She set her hands on her hips. “Did it ever occur to you to ask me how I feel about you?”
“I think I know how you feel about me.”
“You have no idea how I feel about you.”
He looked at her as if she’d just announced that the koi in the pond were performing a play.
“You should have had a conversation with me about this,” she said.
“We are having a conversation about it.”
“We should have had a conversation about this sooner.”
He scrubbed his hands into his hair, ruining the neat alignment she’d noticed earlier. Then, with a sound of frustration, he dropped his arms. “How do you feel about me?” He appeared to brace for bad news.
“I’m not sure. Which is why there’s no way that you can know, Zander. My feelings for you have been changing.”
A pause. “Changing?”
“When we kissed, the dynamic between us shifted. I haven’t been able to find my equilibrium since.”
“Why? You got everything you wanted the way you wanted it after we kissed. You said you thought it would be best if we didn’t repeat the kiss. And I said okay.”
“My brain was so scrambled after we kissed that I hardly knew what I was saying. My knee-jerk reaction was to safeguard our friendship.”
He drew an uneven breath. “Have you changed your mind? You’re going to have to spell it out for me so that I can understand. What is it you want?”
“I want to kiss you,” she told him bluntly.
He looked like he’d been poleaxed.
Collecting her bravery, she drew herself upright. “That’s what I wanted five seconds after our kiss. And that’s what I’ve continued to want every day since. It’s just that I’m wary about getting your hopes up or my hopes up about the future. I don’t want to cause you or myself pain. I can’t guarantee ... anything.”
The band began to play “Keep on Loving You”by REO Speedwagon.
“Maybe we should do what other people do when they like each other,” she suggested. “Maybe we should try dating and see where it leads.”
He still hadn’t moved. “You want to date me?”
For the first time since she’d found him in the garden, she smiled. Despite his photographic memory and an extraordinarily high IQ, he seemed to be having difficulty comprehending English. She understood why.
When something had been the same for an eon, it was mind-bending to realize that it was suddenly different. A micro-evolution had occurred in their relationship. “Yes. I want to give dating you a try.”
“And ... you want to kiss me? Is that what you said?”
A tendril of hair drifted in front of her face. She tucked it behind her ear. “When I told you on the beach that I liked our kiss, that was an understatement. In fact, it was such a big understatement that it might be considered either a sin of omission or a lie.”
His gaze homed in on her.
“That kiss was earth-shattering,” she stated. “In the best possible way.”
He walked slowly toward her, closing the distance between them until they stood less than a foot apart.
Desire began to singe the edges of the clear-headedness she was trying to maintain. “Was it earth-shattering for you, too?” Her voice emerged faintly hoarse.
“Yes. Earth-shattering.”
“Do you want to give dating me a try?” she asked.
