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“Just following protocol. You can refuse to answer I suppose.”
“No,” she said, finally after taking another sip of the wine. “I’ll spill. I would guess my vice is chocolate. There’s nothing more satisfying than sinking into a hot bubble bath after work and eating chocolate.”
My cock shifted in my pants, and I felt the need to move around to give it some room. Just the words ‘bubble bath’ coming from her lips was enough to conjure images in my mind that I was going to have to work very hard to suppress.
“Chocolate,” I said after a moment of trying to keep my breathing even. “Got it.”
“And you?” she asked.
“Easy, bread.”
“Bread?” she asked indignantly. “Bread can’t be a vice. Bread is a food.”
“So is chocolate,” I said. “I don’t mean like a loaf of sandwich bread, Melanie. I’m talking good, deli-baked, thick bread. Where the flour or cornmeal dust is all over it and it sticks to your hands. Bread that you want to hollow out and put soup in, butthen you want to eat the stuff you hollowed first. Breadsticks covered in butter and salt and cheese. The pie the rest of the pizza sits on. Bread. I love bread. I love bread way more than a person should love empty carbohydrates.”
“Wow,” she said. “I don’t think I have ever heard a man talk about bread like he wanted to make love to it.”
I swallowed hard. She laughed. What black magic did this woman have? What spell was she was casting on me?
Did I want it to stop?
The food arrived a moment later, breaking some of the intensity. Talk slowly morphed back to more casual things, and then to the store itself. I poured her another glass of wine as she told me of a few ideas she had for expanding the business. Things that would improve the appeal in the age of superstores without losing the small-town flavor. And ways to do it cheaply at that.
I marveled at her. Her ideas were extraordinary, and the more we talked about them, sharing ideas I had with her and going back and forth, we began to refine our ideas to ones that worked even better than what we had thought of on our own. We were editing each other, and it was working splendidly. Every time one of us thought of something to add to the other’s idea, our eyes would meet, and a smile would take over my lips.
She was charming and sexy and brilliant. The more we spoke, the more I realized that she could have done this without me. She could have made the store something magnificent without anyone’s help at all. I really might be the bad guy here. And in any other circumstance…
I wanted to shake the feeling. This should be about business. It should be about getting to know each other in a way that wouldallow us to work together. To make our shared investment the best it could possibly be. But the more we spoke, and the more we ate, and the more the bottle of wine emptied, the more I wanted to take her hand and discuss things of a more intimate nature.
The more I wanted to kiss her.
It felt like that feeling was returned with every batted eye and flirty laugh. She was responding to me in ways Sarah never had, even when we first started dating. There was a connection there, a powerful one. One that sparked with electricity and possibility. Our fingers brushed against each other briefly when I finished the bottle, topping off her glass and handing it back to her, and I felt like the first touch of many. At least I hoped it would be.
We finished the meal and stayed for a short while, still talking about our plans. When the waiter came by with the receipt for me to sign, Melanie was already grabbing her purse and scooting to the end of the booth to stand. Reluctantly, I stood too.
I had to try. Just for the sake of my own sanity, I had to try. Perhaps this was one moment, the only one I would have, where this would be a possibility. What if tomorrow, she went right back to being the combative co-owner of the business? It was now or never.
“So,” I said, mustering up every bit of charm I felt like I could grasp, “would you like to continue this conversation? Maybe come back to my place for a bit and go over some actual concrete plans?”
She smiled, and it seemed like she was so close to saying yes before she looked away, her cheeks and neck glowing red. Whenshe looked back, there was a sadness in her eyes, and my heart fell.
“I shouldn’t,” she said.
“I understand,” I said. “Do you need a ride home?”
“No,” she said. “I’ll be fine. Will you?”
“Of course,” I said. “Well, then, I guess I will see you later then.”
“Yes,” she said.
I held the door open for her as we walked out onto the sidewalk. Sure enough, the light from the store glowed in the distance, just a few blocks away.
“Goodnight, Melanie,” I said.
“Goodnight, Victor,” she echoed.
With that, she turned and walked back to her car. I watched her as she drove off and sighed before getting in my own.
