Page 61 of The Holy Grail

Second date

For their second date, Evan invited Malcom and Jules to a movie. They ended up going on Saturday afternoon to see the new Avengers installment, and after a tiny bit of awkwardness when it came time to who would sit in the middle, Jules finally made the decision and took it herself.

The theater was about half full, and they sat near the back away from most of the other people.

They’d gotten a giant tub of popcorn, a large Coke, and peanut M&M’s to share, and it was quickly decided since Jules was in the middle, she should be the one to hold the popcorn.

Both men proceeded to use that as an excuse to lean into her and nuzzle against her neck as they accidentally brushed their fingers against her breasts while reaching for the popcorn.

Evan took it even further, sometimes dropping a few kernels on her, only to then conduct a thorough search for them in the dark, sometimes down the front of her shirt—which she didn’t really mind, until it started to distract her from the movie.

“What are you, a thirteen-year-old boy, trapped in the body of …” Jules trailed off, quickly subtracting seven years from Malcom’s age, to calculate Evan’s, “… a thirty-five-year-old man?”

“I’m thirty-six, actually,” Evan corrected her.

“You are?”

“My birthday was a couple of weeks ago.”

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Malcom asked.

“Because we weren’t together, then. ”

“Well, happy belated birthday.”

“Thanks.”

“Yes, happy belated birthday,” Jules said. Then, to Malcom, she whispered, “That makes him only one year younger than me.”

“And only six years younger than me,” Mal whispered back.

They gave each other a discreet fist bump.

When the movie was over, Malcom suggested they go to the Farmer’s Market and do some shopping (which would count as his public outing, technically making it another ‘date’ even though it would piggyback on Evan’s), then go back to Malcom’s place for dinner.

As they walked around, the memory of the last time they’d been there made things kind of awkward, until Evan said, “I assume we’re all having a bit of a flashback, but I think we should just agree to agree that our meet-and-greet here was the best thing to happen to us and turn a negative into a positive. ”

“Calling it the best thing is a bit of a stretch,” Malcom argued, his attention half captured by a display of yams.

“I agree,” said Jules.

Evan looked confused. “You agree with who?”

“With Mal.”

“Well, you’re both wrong.” Evan gave them each a long look—or tried to, with Malcom busy rooting through the yams like he was looking for buried treasure.

“That was the moment we all got into the same orbit, so it’s a good thing.

I mean, I was going to try and avoid you two like the plague, even when I didn’t know who Mal was.

So, it could have been a year or more before we ran into each other and got together …

and that’s assuming I hadn’t been snatched up by then, in which case .

..” he trailed off with a shrug, as if to say, You two would have been shit out of luck.

Turning to face Evan, Malcom held out three large yams. “Here. Take these for a second while I get a bag,” he said, then proceeded to walk away.

“First, there’s no way you would’ve been able to avoid us for a year. Get real,” Jules told Evan. “Our best friends are married, for Christ’s sake, so you do the math.”

“I’ll allow that Cat Lady can be persuasive, and hard to say ‘no’ to,” Evan mused, “but I have an arsenal of excuses which would have kept me from any potential gatherings involving you and What’s-His-Name. ”

Returning just in time to hear the nickname, Malcom rolled his eyes. “An arsenal?” he asked, holding out the bag so Evan could put the yams in it.

After obliging, Evan nodded. “That’s right. And they’re all tried and tested.”

“These I have to hear,” Jules said.

Evan held up a finger. “One … being sick, like having a cold, or the flu. Nothing serious, though, because you don’t want to oversell it, or make someone worried.

I learned that the hard way when my mom was threatening to take me to the hospital one time.

” He held up another finger. “Two … a sprain of some sort. The best is an ankle sprain—I live on the third floor, so there’s a lot of steps to possibly trip and fall on, which makes it more plausible—but I have used a sprained wrist before, and that kept me from having to drive, because my car has a stick shift. ”

“Oh, my God,” Jules muttered, but her exasperation was ruined by her amusement. “Lame.”

“It doesn’t matter if they’re lame, they work .

” A third finger went up. “Three … having a previous engagement. That could literally be anything, and I’ve actually used having to babysit my nieces and nephews to get out of something.

It has a zero-fail rate, which makes it one of my favorites to use.

