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I winked at her, and she blushed, which caused me to laugh. It was so easy to make her blush, but I still tried to every chance I got. I loved the way her cheeks flushed, and she got the cutest little dimples when she tried to hide the smile that came with her blushing. She looked amazing, always, but there were some moments when she looked like a model to me.
We put in our order with the waiter, and I requested a beer. I was a bit surprised when Laurel opted to have water instead.
“Don’t you want something to help you unwind?” I asked. “It sounds like you had quite the day at work.
“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m a little worried that if I put alcohol in my stomach it’s going to go south on me. I want to take it easy tonight.”
“Smart,” I said, though I wanted to ask her once more if she would think about going to see a doctor. I bit my tongue before the question made its way out of my mouth, and instead turned my attention to the dessert menu.
“We haven’t even had dinner yet, and you’re talking about dessert?” she asked with a laugh.
“Dessert is the most important part of any meal, you should know this,” I told her. “And when it comes to these chocolate sundaes, you haven’t even lived until you’ve tried one.”
“Now you sound like a teenage girl,” she said with a shake of her head.
“And what’s wrong with that? I mean, I’ll take being a teenage boy over a teenage girl, but when are you going to realize that I haven’t grown up yet?” I asked with a wink.
She shook her head, but she still had an amused smile on her face.
“So,” Laurel said, “have you thought about settling down? I mean, do you want to settle down with someone?”
“Someday. I mean, eventually I will. But I’m not even in my thirties yet. I would rather live it up until I make it to forty, then I’ll think about settling down,” I told her.
“Ten more years?” she asked.
“Eleven. I’m twenty-nine,” I said as I puffed out my chest. “I don’t want to grow up too soon or settle down before I have to. Responsibility is one thing, but when you have to really settle down, that’s when life gets serious, and I’m not sure I want that to happen. I’ll feel old, and I don’t want to feel old yet.”
“That makes sense,” she said as she took a sip of her water.
I grinned at her as the waiter brought the food.
“Save some of your french fries,” I said. “It’s the big secret to making their sundaes the best on the planet.”
“French fries?” she asked with raised eyebrows. “Are you sure you’ve only had one beer today? That sounds like the kind of combination someone would like if they were drunk.”
“On my honor, this is my first,” I said with a laugh. “Trust me on this. The salty sweet combination is one that you can recreate with other places, but no one does it the same way Bud’s does. There’s a reason why this is my favorite place in Seattle.”
“Okay, I trust you,” Laurel replied, though she remained skeptical of the dessert idea all the way until the point we had the ice cream in front of us. I showed her how to get the right ratio of the ice cream and chocolate sauce on a fry, and she finally admitted I was onto something.
“I’m pretty sure it’s a well-known secret, or I might put a copyright on the recipe,” I joked.
“Pretty sure you can’t do that with food that’s not yours,” she said. “We’re at a restaurant, and even if you did come up with the world’s greatest combination, I’m not sure you can copyright it when both the fries and the sundae are this place’s own recipe.”
“Okay, that’s fair,” I said. “But I would want it to at least be named after me on the menu.”
Laurel laughed again.
“You’re impossible,” she said.
“Giant child,” I replied with a wink.
She giggled, and I was sure this was our best date so far. I knew I was going to have to talk to her at some point about what we were doing with our relationship, but I wasn’t sure when to bring that up. I knew she’d said that we were going to have fun with this when we first slept together, but we had done a lot of growing in our relationship since then.
I didn’t want the end of our trip to be the end of the road for us as a couple. I was falling in love with her more and more each day, and I hoped the way she looked at me meant she was feeling the same things.
I knew the most mature way to handle this would be to talk to her directly, but I had never been good at difficult conversations, and there was a part of me that hoped she would be the one to bring it up. I knew she was better with words, and she might be able to bring up our relationship without it sounding like a terrifying commitment.
But, I felt the best thing to do was to wait and see what happened next.
