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He set his bottle on a coaster on the coffee table—be still my heart—and poured me a glass of the chilled wine.
Now I knew he’d been to more than one place. The grocery stores around here didn’t stock cold wine—or really wine at all, to be honest—but the liquor store did.
That, my friends, was almost enough to make me fall irrevocably in love with him right here, right now.
What?
I liked romance.
It wasn’t all lavish displays of flowers and fancy dates and grand gestures.
Sometimes, romance was cold wine and sanitary pads.
There was a sentence I never thought I’d say.
I sipped the wine—it was my favorite, after all, and nestled into place when he sat on the sofa. Josh grabbed my legs by the ankles and lifted them so he could get as close to me as possible. My legs hooked over his thighs, and he let them settle on his lap as if they were meant to be there.
He displaced me slightly as he leaned forward to grab his beer and drop the chips in my lap, but it was by no means uncomfortable. I already had Netflix pulled up on the screen when he sat back against the cushions and had the remote pointed in anticipation.
“What are we watching?” Josh asked, balancing the beer between my legs so he could open the chip packet.
“I don’t know. I was waiting for you to decide.”
“Are you going to watch anything I say?”
“Depends what you suggest, but there’s a high chance I’ll argue everything.”
“Why don’t you just pick then?”
“Because I was trying to be polite,” I replied. “I won’t bother next time.”
His lips twitched, and his amusement was in his eyes. “Just don’t turn on something that was a book once,” he said after a moment of stifling his laughter. “You’re feisty enough tonight without the rage of a book-to-screen adaptation to rile you up.”
“Carry on with that attitude, and I’ll put Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on.”
“If you do that, I’m leaving.”
“Excellent. Harry Potter it is!”
Laughing, he whipped the remote control from my hand and held it at arm’s length. “You’d miss me if I left.”
I snorted. “I told you not to come. I was going to wallow in my own self-pity all night.”
“Yeah, but I brought food.”
“If you really wanted to cheer me up, you should have brought books.”
He paused. “You own a bookstore. You can get any book you want. I can’t top that, Kins.”
“Fine. A notebook. Pens. Post-It notes. Pencils. Ooh, or bookmarks. I love bookmarks.” I sighed. “I’m a simple girl.”
Josh looked at me as if I were anything but simple. “Seriously? That’s the way to your heart? Stationery and bookmarks?”
“No, it’s books, but you just told me why that won’t work.”
“And you think you’re a simple girl,” he muttered. “Here. Schitt’s Creek. Have you watched the latest season?”
“Damn, no! I didn’t know it was on!” I sat up a little straighter, almost knocking his beer over myself.
He grabbed it before I could cover myself in Eau de Coors Light. “I haven’t had a chance to start it yet. I’m behind. Shall we?”
“Okay, but before we do this, you have to remember we’re officially entering into a binding agreement.”
“It’s a TV series, not a marriage, Kinsley.”
“No, Joshua, you don’t understand. If we start watching this series together, we’re obligated to only watch it together. We can’t watch it with anyone else or while we’re alone unless we’re buddy watching.”
He blinked at me. “Seriously?”
“Seriously. If I find out you’ve watched it without me, I’m going to be furious.”
“What are you going to do? Make me sit through Harry Potter?”
“No. I’ll make you sit through Twilight. I know you hate those movies.”
He visibly shuddered. He really did—his sister had been obsessed when they came out, and since he was older than us, he’d been forced into chaperoning us to the theater along with my brother.
I don’t know why they’d complained. They’d both been paid for the chore of it, and they’d been able to take their girlfriends at the time.
It really wasn’t the end of the world.
“All right, all right,” he finally acquiesced. “Besides, if I had the time to watch it, I’d have started already.”
“You live alone with no dependents. How do you not have time to watch TV?”
“Sports,” he deadpanned. “And finding you dates.”
“Yeah, that went well.” I rolled my eyes and plucked the remote back into my possession. “I mean it. You can’t watch it without me.”
“I solemnly swear not to watch any of the final season of Schitt’s Creek unless it’s with you,” he said in a serious tone. “Is that good?”
I dropped the remote and held out my pinky finger. “Nope. Pinky swear.”
“Pinky swear? How old are we?”
“Old enough that I watched the new Trolls movie for fun by myself last week and felt no shame,” I said, wiggling my finger. “Now, pinky swear.”
