I had to look away from the intensity of his stare, which was like a hot and hard drill boring into my brain. Instead I concentrated on unscrewing the lid of my lemonade. I took a big swig of the stuff and stared at the table.
"Aren't you hungry?" he asked, distracted by my use of the word swig.
"No." I didn't feel like mentioning that my stomach was already full—of butterflies, that is. "You?" I looked at the empty table in front of him.
"No, I'm never hungry." I didn't understand his expression—it looked like he was enjoying some private joke that wasn't very funny.
"Can you do me a favor?" I asked after a second of hesitation.
He was suddenly wary. "That depends on what you want, Bella."
"It's not much," I assured him.
He waited, engorged and curious.
"I just wondered... if you could warn me beforehand the next time you decided to ignore me for my own good.127 Just so I'm prepared." I looked at the lemonade bottle as I spoke, tracing the circle of the opening with my little pinky finger.
"That sounds fair." He was pressing his lips together to keep from laughing at me when I looked up.
"Thanks."
"Then can I have one answer in return?" he demanded.
"One." I held up a single finger to emphasize just how much of 'one' I meant. Not one after the other, not one now and one later; just one now and forever.
"Tell me one theory."
Whoops. "Not that one."
"You didn't qualify, you just promised one answer," he reminded me.128
127. Fat chance; ignoring women drives them crazy.
128. At no point did Bella actually make any promises.