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“Will you go out with me?” Layne asked. “On an official date.”
“When this thing is over?”
“No, I was thinking maybe tomorrow night.”
“We can’t–”
“Virtual date,” Layne added.
“Virtual date? How would that even work?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out. Will you maybe just say yes now?”
Shay chuckled and said, “Yes, I’ll go on a date with you, Layne.”
“Good. Now, I need to get some sleep because I am really tired.”
“Want to watch something together until you fall asleep?”
“Sure. You pick,” Layne said.
CHAPTER 22
Planning a date should be easy. Even a non-creative person like Layne could have taken Shay to dinner and a movie and walked her to her room at the end of the night, if she had no other ideas. Planning a virtual date during a pandemic was proving to be a little more difficult, though. Layne wanted to go pick up flowers for Shay, but she wasn’t supposed to leave her room for any non-essential activities. A date was essential, wasn’t it? She sure thought so. She spent most of her morning trying to figure out a way to approach a date where she wouldn’t be able to pick Shay up, take her somewhere nice, and bring her back home afterward. It had taken some preparation, but after their workout, where Layne had again struggled more than she should be struggling for someone who hadn’t worked out in a few months, she’d gotten back to her room and finished everything she needed for the night. Then, she dropped the bag by Shay’s door, returned to her own room, and waited.
She set her computer up on her bed and took a deep breath. When her phone rang, she knew it was time.
“Hi,” she greeted when she saw Shay’s smiling face.
“Hi,” Shay replied. “Thank you for all of my gifts? Or are they supplies?”
“Maybe they’re a little of both.”
“Should I open the bag?”
“Yes,” Layne replied. “Are you on your bed?”
“Yeah, hold on.” Shay shifted until the phone was tilted up toward her face, and she had the bag in front of her. “What did you put in here?”
Layne got up and quickly turned off the light in her room.
“Hey, where did you go?”
“One second,” Layne replied and hurried around the room.
“What the…”
“Look in the bag,” she told Shay and finally made it back over to her bed to watch Shay in the dim light.
“Candles?”
“Flameless ones.”
“Where did you get these?” Shay asked, pulling a few from the bottom of the bag.
“I had them. I almost forgot about them, honestly. Remember that one time the power went out during our junior year?”
“Yeah.”
