"Oh sure, less aggressive," he agrees, nodding slowly. "How about, 'golly Curtis I sure do wish you'd take me to the county fair and we can hold hands and skip!'" He's kidding, and the fake, completely terrible Southern accent is enough to be sure of that, but Darrow is the kind of ridiculous place where that sort of thing actually happens, so. Maybe Beth and Curtis will go to the next city fair together and be sickeningly cute and Nate could even chaperone. That's probably a terrible idea though.

"You're cute," he laughs when she says the part about how handsome he is. For all that Beth has seen the end of the world and horrors beyond what even Nate can imagine, at the core of it there's still a sweet Southern girl who wants to ask a boy out, and it's nice.