She eyed me. “What a surprise that Sir Eros himself wants to know a girl’s ideal date,” she mocked. “Shouldn’t you know that by all the app data you’ve collected?”
I scoffed and pulled my phone out to search for her profile. “Your profile is quite literally blank,” I said as I turned the phone around. “With the exception of this one photo—“
She laughed at the photo of her eating a cherry. One eye closed like she was laughing, wearing a white tee and her hair down. She shook her head before reaching into the fridge for a drink.
“Do you like ciders?” she asked, pulling two from the inside.
“Are you dodging my question?” I asked.
“I am, yes,” she answered, popping the lids off the bottles and handing me one.
My brows lifted as I waited for her answer, staring her down as she avoided it, until she chuckled out loud and rolled her eyes.
“I honestly hate dates,” she admitted. “They’re so awkward—at least the first few. It’s like each one is a job interview.”
“What would you prefer instead?” I asked.
“This,” she blurted. Her broad smile faltered like she hadn’t meant to say it. She uncrossed her ankles and pressed one foot into the bottom cabinet, holding that drink against her chest like she was trying to make herself smaller.
“I prefer this,” she continued. “I prefer feeling a connection in person and chasing it.”
“What if I took you out?” I asked. “Where would you want to go?”
I knew it was a gamble to even mention it after what she’d admitted about not being ready. She was likely to push me out of the apartment right then, but I was willing to chance it.
She smiled at the floor, her eyes then lifting to mine. “Gavin—”
“Hypothetically,” I said before she could completely shut me down. “The romance novel version.”
She scoffed and pressed her hand onto the lip of the counter behind her as she seemingly thought it through. “Okay… Ah… Autumn festival or carnival at night,” she answered. “With the lights everywhere.”
“Weather?”
“Oh, you can control the weather now?” she bantered.
“I might know a guy.” A lie, but it was fun to make her think.
“Damp grass and chilling fog weaving through the forest around the outside. Just cold enough that I can wear a sweater and skirt with my boots and hat, and you could wear a sweater and leather jacket—obviously, you have to have the jacket because at some point I would need it—”
“Obviously,” I added, my stomach twisting with the vision.
She smiled wide and took another swig of her drink. “We would eat shit fried foods and drink sours and ciders all night. We’d laugh, maybe meet my friends, maybe get lost in the Hall of Mirrors, and you’d spend a ridiculous amount of money on those games trying to impress me.“
A short pause rested between us, our eyes locked on one another. I could see what she wanted in my mind, and I was willing to spend whatever she wanted me to.
“What else?” I asked.
She sat her drink on the counter before starting toward me. “You would bribe the Ferris wheel operator to pretend the ride was broken,” she continued. “Or to go very slow…”
My chin lifted as she playfully tugged on the belt of my pants, those doe eyes looking up at me. I stared down my nose at her and drifted my fingers along the outskirts of her arms. Lower and lower my hands trailed as goosebumps rose on her skin with every whisper of my touch.
“Excruciatingly slow,” I said, one finger toying with the hem of her underwear.
“The other people on the ride would begin to complain,” she said. “Perhaps even panic at being stuck.”
“Absolute chaos,” I said, my fingers trailing lower.
“But we wouldn’t know,” she whispered as her eyes darted to my lips. “Because your hand would be between my thighs…” Her eyes fluttered as I dipped my fingers beneath the hem on the curve of her ass. “I’d try to be quiet as you teased me, but… in the end, those people would get a show.”
