"I've never been on one."
"A date?"
"With a guy, I mean."
The sentence sat between us. Simple, yet enormous.
"Me neither," I said.
"So this is our first date." Liam smiled.
"Technically our first date was Penny's."
Liam's head whipped toward me. "Penny's was not a date."
"You took me to your favorite restaurant. You ordered for me. You wiped syrup off my face with your thumb," I said.
Liam squeezed my hand. "That was—I was being helpful. You had blueberry all over your—"
"You touched my face."
He was grinning. Fighting it, losing. "Penny's was not a date. We were friends."
"We were coworkers who couldn't stop staring at each other." I shot a look towards him. "And you told her I was just a coworker. Not even a friend. Coworker."
"You were both."
"Either way Liam, you wiped food off my face."
"You keep coming back to that."
"Because it was the moment I knew."
That stopped him. The grin fading into something quieter. He looked at me.
"Knew what?" he asked.
"That you were going to be a problem."
He was quiet for a second. The road humming under us. Trees blurring gold.
"The pancakes were life-changing though," he said finally. "I wasn't wrong about that."
"You weren't wrong about that."
"So fine. Penny's was... a pre-date. An audition."
"An audition."
"Yeah. And you passed."
"Damn straight I passed."
"Barely." He squeezed my hand. "But yeah. You passed."
I squeezed back. The road stretched ahead of us.
He was grinning. But then it faded—not into sadness, just into something more honest.
