Losing Hope

“I’m sorry, but damn. You’re so blatantly attracted to me, it’s hard not to tease you.” I’m still laughing when I walk back to the stove with the garlic. I pour some into the pan and glance at her. She’s covering her face with her hands from embarrassment and I immediately feel guilty. I don’t want her thinking I’m not into her, because I’m positive I’m into her way more than she’s into me. I guess I haven’t made that very clear to her, though, which is a little unfair.

“Want to know something?” I ask.

She looks up at me and shakes her head. “Probably not.”

“It might make you feel better,” I say.

“I doubt it.”

I look at her and she’s not smiling and I hate it. I meant for this to be lighthearted; I didn’t mean to hurt her feelings. “I might be a little bit attracted to you, too,” I admit, hoping it’ll help her realize that I didn’t mean to embarrass her.

“Just a little bit?” she asks, teasingly.

No. Not just a little bit. A whole helluva lot.

I continue to prepare the food and I’m doing everything I can to get it all started so I can sit and talk with her while it cooks. She just sits silently at the bar, watching me work my way around her kitchen. I love that she’s not modest when it comes to the way she watches me. She stares at me like she doesn’t want to look at anything else and I like it.

“What does lol mean?”

“Seriously?”

“Yes, seriously. You typed it in your text earlier.”

“It means laugh out loud. You use it when you think something is funny.”

“Huh,” she says. “That’s dumb.”

“Yeah, it is pretty dumb. It’s just habit, though, and the abbreviated texts make it a lot faster to type once you get the hang of it. Sort of like OMG and WTF and IDK and . . .”

“Oh, God, stop,” she says quickly. “You speaking in abbreviated text form is really unattractive.”

I wink at her. “I’ll never do it again, then.” I walk to the counter and pull the vegetables out of the sack. I run them under the water and move the cutting board to the bar in front of her. “Do you like chunky or smooth spaghetti sauce,” I ask, placing the tomato in front of me. She’s looking past me, lost in thought. I wait to see if she’ll answer me when she catches back up, but she just keeps staring off into space.

“You okay?” I ask her, waving my hand once in front of her eyes. She finally snaps out of it and looks up at me. “Where’d you go? You checked out for a while there.”

She shakes it off. “I’m fine.”

I don’t like her tone of voice. She doesn’t seem fine.

“Where’d you go, Sky?” I ask her again. I want to know what she was thinking. Or maybe I don’t want to know, because if she was thinking about how she wants me to leave then I hope she continues to pretend she’s fine.

“Promise you won’t laugh?” she asks.

Relief rushes through me because I don’t think she’d ask me that if she was hoping I would leave. But I’m not about to promise her I won’t laugh, so I shake my head in disagreement. “I told you that I’ll only ever be honest with you, so no. I can’t promise I won’t laugh because you’re kind of funny and that’s only setting myself up for failure.”

“Are you always so difficult?”

I grin, but don’t respond. I love it when she gets irritated with me, so I don’t give her a response on purpose.

She straightens up in her chair and says, “Okay, fine.” She inhales a deep breath like she’s preparing for a long speech.

I’m nervous.

“I’m really not any good at this whole dating thing, and I don’t even know if this is a date, but I know that whatever it is, it’s a little more than just two friends hanging out, and knowing that makes me think about later tonight when it’s time for you to leave and whether or not you plan to kiss me and I’m the type of person who hates surprises so I can’t stop feeling awkward about it because I do want you to kiss me and this may be presumptuous of me, but I sort of think you want to kiss me, too, and so I was thinking how much easier it would be if we just went ahead and kissed already so you can go back to cooking dinner and I can stop trying to mentally map out how our night’s about to play out.”

I’m pretty sure it’s too soon to love her, but shit. She’s got to stop doing and saying these unexpected things that make me want to fast-forward whatever’s going on between us. Because I want to kiss her and make love to her and marry her and make her have my babies and I want it all to happen tonight.

But then we’ll be out of firsts, and the firsts are the best part. Good thing I’m patient.

I set the knife down on the cutting board and look her in the eyes. “That,” I say, “was the longest run-on sentence I’ve ever heard.”

She doesn’t like my comment. She huffs and falls back against her seat in a pout.

“Relax.” I laugh. I take a second to finish the sauce and start the pasta and do everything I need to do to get to a point where I can actually talk to her while I’m not trying to cook at the same time. When I finally get the pasta going, I wipe my hands on the dishtowel and place it on the counter. I walk around the bar to where she’s seated.

“Stand up,” I tell her.

She slowly stands up and I place my hands on her shoulders, then look around the room for a good spot to break the news to her that I’m not going to kiss her tonight. As much as I want to and as much as I now know she wants me to, I still want to wait.

And I know I told her I’m not mean, but I never said I wasn’t cruel. And I’m just having too much fun watching her when she’s flustered and I really want to make her flustered again. “Hmm,” I say, still pretending I’m looking for the perfect spot to kiss her. I glance into the kitchen, then take her by the wrists and pull her with me. “I sort of liked the fridge backdrop.” I push her against the fridge and she lets me. She hasn’t stopped watching me intently the whole time and I love it. I lift my arms to the sides of her head and begin to lean in toward her. She closes her eyes.

I keep mine open.

I look at her lips for a moment. Thanks to the peck I stole while she was sleeping last night, I kind of have an idea what they feel like. But now I can’t help but wonder what they taste like. I’m so tempted to lean in a few more inches and see for myself, but I don’t.

I’ve got this.

They’re just lips.

I watch her for a few more seconds until her eyes flick open when I fail to kiss her. Her whole body jumps when she sees how close I am and it makes me laugh.

Why do I enjoy teasing her so much?

“Sky?” I say, looking down at her. “I’m not trying to torture you or anything, but I already made up my mind before I came over here. I’m not kissing you tonight.”

The hope in her expression dwindles almost immediately.

“Why not?” she says. Her eyes are full of rejection and I absolutely hate it, but I’m still not kissing her. But I do want her to know how much I want to kiss her.

I bring my hand up to her face and trace a line down her cheek. The feel of her skin beneath my fingertips is like silk. I keep trailing down her jaw, then her neck. My whole body is tense because I’m not sure if she feels all of this the way I do. I can’t imagine someone like Grayson could be lucky enough to touch her face or taste her mouth and that he wouldn’t care if she was even enjoying it or not.

When my hand reaches her shoulder, I stop and look her in the eyes. “I want to kiss you,” I say. “Believe me, I do.”

So, so bad.

I remove my hand from her shoulder and bring it up to her cheek. She leans into my hand and looks up at