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“Do you remember our first kiss?” she asked.
The question threw him off. He’d been thinking about giving her the second kiss of the weekend.
“I didn’t plan it.” He stared out the front windshield at that bushel of mistletoe. “I’d been thinking about it a long time, believe me, but I never thought you’d go for it.”
“It was so sudden.” She giggled. “You pulled me off to the side when we walked out of the dance and kissed me.”
“Your mom was out there in her car, waiting for us.” He sat back in his seat and looked over at her. “I couldn’t kiss you inside the school gym with everyone watching. But I knew if I didn’t kiss you then, I’d never get the chance.”
“You would have gotten the chance,” she said. “Eventually. But it was perfect.”
“It took me so much courage to even ask you to that dance.”
“I was scared you were asking me as a friend.”
He shook his head. “I was hoping you’d see it as a date even though everybody thought we were going as friends. You looked so beautiful that night. Not that you didn’t always look beautiful. Still do.”
Smooth. He was a real Casanova. Normally, he was a little better with women, but all this talk about kissing had him reverting to his teenage self.
Charity laughed. “We thought we were so cool.”
“Well, we were fifteen.”
“Wow. We were, weren’t we?”
They’d been freshmen at the time. He hadn’t technically been allowed to date yet. Neither had she. But they mostly hung out in groups until he had a car. Even then, group hangouts were the norm, so it wasn’t like they ever spent that much time alone together.
“I had a crush on you starting in about fifth grade,” she said.
That surprised him. “Me, too. My birthday party.”
“Yep. Laser tag.”
The biggest surprise in all this was that they’d never discussed any of it before. There had been one moment during laser tag where he’d saved her. They’d stood, frozen, staring at each other, and for the first time, he saw her not as his friend but as an actual girl.
“It was also the first time I liked a boy like that.” She sounded ashamed to admit it. She even winced. “I mean, not counting celebrities.”
He laughed. “Yeah, and if I count celebrities, I’d have to say it was the first time I liked a girl who was even close to my age.”
They were both smiling by then, but those smiles faded as the weight of the conversation settled around them. All this talk about kissing. But in truth, he’d been thinking about kissing her from the first time he’d seen her at the coffee shop yesterday. Kissing her once hadn’t been enough to satisfy his craving.
As he leaned toward her, Nic knew this wouldn’t be a short kiss. Not even as short as last night. Tonight, he’d take his time. He’d enjoy every second of this because who knew when he’d get a kiss like this again?
11
Maybe he stuck around a little longer.
That was the first thought that went through Charity’s mind when she woke Monday morning. They were the words Nic had spoken when he dropped her off at her car.
“Maybe I’ll stick around a little longer,” he’d said.
She smiled, gave him one last kiss, and said, “Thanks for everything.”
As she drove home, she’d wondered what she’d meant by those words. Thanks for everything? What did that even mean?
But she didn’t have time to dwell on it. She had a busy morning. She only allowed herself a few seconds to glance toward the coffee shop on the strip as she passed on her way to her first meeting. She had a day full of decorating cabins for Christmas, followed by a lunchtime meeting with a potential client.
A meeting that was canceled midmorning.