Plus, it’s not like the person I’m using it on will get in touch with my brother or sister to confirm, so it’s perfect. ”

“Using kids?” Malcom had to force a serious tone. “Really?”

“Yes, really. Like I said, zero-fail rate,” Evan defended it, before moving on and popping up a fourth finger.

“Number four … food poisoning. This one works best on someone who won’t be able to come and check up on you because they don’t know where you live.

I’ve used this to get out of dates with people who seemed normal after I had a few drinks in me, but when sober—and after scouring their social media—turned out to have too many red flags—”

“How many is too many?” Jules wanted to know.

After pausing for a moment, he answered, “I’d say five.”

“Five? I’d think one or two would be enough.”

Evan blinked at her. “You have three, my love.”

“Three?”

“As far as I know. Although, there might be more I just haven’t become aware of yet.” He cocked his head to one side. “Want to know what they are? ”

For a split second, she considered asking what they were, but then remembered it was never wise to ask a question you didn’t want the answer to. Also, she figured one person’s red flags were another person’s catnip, so she said, as nonchalantly as she could, “No.”

“I do,” Malcom said.

Like the girl in The Exorcist , Jules swiveled her head to give him a dirty look, which he totally ignored.

Then, rather than say what the red flags were out loud, Evan cupped a hand against Malcom’s ear so he could apparently whisper them like he was five years old.

“Seriously? Whispering?” she asked.

Evan stopped and glanced in her direction. “You said you didn’t want to know,” he reminded her, then went back to whispering in Malcom’s ear, while Jules watched with growing exasperation.

“Oh, definitely,” Malcom murmured in response to what was likely the first red flag.

The second one made him nod and chuckle.

“Yeah, that’s a big one. I noticed it right away,” he said, then a moment later, his expression became conflicted.

“I’m not sure about that one. I mean I understand why you picked it, but I think this one is better,” he said, before shifting so he could cup a hand to Evan’s ear and whisper something in return.

Evan’s face lit up with amused surprise at whatever was revealed. “Oh, shit, you’re right. Damn, that’s a good one.”

Malcom nodded. “Right?”

Under Jules’ narrowed gaze, both men worked to get their shared hilarity under control. Once it had been mostly achieved, Evan slowly faced Jules, and after a dramatic pause, told her gravely, “It appears you have four red flags, my love.”

The desire to find out what they were reared its ugly head again, but she fought it off.

The red flags obviously weren’t bad enough to scare either of the men away, and even if she knew what the flags were, she likely wouldn’t do anything to neutralize them, would she?

Hell, no. For all she knew, it was what had drawn them to her in the first place.

Why mess with perfection?

“Four it is then,” she said, before rerouting the conversation back to Evan’s ‘arsenal of excuses’. “So … food poisoning?”

He snapped his fingers. “Right. So, as an excuse, food poisoning is doubly effective because it not only gets you out of the date, but it usually keeps them from trying to go out with you again in the future , because they have the image of you—vomiting and whatnot—in their head, so they just wash their hands of you completely. ”

“You know, I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but that one actually isn’t bad.”

“It’s brilliant, is what it is. However, my best one is pretty boring, without much flair to it—”

“Flair?”

“Yes, flair. Anyway, the excuse is just … work. I used it a lot when it was true, and then I just kept using it, even when it wasn’t, because people always believe the work excuse.” He slung an arm around Jules’ shoulders. “Now what’s in your arsenal of excuses?”

“I don’t have an arsenal,” she replied.

“Well, you must have a few excuses that you use.”

She shook her head. “If I don’t want to go out with someone, either the first time or the second, I just tell them I have no interest in going out with them. You know … be honest.”

Evan and Malcom exchanged a secret, man-look, and Jules elbowed Evan in the stomach, making him grunt. “Holy shit, was that one of my red flags? My honesty ?”

Instead of answering the question, because only an idiot would do that, Malcom abruptly motioned off to the left, where all the fruit stands were.

“I’m going to head over there and get some peaches for a cobbler,” he announced, before quickly walking away with his bag of yams, leaving Evan to deal with Jules, who could now be heard saying, “My honesty is one of the best things about me.”

“Brutally honest people always think that, but they’re the only ones who do think it. The rest of us think it’s a red flag.”