Dare You to Blink

Johan came through the door of the Sandbox Diner at seven sharp, took off his cap, and scanned the room the way he always did in a new place. Exits, crowd, coffee. Then he saw her, third booth from the window, waving a fork at him like she was flagging down a helicopter.

"You're taller than your pictures," Lydia said. "That's a good start."

"So are you," he said, sliding in across from her. "Taller than your pictures, I mean."

"I'm fifty-four and I lied on my profile about weight, not height." She stuck out her hand. "Lydia. Retired army medic. Twenty-two years and I never once dropped a thing I was carrying. You can shake."

He shook it. Her grip was strong enough to make him notice. "Johan. Truck driver. Thirty-eight years and I've dropped plenty."

"See, we already have something to talk about." She pushed a laminated menu at him. "Order coffee. I already ordered pie."

"Two pies?"

"One pie, two forks. I planned ahead. You don't mind, do you?"

"I don't mind." He flagged the waitress, a woman named Billie with a pen behind each ear, and ordered coffee and the meatloaf special. When Billie walked off, Lydia leaned back and looked at him like she was sizing up a horse.

"Okay. Ground rules. I like dares. I've been dared into half the best things I ever did. So tonight, we play a game. I dare you, you dare me back if you want. Small stuff first. And nobody ever has to do one. \"Forfeit\" just means we go back to pie. Deal?"

Johan wiped his mouth with his napkin even though nothing was on it. "What kind of small stuff?"

"Sugar packet small." She nodded at the next booth, where a big man in a base jacket sat alone reading his phone, three sugar packets lined up by the salt shaker. "Steal one. Right now. Don't get caught!"

He laughed before he could stop himself. "That's stealing."

"That's borrowing. He's got three, nobody needs three." She sipped her coffee. "Unless you're scared."

Johan was sixty-one years old and had never once in his life been accused of being scared, mostly because he never rose to it. He looked at the man, looked at the packets, and waited until the guy scrolled down on his phone. Then he reached over with a smoothness that surprised even him and slid the middle packet off the table and into his lap.

The man never looked up. Lydia put both hands over her mouth and shook silently.

"Nice," she managed. "Very smooth. You've done crime before."

"One sugar packet, thirty-eight years of driving, close enough." He set the packet on the table between them like a trophy.

Billie came back with his coffee and refilled Lydia's cup. While she was there, Lydia said, "My turn again. Tell her the joke."

"What joke?"

"The one from your messages. The camel one. Deadpan. No laughing."

"You want me to tell Billie a joke about a camel."

"I want you to commit to it. Full deadpan. That's the dare."

Billie was already halfway turned away. Johan cleared his throat. "Ma'am. Question. How does a camel cross the desert without getting blisters?"

Billie turned back around, pen in hand. "I don't know, hon, how?"

"He doesn't. He takes his shoes off first."

There was a pause that lasted about a year. Then Billie snorted, laughed into her wrist, and smacked him on the shoulder with the order pad. "Oh, that's terrible. That's so terrible. Meatloaf, right?"

"Meatloaf," Johan agreed, and Billie walked off still laughing.

Lydia pointed her fork at him. "You didn't blink. Not one blink. That was the best part."

"I've got a face for deadpan. It's the only gear I've got."

"No, you've got at least three gears, I can tell. But I like that one." She turned as the pie arrived, a big wedge of cherry with a ridge of crust. She set it in the middle of the table and laid the two forks on either side like place settings at a summit.

"Okay," she said. "Bigger dare."

"That escalated fast."

"It's pie, relax." She cut a piece and lifted it on her fork. "I feed you a bite. In public. Like you're a baby bird."

Johan looked at the fork. He looked at the diner, half full of soldiers and truckers and one old man doing a crossword. Then he looked at her.

"You're serious."

"Completely serious. Fork's getting heavy."

"Why is that a dare? People feed each other all the time."

"Married people feed each other. Old people feed each other. Two strangers on a first date, one of them feeding the other a bite of pie in front of an entire diner, that's a dare." She wiggled the fork. "Plus you have to open wide and say aah."

"That's extra."

"That's the dare. Say aah."

He hesitated. Not because of the pie. Because he was enjoying this more than he'd enjoyed a Tuesday in years and some part of him wanted to slow it down, stretch it out, make it last like a good stretch of highway. But a dare was a dare, and he'd started this one himself, walking through that door.

"Aah," he said, and leaned in.

The fork came at him steady. He closed his mouth around the bite and she pulled the fork out clean, no mess, and looked delighted about something.

"Well?" she said.

He chewed. Swallowed. "Cherry."

"Obviously cherry. Was it good?"

"Best bite of pie I ever had, and I've had a lot of pie."

"That's the spirit. Also, you've got whipped cream on your chin."

He wiped at the wrong side twice before she reached across with her thumb and got it. Then she sat back and looked way too pleased with herself.

"You did all three," she said. "Sugar, joke, bird. I honestly thought you'd fold at the bird."

"I fold at nothing. It's a character flaw." He cut himself a normal, dignified bite of pie. "My turn. I dare you to tell me why."

"Why what?"

"Why the dares. You could've just talked to me like a regular person. Instead you're running drills." He leaned forward. "You're a medic. Twenty-two years. You triage a guy first thing, right? You check him out under pressure to see what he's really like. That's what this is."

Lydia put her fork down slow and smiled at him, a different smile than the one she'd been wearing. Softer around the edges, sharper in the middle.

"Okay," she said. "That's annoyingly accurate. Yeah. You learn more about somebody in thirty seconds of stupid than in three hours of talk. And your thirty seconds told me a lot."

"Like what?"

"Like you're brave but you think about it first. Like you don't care who's watching. And like you hesitated on the fork, which means you wanted to." She picked her fork back up. "Which is the most interesting one."

Johan felt his ears go warm. He drank his coffee to cover it.

"Your turn to dare me," she said. "Unless you're out of ideas already. Some trucker."

"I'm thinking."

"Think faster, big guy. Night's young and I've got a whole list."

"Okay," Johan said. "Here's mine." He set his coffee down. "I dare you to tell me something true. Something you wouldn't put on the profile."

"That's not a dare, that's a question with a costume on."

"Fine. I dare you."

Lydia chewed her pie and thought about it. "The weight thing on my profile is a lie. I'm heavier than that."

"I figured. You're taller than your pictures too."

"How can a person be taller than her pictures?"

"Angles. Everybody lies with angles. I'm standing up right now and I've got four inches on what I claimed."

"So we're both liars."

"We're both honest liars. That's better than honest honest people." He pushed his coffee cup aside. "Your turn."

She tapped her fork on the plate three times. "Okay. Dare. Walk me out to the parking lot and kiss me. Not in here. Out there, under the light, where anybody walking past can see. That's the dare."

"In the parking lot."

"Under the light. The one by the coyote truck. If that's your truck. Coyote decal, right? You told me about it."

"That's my truck."

"Then there's no excuse. Unless you're scared of a little audience." She stood, dropped bills on the table, and picked up her jacket. "Coming?"

Johan had driven through forty-one states and never once been nervous at a stop sign. He stood up now and his knees were doing something new. "Coming."

Billie caught them at the register. "You two leaving already? I liked you."

"We'll be back, Billie," Lydia said. "He's not done embarrassing himself."

"He's got a ways to go, then," Billie said, and rang them out.

Outside the air had cooled to that desert thing where the day's heat gives up all at once. The lot was dusty pickups and the one long-haul rig with the faded coyote. The light above it buzzed and threw moths around like confetti. Lydia walked ahead of him, stopped dead center in the