He cuts his eyes to me again and the playful smile is gone from his lips. He reaches into a cabinet and pulls out a pan, then walks to the sink and fills it with water. He walks back to the stove and begins stirring again. “I might be a little bit attracted to you, too,” he says.
I unnoticeably inhale, then let out a slow, controlled breath in an attempt not to appear blindsided by that comment.
“Just a little bit?” I ask, doing what I do best by infusing awkward moments with sarcasm.
He smiles again, but keeps his eyes trained on the pan in front of him. The room grows silent for several minutes. He’s focused on cooking and I’m focused on him. I watch him as he moves effortlessly around the kitchen and I’m in awe at his level of comfort. This is my house and I’m more nervous than he is. I can’t stop fidgeting and I wish he would start talking again. He doesn’t seem as affected by the silence, but it’s looming in the air around me and I need to get rid of it.
“What does lol mean?”
He laughs. “Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. You typed it in your text earlier.”
“It means laugh out loud. You use it when you think something is funny.”
I can’t deny the relief I feel that it wasn’t lots of love.
“Huh,” I say. “That’s dumb.”
“Yeah, it is pretty dumb. It’s just habit though, and the abbreviated texts make it a lot faster to type once you get the hang of it. Sort of like OMG and WTF and IDK and…”
“Oh, God, stop,” I say, interrupting him before he spouts off more abbreviations. “You speaking in abbreviated text form is really unattractive.”
He turns to me and winks, then walks to the oven. “I’ll never do it again, then.”
And it happens again…the silence. Yesterday the silence between us was fine, but for some reason, it’s incredibly awkward tonight. It is for me, anyway. I’m beginning to think I’m just nervous for what the rest of the night holds. It’s obvious with the chemistry between us that we’ll end up kissing eventually. It’s just really hard to focus on the here and now and be engaged in conversation when that’s the only thing on my mind. I can’t stand not knowing when he’ll do it. Will he wait until after dinner when my breath smells like garlic and onions? Will he wait until it’s time for him to leave? Will he just spring it on me when I’m least expecting it? I almost just want to get it over with right now. Cut to the chase so the inevitable can be put aside and we can get on with the night.
“You okay?” he asks. I snap my gaze back up to his and he’s standing across the bar from me. “Where’d you go? You checked out for a while there.”
I shake my head and pull myself back into the conversation. “I’m fine.”
He picks up a knife and begins chopping a tomato. Even his tomato chopping skills are effortless. Is there anything this boy is bad at? His knife stills on the cutting board and I look up at him. He’s looking down at me with a serious expression.
“Where’d you go, Sky?” He watches me for a few seconds, waiting on my response. When I fail to give him one, he drops his eyes back to the cutting board.
“Promise you won’t laugh?” I ask.
He squints his eyes and ponders my question, then shakes his head. “I told you that I’ll only ever be honest with you, so no. I can’t promise I won’t laugh because you’re kind of funny and that’s only setting myself up for failure.”
“Are you always so difficult?”
He grins at me, but doesn’t respond. He keeps eyeing me like he’s challenging me to say what’s really on my mind. Unfortunately, I don’t back down from challenges.
“Okay, fine.” I sit up straight in my chair and take a deep breath, then let all my thoughts out at once. “I’m really not any good at this whole dating thing, and I don’t even know if this is a date, but I know that whatever it is, it’s a little more than just two friends hanging out, and knowing that makes me think about later tonight when it’s time for you to leave and whether or not you plan to kiss me and I’m the type of person who hates surprises so I can’t stop feeling awkward about it because I do want you to kiss me and this may be presumptuous of me, but I sort of think you want to kiss me, too, and so I was thinking how much easier it would be if we just went ahead and kissed already so you can go back to cooking dinner and I can stop trying to mentally map out how our night’s about to play out.” I inhale an incredibly huge breath, being as though I have none left in my lungs.
He stopped chopping somewhere in the middle of that rant, but I’m not sure which part. He’s looking at me with his mouth slightly agape. I take a deep breath and slowly exhale, thinking I may have just completely sent him out the front door. And sadly, I wouldn’t blame him if he ran.
He lays the knife gently on the cutting board and places his palms on the counter in front of him, never breaking his gaze from mine. I fold my hands in my lap and wait for a reaction. It’s all I can do.
“That,” he says, pointedly, “was the longest run-on sentence I’ve ever heard.”
I roll my eyes and slouch back against my seat, then fold my arms across my chest. I just practically begged him to kiss me, and he’s critiquing my grammar?
“Relax,” he says with a grin. He slides the tomatoes off the cutting board and into the pan, then places it on the stove. He adjusts the temperature of one of the burners and pours the pasta into the boiling water. Once everything is set, he dries his hands on the hand towel, then walks around the bar to where I’m seated.
“Stand up,” he directs.