Page 93 of Timeless
“Not if you don’t put on a little black dress, it’s not,” Quinn joked.
Abby laughed again. This was already so nice, possibly the best date she’d ever had, and it hadn’t even started yet. Technically, it was an hour before it had been scheduled to start, but Abby had already laughed more than any date with anyone else.
“Give me five? I can at least put on some grown-up clothes.”
“Grown-up clothes sound like lingerie to me.”
“Oh, my God!” Abby laughed and turned around. “Just unpack the stuff you brought. I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll open the wine to let it breathe.”
“I wouldn’t know the difference anyway,” she replied as she walked away.
“What about all those fancy events you have to attend?They don’t have good wine there?” Quinn yelled after her.
“I repeat: I wouldn’t know the difference.”
She made it down the hall and into her bedroom. When the door closed, she pressed herself back against it.
“Fuck. She’s hot,” she said to herself.
Then, Abby looked down at her clothes and couldnotbelieve that she’d opened the door on their first date looking like this: blue sweatpants, a white T-shirt with no bra under it, and her fluffy pink socks that kept her feet warm. Kicking those off first, she moved to her closet to find a decent sweater to throw on. When she did, she tossed it on her bed, went to her drawer, pulled out her best bra, removed her shirt, put it on, and then, gracefully, smelled her armpits.
“Deodorant,” she muttered.
After applying that, she dressed and returned to the bathroom to try to do something with her hair before she found a tube of lipstick she had in a drawer. She’d forgotten all about it, and when she put a little on, blotting most of it away, she had a vision of Cheryl and Diana’s wedding day in the underground lesbian bar. Cheryl had on bright red lipstick, and when she kissed her new wife in the vision, she left some of it on Diana’s lips, causing Cheryl to laugh and then wipe it away.
“Tonight, you’re not them,” she told herself as she slipped on some new, plain white socks. “You’re you. She’s Quinn. You need to know if this can be real between you two because of who the two of you are today, not just because you have this connection you still don’t really understand.”
She stood up from her bed and walked to the door. Before she pulled it open, though, she held her hand in front of her mouth and exhaled.
“Brush your teeth,” she scolded herself and headed back into the bathroom.
Minutes later, she walked back down the hall and saw Quinn in her kitchen. No vision came to her that time, but she leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, taking in the sight right in front of her. Quinn looked like shebelonged there. She’d kicked off her shoes and was doing a little sliding around the kitchen to get from the counter to a cabinet instead of merely walking from one place to the other. Abby smiled as she watched her and then listened as Quinn started to hum some tune that Abby didn’t recognize. She wondered if it was something from a past life and decided to ask.
“What song is that? I don’t recognize it. Something from one of our many lives?” she asked as she made her way back into the kitchen.
“Um… No. It was the slow version ofBaby Got Back.”
Abby laughed wildly and went to say, “You were–”
“I heard it in the grocery store,” Quinn explained then. “They were playing it over the speakers. I guess it got stuck in my head.”
Abby laughed again and asked, “And is that your favorite song?”
“What? No,” Quinn replied as she expertly uncorked the wine.
“How did you do that so easily if you’re not a big wine drinker?”
“I waited tables in college before I dropped out. I had to open bottles at the table if they ordered the stuff.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“Whywouldyou? We’ve spent so much time talking about everything else. We really hardly know each other.”
“Is that what tonight is all about to you?”
“No, tonight is a date. On dates, you generally get to know the other person, so yes, by default, we’ll do some of that, but I don’t want there to be any pressure, Abs. I know you weren’t sure about this. I don’t want you to run because we put too much pressure on seeing if this could work between modern-day… us.”