Cugino’s was…well, Cugino’s was Jim’s favorite restaurant, actually. It wasn’t an accident that he’d suggested it for his and Pam’s first date (first date. They were actually dating. Him and Pam!) because he knew two things about Cugino’s: one, he was going to enjoy whatever it was he ordered, and two, if a girl he was dating didn’t actually want anything on the Cugino’s menu they were not going to have a good time.

Not that he had any actual concerns in that regard. He’d been doing his best to watch Pam without being creepy about watching Pam, and he flattered himself he’d done a pretty good job of it, and there was absolutely no question in his mind that she was the sort of person who would have the opposite problem at Cugino’s, if anything. He’d been having that problem himself for years (not years of dates—that had actually been fairly rare—but years of not stopping himself from going to a good restaurant just because he didn’t have a date). He would look at the menu and he’d just freeze. What should he have? The calzone was amazing. The lasagna was better than his mom’s, and that wasn’t his opinion, that was his mom’s opinion (and a large part of why she had stopped making lasagna at home and just dragged them all out to Cugino’s whenever she felt a craving). The meatball sub was in and of itself a justification for being a carnivore.

It was, in short, the sort of place where Jim could not decide on what to eat.

Today, as it turned out, he did not have that problem.

The reason for this was currently sitting across from him, with her own menu flat on the table and her hands moving rapidly as she described a particular piece of art that she’d seen in the Everhart Museum a few months ago.

“But you don’t understand, Jim,” she said, leaning forward with enthusiasm. “The use of purple.” She sighed. “Just…I could never use that much purple—the hat, and the shirt, and the way there are even purple highlights around the eyes—but I want to use that much purple, and she just did it.”

“I know what you mean.” He actually did. His sister Larissa had grown up completely obsessed with dinosaurs—like, there was still a quilt that his grandmother had sewn on Larissa’s childhood bed decorated with the ‘Larissasaurus’ that she’d insisted for years she truly was underneath—and so she’d dragged the family to see the full-scale Stegosaurus fossil cast at the Everhart just about every other weekend. As a self-defense mechanism he’d started getting into the other permanent collections at the Everhart, so he knew exactly what painting Pam was referring to, even though she didn’t seem to realize that she had quite as interested an audience as she did. “Garrett’s work is amazing.”

“Wait, you know the painting already? Why did you let me describe it to you in such detail?” Pam covered her face and he was pretty sure she was mumbling something about disasters and catastrophes.

He reached out instinctively and pulled her hands away from her face, not letting go when he had her hand against the table again. “I know the painting, but I don’t see the painting the way you do.” He squeezed her hand and she squeezed back, which he took to be a good sign. “I saw the lady, and the alcohol, and the cigarette, but I didn’t see the composition you explained to me. I noticed that I couldn’t see the other person’s face, but I didn’t ask why not. It’s much more interesting when I hear you talk about it than when I just remember it myself.” He gestured with the hand not holding hers. “It’s called Tête-à-Tête, right?”

“Right.” Pam seemed to have calmed down a little, and her hand was still in his.

“So, I mean, we…this is kind of one of those too, right?” Why did his face decide today was the day to start a program of blushing? “Uh…I mean, if you ignore all the other tables.” They were in one of the little two-person round-tops by the window, actually, so it was pretty easy to look out to the street and ignore the busy restaurant behind them. “So…composition me. Tell me how you’d paint this.”

“Well.” Pam looked him up and down and quirked an eyebrow. “I don’t think I’d chose to paint you in that.” He looked down and realized that there was a coffee stain right on the center of his shirt. Pam had tidied up for their date but he hadn’t, a decision he was regretting strongly just now.

“So the shirt has to go?”

“Definitely.” She flushed but kept on going. “Uh…I think you have a green one though, that would go well with the lighting here.”

She’d noticed what shirts he wore?

“And…I think you’d have to move over here, actually.” She gestured a little to the left. “So that I could get the window curtains and the shape of the seat just at the edge of the canvas.”

He obligingly scooted over.

“Great.” She grabbed his hand again as soon as he was done moving. “Now we aren’t drinking or smoking, so we’d need something to draw the eye to the table.” She squeezed. “But I think we’ve done a good enough job of that, don’t you?”

God, he was a total goner for this woman. But then again, he’d been one since she’d first walked into the shop and opened her mouth. “I don’t know. You have another hand.”

“I need that to paint, Jim.” She stuck out her tongue and if he’d thought he’d been in love before, what words did he have left for what he was now that he’d seen her like this. “Anyway, the key part is the red.” She pointed at the menus on the table, which were indeed red—not that he’d ever thought about the color of Cugino’s menus before. “I’d want to make sure that was clearly associated with you, so I’d probably put your free hand on one.”

“Why is that?”

She shook her head. “Jim, aren’t you the one who told me you’re a Marxist? How else are they going to know?”

He couldn’t help laughing—no, he had to be honest with himself, giggling, like a giddy schoolgirl or a dog in Duck Hunt—and they were both still like that when the waiter finally came to take their order.