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Fine, I will meet you for dinner.
Fantastic. Is it pushing my luck if I tell you I haven’t been able to stop thinking about wanting to kiss you?
Kelly’s stomach dropped to her knees. She knew Hank was a flirt, but what if he tried to kiss her? She hadn’t kissed anyone in eleven years and he was a damn Lothario! What if she sucked?
The sound of the shower turning on upstairs distracted her from her panic attack for a half a second before it all rushed back over her. She needed to start off slow. Find someone comfortable to practice on so when Hank laid one on her she wasn’t completely hopeless.
Chris belting the lyrics to “More Than a Feeling” traveled through the flooring and Kelly got an idea. With Chris and her having this weird vibe between them, things had been tense. But, if they kissed and proved there was nothing more than friendship between them, it would kill two birds with one stone.
Now, she just had to figure out how to get Chris to kiss her.
Chapter 14
Chris pushed the cart through Walmart with Kelly by his side, putting his foot up on the back of it and gliding forward across the white linoleum squares. The fluorescent lights above them were like spotlights.
“Nice, very mature,” she said.
“What? You said to treat this trip like we’re back in high school.”
“I just wanted you to go to the store with me, not act like a nerd bomber riding carts up and down the aisle.”
Chris stopped in front of the cat food and turned to her with a wicked smile. “Wanna climb into the basket and give them a real show?”
“Are you crazy? I’m not climbing in there and letting you push me around. That’s how I broke my arm junior year.”
“Hey, it wasn’t my fault! Ray was driving.”
Their banter faded at the mention of Ray’s name, and Chris wished that it didn’t still hurt. Especially the last few weeks, when he’d had such conflicting emotions where Kelly was concerned, the thought of Ray on top of that had made his guilt palpable.
It had never been awkward to talk about Ray before, but the silence was strained now.
Because Ray was always the buffer between me and her, and then it was her grief and work.
Now there was nothing to blind him to the fact that he wanted Kelly.
So freaking bad.
Kelly cleared her throat and grabbed a couple of cans of cat food off the shelf. “Here’s some wet food, which you can wean him off if you hate the smell.” She set the food in the cat and walked across the aisle to the other ceiling high metal shelves. “I’ll grab a bag of kitten food too.”
“I can get it,” he said.
“Please, it’s like 8 pounds. I can handle it”
He intercepted her, grabbing the yellow bag with a triumphant whoop, trying to regain the carefree interactions they’d had before he brought up Ray.
She rolled her eyes. “Congratulations, you got the food.”
Chris set the bag into the basket. “Damn right I did. Now, I’ll race you to the litter!”
He grabbed the cart and pushed off. He heard her laugh behind him and grinned. They could do this. Things didn’t need to get weird.
She caught up with him, going neck and neck with the cart as they neared the rear wall where the cat litter was stacked on wire shelves.
Kelly got to the shelf first. She grabbed a plastic jug and held it over her head. “I am the master of the litter!”
Kelly did a little victory dance with the jug and Chris was struck dumb by how adorable she looked in her plaid pajama bottoms, gray sweater, and messy ponytail, doing the running man.
She stopped shaking her rear and frowned at him. “What? Do I have something on my face?”
