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He didn’t hesitate when he answered, “They’re perfect.”
“Okay, good. That’s good,” I murmured.
But was it? With this intense way Lucas had been looking at me, I couldn’t tell, I couldn’t decide whether this was good or bad. Inspiring or distracting. Exhilarating or overwhelming. Real or… experimental.
My head swarmed with thoughts, questions, and speculations, while the flopping sensation, the up and down and up and down, in my chest continued. And I… “Lucas?”
He might have sensed something in my voice, because all that intensity coming off him softened. “Yeah?”
“I think I’m messing this up,” I confessed. “I’m making this awkward. I said I didn’t want any awkwardness between us and I’m already—”
His palm fell on my shoulder, the touch bringing my words to a stop. His strong fingers felt warm against the thin fabric of my blouse. Comforting and thrilling. “Do you trust me?” I nodded, and he smiled. “Then, relax. You’re not making anything awkward. This is just Rosie and Lucas, Date Night. Phase one of the experiment. Just like we agreed.”
I swallowed. “Do you think we can take a break for a second? Be… just us? Rosie and Lucas, every other day, just for a few minutes before we leave?”
“We can be anything you need,” he said, his hand remaining exactly where it was. His thumb now moving back and forth. And my thoughts scattered. Because of his words. His touch.Dammit. He tilted his head. “You know, I thought it would be a good idea to slip into it right away,” he admitted, that thumb now trailing along my collarbone and leaving a path of tingles behind. “Knock on the door, have you invite me in, but maybe I’m rustier than I thought. So, I hope you don’t fire me just yet, Ro.”
Ro.
That was new.
I liked it. Loved it. A lot.
Which was bad. Real bad. I shook my head, trying to focus, ready to tell him just how not rusty he was based on how he’d affected me, but his hand left my shoulder, and the absence of his touch distracted me.
He slipped his hand into the pocket of his bomber jacket. “I guess this is a good time to give you something I got you. It’s nothing special but…” He pulled out thatnothing specialand placed it on my head. “You said you loved it.”
His palm returned to my shoulder, and he turned me around until we were both facing the large mirror against the wall behind me.
I took in our matching blue and pinkINYCcaps in our reflection, thinking how very wrong he was to think this wasn’t something special, and I realized that I’d made a big, big mistake.
“Look at that,” he said as he stood right behind me. “Someone call 9-1-1, because double the good, double the emergency.”
My heart flipped in my chest. No, it might have pirouetted straight out of it. When my lips parted, and instead of words, only laughter came out. An eruption of giggles. Happy, chaotic giggles that released whatever tension or awkwardness I had been feeling minutes ago and replaced it with pure, unfiltered giddiness.
And that right there had been my mistake: a miscalculation of what I could or couldn’t take; an overestimation of my control, of what would be experimental or real to me. The answer to my ownquestion, what did I have to lose by doing this? Turned out, more than I thought. And we hadn’t even gone on our first date yet.
“Cronut you,” I told him, using the code forthank youwe’d agreed on. Becausefriends don’t do stuff for friends expecting a thank-you, like he’d said. And I needed the reminder.We are friends. Lucas doesn’t date. This is all research.
His smile faltered for an instant, too quick for me to guess why or how. And then he was taking off both his and my cap and tossing them on the bed.
“Hey!” I complained.
“Break’s over,” he said, spinning on his heels and throwing open the entrance door. “Do you think we’re ready now, Rosie?”
Rosie, not Ro.
I swallowed, my earlier anticipation and nerves returning, but different. Bigger, scarier, but more… manageable, if that was even possible. So, I grabbed my leather jacket, threw my arms in, and said, “As ready as we’ll ever be.”
After walking a few blocks, Lucas broke the mostly comfortable silence. “Phase one,” he said. “The meet-cute, a spark of interest, the sweet anticipation that leads to that first date. First dates are like first impressions: you only have one chance to make it count.”
My cheeks flamed at hearing my own words on his lips.
I wasn’t exactly proud of myself for looking at romance through the lens of an engineer or a project manager, as I’d been in my job at InTech. As if I was optimizing a process. Setting these four pivotal points in a relationship that I needed to check in the hope of jump-starting my inspiration. But I guessed habits die hard, and thiswasan experiment anyway. We needed structure. Efficiency. A plan.
And Lucas had definitely studied the material, as he’d promised.
“I think we have the meet-cute in the bag,” he continued. “Remember the whole you thinking I was trying to break in and calling the cops?” How could I forget. “So, I’ve focused on the rest of phase one.”
