"A grand gesture?" I echoed.
“Yeah, like in rom-coms. It sounds cheesy, explaining it to you now, but I thought it would be nice. And Pippa's really cute. I knew that you would love her.”
“She is cute,” I agreed. “Thank you for tonight. It was really thoughtful.”
He shrugged. “It was nothing.”
I swallowed and made my voice light. “I wonder what I’d do for you as a grand gesture. I’d probably have to make an architectural model."
“An architectural model?” Leo repeated, head swivelling to look at me.
“Yeah,” I said, “of the Sagrada Familia.”
“You remembered that?”
“Of course.”
“It'd be very difficult to recreate,” Leo pointed out.
“Well, it's either that or a building that looks like your face, which would probably be equally as difficult.”
“And,” he said, lips curving. “It would have the added benefit of being a hideous building.”
“Hey, are you calling yourself hideous? Or are you fishing for compliments again?”
“No!” Leo's eyes went big, brows jumping up to his hairline. “No, I just mean a house that looked like someone’s face would be creepy. Imagine living in it. You open a window, and it’s the person’s eyes. Or, you’re chilling in the toilet, but it’s actually the person’s nose.”
“Yeah, that would be pretty weird. I suppose that I could always go to a tourist shop,” I mused. “I could buy a miniature model of the Sydney Opera House.”
“You could,” Leo said.
We fell silent because, in this hypothetical scenario, my grand gesture would be my attempt to win him back after doing something to hurt him, and I didn’t want to dwell on that.
Up ahead were the bright neon lights of a convenience store. I turned to Leo. “Do you want a coffee?”
He eyed me. “Do I look tired?”
“No,” I said with a small smile. “I just remembered you liked them, and I don't know if you wanted something to drink. I could get myself a hot chocolate.”
“All right,” Leo said.
In the store, we used the machine to make two $1 beverages. I insisted on paying, even though it was literally spare change compared to the dinner Leo had paid for.
We left the corner shop and continued up the street, which had a slight uphill incline. As I sipped the sweet chocolate and milky mixture, I thought that coffee could be another grand gesture for Leo. He’d said several times he was turning twenty soon — I could buy him a heap of coffee pods as a gift.
We arrived at my apartment building sooner than I expected, and I had only swallowed half of my hot chocolate. I could tell from how Leo held his cup that he hadn't finished his cup either.
“Well,” he said as we stood on the street, the lobby windows casting us in light. “I hope you had a good time.”
“I did. Thank you for this evening. I enjoyed myself.”
“That's good.” He looked down at his hands, which enclosed around the coffee cup, then back up again. “Well, I’ll stop keeping you in the cold. But I hope that maybe we can see each other again. No pressure though.” He smiled and took a step back.
I frowned. “Are you leaving?”
He nodded.
“You don’t want to come up?”
