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“Then is this the ring thing?”
“The—the what? Ryan, I swear, sometimes you’re impossible to follow.”
“You said you didn’t like rings, that you don’t like the idea of belonging to someone. Being property. And you just railed on me for telling Barrett off. Let me guess—you don’t like ‘labels’ either.”
He remembered my engagement ring rant?
“But you know, the way I was raised was that you ask a girl out and you pay for her dinner and you buy her flowers. Jesus, Rachael, you drive me crazy. God forbid I ever wanted to buy you a present—you’d probably tell me how demeaning it was and toss it in the gutter. You’d probably say Tiffany’s is built on blood money and that if I really cared about you I would—I don’t know—give up football and join the Peace Corps!”
I was entirely blown away. I couldn’t even think of what to say. Finally, fumbling, I said, “You never asked me out to dinner.”
He glared at me. “I have you over for dinner all the time.”
“But you never asked me out.”
Exasperation flooded his voice. “Fine. Do you want to go out to dinner with me?”
“Yes.”
He stopped looking pissed off and irritated and looked confused and vulnerable. “You do?”
“Yes. I do.”
“Oh.”
“And you can buy me, flowers, too, if you want.”
His brows creased uncertainly.
“God, Ryan!” I exploded. “You drive me nuts, too, sometimes!”
He started to grin. “At least it’s mutual.” He dropped down on the couch and regarded me rather warily. “Are you going to flip out again if I kiss you?”
I smiled at him. “Why don’t you find out?”
And he did.
Chapter Nineteen
I was humming “Not Pretty Enough to Tempt Me” and de-bugging the kitchenette when Eva walked in.
“Oh my God, stop singing that.” She dropped her purse and re-did her messy bun. “We just spent like two hours on that number.”
“I can’t help it.” I covered a cockroach with a plastic cup and slid a stiff piece of paper stock beneath it. The cockroach started scrambling around, its little legs frantically beating against the plastic walls. “I’m happy.”
“Please don’t tell me you’re going to free that. We have a duty to the city to exterminate all of them.”
I started shuffling toward the small window, sticking my nose in the air and answering airily. “If it survives a five story fall to the ground, maybe it deserves to live.”
“Of course it will survive,” Eva grumbled, coming forward and wrestling the cup and paper from me in the gentlest manner possible. “I’m flushing it down the toilet. At least that way it will breed in the sewers and not bother us until we can’t make rent and end up living there.”
When she came back into the tiny living room she surveyed the counter like a general. “Is that the last of them?”
“Uh-huh. So...bad day at rehearsal?”
“Why would you say that?” She started spraying down the counter with bleach, determined to remove every trace of the insects.
“Instinct.”
