We were sitting in front of my apartment in his car,
uncomfortably damp in our swimsuits after a summer night in the hot tub. I was
making dumb conversation, not wanting to go inside and end the night.
“Let’s get drinks,” he said.
Thrilled he wanted to spend more time together, I suggested
Sonic and we were off.
Waiting in the drive-through line we compared each other’s drivers’ license pictures while I worried his eyes would linger too long on my
weight stat.
“Okay, let’s talk about something else,” I said, grabbing my
license.
He put his license back in his wallet and took out his
credit card. He rolled his window down because we were next in line to pay.
He snapped his card back and forth as he told me a story about his roommate. He gestured his left hand to emphasize a point when the card sailed away.
There was a brief silence.
His face, always so collected, turned an endearing and entirely new shade of red.
“Did you just drop your card?”
“Uh. Yeah,” he said, leaning outside of the car to look down
at the street.
“Do you see it?”
He kept staring outside and then felt down under his seat, but the card would not be found.
"I'm sure it's here," I said with a nervous laugh.
“So," he said after a moment, "I don’t know how this happened…but I think it's down
the window crack."
There was no way, yet it was true. He rolled his window up and down but the card would not come out.
We lost ourselves in crying laughter before the car in front of us pulled away. I didn't care that I had to buy the drinks now; having an inside joke was worth four dollars.
"I didn't even know that was possible," he said with a gruff laugh, rolling his eyes as he put the car in drive.
We
pulled up to the cashier with wet faces as he handed her my card.
