Now it wasmyturn to shift awkwardly in my seat, heat creeping up the back of my neck.
“Yeah, well. Was the first time,” I said, finishing off the last few bites of lunch.
“I expected you to say no,” Felix said softly after a few moments of staring out the diner window, over at the mountains. “Now I’m not sure what to do. I had a whole speech prepared and everything.”
“You can still give me the speech, if you want,” I said. “I’ll listen.”
Felix shook his head, smiling wryly. “I’ve forgotten everything I was gonna say, anyway,” he confessed. “Lucky you said yes the first time.”
“So, what’re my boyfriend duties?” I asked.
“I think I mostly need pictures,” Felix said. “I also, umm. Need you to come with me to my book launch.”
“You haven’t finished the book yet,” I pointed out.
“No, not this one. The launch of thelastbook. I forgot it was this week. Would that, umm. Would that be okay?”
“What day?”
“Thursday night. It’ll run late, I was thinking you could stay at my place and we could come back Friday morning?”
I smiled. Felix might’ve been expecting me to say no, but he’d clearly thought about how to make this work. “Got it all figured out, huh?” I asked. “So you’re coming back here after the launch?”
Felix nodded. “I can’t finish this book by Thursday. Not even if the muses themselves decide to drop by.”
“But you can start, right?” I asked. “Now that you know… now that it’s okay.”
A tiny, shy smile spread over Felix’s features until he was grinning down at the table, dimples on full display. When he looked up at me, his eyes were sparkling like I hadn’t seen since he got here. Like they had when we were kids walking home together and he’d just had a new idea for a story he’d been waiting hours to tell me.
“I’m dying to start, actually. Thank you, I haven’t felt like this in so long.”
The look on Felix’s face was enough to convince me that I wasdefinitelydoing the right thing. Anything that made him look like thathadto be right.
“Did you wanna come by later?” he asked. “I have… half an idea for a photo.”
Well. That solved my empty afternoon of sitting around on the sofa wondering what I was meant to do with my Monday night.
“Sure. Could bring you dinner?”
“I’m actually desperate to try the one pizza place here that delivers, if that works for you?” Felix asked.
I lit up at the mention of pizza. It wasn’t myonlyweakness, but it was one of my big ones. Besides, that’d always been mine and Felix’s thing. We’d split more pizzas in our lives than I could count.
“You have no idea how much I’d love that. Around six?”
“Perfect.”
7
Felix
The doorbell ringingstartled me out of what I now realized had been a state of focus I hadn’t felt in… months. Not since I was finishing up the last book, over half a year ago now.
Six o’clock exactly. Kieran.
My heart leapt into my throat. I’d forced myself not to think about how easily he’d agreed to this, how open he’d been to the idea, how he’d teased me that I wasn’t the first person to ask to be his boyfriend, but that all came flooding back in an instant.
“Coming,” I called out, glancing at my wordcount.
