Side Effects May Vary

Thankfully, Debora and Dennis were not identical twins—is that even possible for brother/sister twins to be identical? The problem was they still looked related and that made things a little weird—especially when I tried to strategize how I might kiss her at the end of the night. But then Debora would start talking, and I’d remember how big of a slacker Dennis was or at least pretended to be—he was no-studying-required smart—and how different the two of them really were.

We pretty much talked about debate strategies and the value of SAT prep courses until dessert. Our conversation ratio was a solid 10:1. Debora ten, me one. Back at Grocery Emporium, our conversation had sort of flowed, but tonight felt like she’d come up with an agenda for the whole date and hadn’t sent me a copy.

When the waitress, the same one I’d had when I was here with Alice, set down Debora’s cheesecake and my tiramisu, Debora took a large gulp of water and cleared her throat. “Why did you ask me out, Harvey?”

The good news was my mouth was full of tiramisu, giving me time to process her frank question. The bad news was she had caught me so off guard I was unable to enjoy the best part of our date so far, the tiramisu. “Well, Debora, in many western societies when a male adolescent is attracted to a female adolescent the male will ask the female to accompany him on several introductory dates before finalizing the details of their courtship.”

“So, you like me and you want to take me on a date before we call each other boyfriend and girlfriend?”

From Rhodes Scholar to sixteen-year-old girl in seconds. “Yeah, something like that,” I said.

She thought about that for a moment. “Why me?”

“Are you fishing for compliments here, Debora? You’re pretty and, you know, good at stuff. I’m not going to spend our whole date convincing you that you’re dateable.”

She wasn’t buying it. “I’m only trying to understand your motives.”

My single motivation was to get over Alice and maybe meet someone in the process. I liked Debora, and I liked that being with her didn’t always feel like I was stumbling down a mountain. She was all the things—direct, uncomplicated, reliable—that Alice was not and maybe that would help me forget her. And I didn’t want to go searching for some imitation Alice.

I guess she’d taken my silence as a non-answer, because she said, “You must be really happy about Alice. It’s pretty incredible.”

I stared out the window and into the parking lot, where Alice and I had kissed only weeks ago. “Yeah, she is.” Quickly, I corrected myself. “It. It is pretty incredible.”

Debora leaned forward, her cheesecake untouched. “Harvey, I’m smart. I don’t need you to agree with me or tell me that I am. I know that I am above average. Maybe that’s cocky or arrogant, but it’s a fact. But there’s a difference between myself and others with my same attributes: I pay attention to the human condition. I see actions and reactions; when Alice acts, you always react.” The more she talked, the more I realized how much I liked the way her lips curved when she did. “Even if I weren’t so astute, I would know that you were in love or infatuated or whatever it is you want to call it with Alice. I like you. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t, but I wonder. I wonder so much I have to know: Why, Harvey, did you ask me out tonight?” She took a sip of her water and a bite of her cheesecake.

I sat there chewing on my bottom lip, a little mesmerized. She had this way, when she wasn’t talking about foreign politics or global warming, of making sense of all the complex things I never knew how to describe. And, yeah, maybe Debora was giving me shit about Alice, but I liked the way she spoke to me and not at me. I liked the way she just asked me, and I liked the way she expected only the same honesty she would give.

I’d always known Debora in a third-party kind of way. Passing her bedroom door to get Dennis. Talking to her at school when Dennis didn’t feel like she was ruining his life. I wondered how long Debora had liked me and if it was a recent thing or a long time coming. I blinked and saw Alice standing by the front door of her house in that guy’s jacket, without a shirt on underneath. I tried to shake the memory.

Debora had been honest with me, and whether or not I knew if it was true yet, I felt like it might be, so I said, “I like you too, Debora.”

She watched her cheesecake like it might move. “What about Alice?”

I wanted to lie to her and tell her that I didn’t like Alice in that way, but I couldn’t. “I don’t know. But I’m not on a date with Alice. I’m here because I like you. That’s not a good answer, but I won’t lie to you.”

She looked up. “No lying. You swear?”

I nodded.

“So does this qualify as dating?”