone I can trust, not to embarrass me. Andre looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked down at himself.
He was wearing a gray undershirt with a small paint stain near the left shoulder, basketball shorts, and work socks with a hole forming near the right pinky toe. His reading glasses were pushed up on his forehead because he'd been reading the installation manual for a new faucet fixture before he remembered he already knew how to install faucets and didn't need the manual. You're asking me, he said. I'm asking you right now. Right now.
He picked up the wrench again, then put it back down again. Clareire. Andre, I have a 12-year-old at home. I already talked to Maya. She said, and I quote, "Tell him to wear the navy blazer, not the brown one. " Something moved behind Andrere's eyes that he refused to let reach his face.
His daughter had apparently been consulted about his wardrobe for a fake date before he had been consulted about the fake date itself. That was either hilarious or humiliating, and he hadn't decided which. She talked to you about my blazers. She texted me. She has my number because I helped her with her science fair project last November, which you apparently forgot.
He hadn't forgotten. He remembered it exactly. Clare sitting at their kitchen table with Maya for 3 hours, helping her build a model of a water filtration system out of plastic bottles and sand and charcoal. The two of them laughing at something he couldn't hear from the hallway. And Andre standing there with two cups of coffee cold in his hands because he couldn't figure out whether walking in would ruin whatever was happening.