I swallow. “That’s good. Just roll your travel clothes and luggage all over the clean sheets. That will make it nice for your stay.”
“Thanks. I think so, too.” Gabriel looks up to me, smiling. “Good to see you, Spencer.”
Warmth flutters through me. “Yeah. You, too, Gabriel.”
He sits up. “How have you been?”
I shrug. “Good, I guess. Can I offer you anything? I haven’t actually been cooking all day, but there’s plenty here. A drink?”
Gabriel stands. “I’ll be hungry soon. We’re supposed to get dinner out, right? There’s some Italian restaurant on standby, right. One of your favorite places in the neighborhood?”
“I almost always eat at home,” I admit. I nod back into the condo, and he follows me as I head to the kitchen. “While you’re here, help yourself to anything in the fridge, by the way. There are a bunch of prepared meals. I get them delivered every couple days.”
“Efficient,” he muses.
I lean back against the counter. “There’s tea. Coffee. You know, just—”
“Spencer,” Gabriel says, cutting me off with a smile. “I’ll let you know if I need anything. Maybe a water to start?”
“Of course.” I realize how nervous I am, and hope I’m not acting like it. There’s just something incredibly disorienting about looking at Gabriel standing in my home.
I grab a soda water from the fridge, pour it in a tall glass with ice, and hand it off. Gabriel’s fingers brush mine as he accepts it. “Let’s eat here,” he says as he sits at the counter. “We should do something interesting for our date out anyway. Don’t want everyone to say I’m boring now that I’m settled down.”
“Interesting?” I get myself a soda, too, which I drink straight from the bottle. “I’m suddenly scared of what you mean by that.”
“A male strip club, of course. Or a demonic ritual at a heavy metal show. It’s really up to you. Both?”
“You’re such a gentleman.”
“Maybe not interesting,” he tries again. “But fun. That’s my job, right?”
I turn my eyes up to the ceiling. “What’s a fun date? What do people do in movies?”
“Don’t make an intellectual exercise out of it. What sounds fun to you?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. I guess I could call Alyssa. She had some alternative date concepts.”
He gives me an exasperated look. “You don’t know what’s fun?”
“Clearly not as much as you do.”
“Name something you’ve never done before that sounds like it would be fun.”
I see the glint of something mischievous in his eyes and let out a surprised laugh. “Damn it,” I say. “I should have known you couldn’t stick to a plan. You’re going to try to drag me to Disney World or something ridiculous by the end of this weekend, aren’t you? It’s not going to work.”
He laughs. “I can’t believe you just put Disney World on the table like that and took it off immediately.”
I lean back on the counter, the kitchen island between us. “It’s mildly depressing that I don’t have an answer to your question,” I admit.
“What did you do for fun growing up?”
“We’re already going to the aquarium for our date tomorrow.” I shrug. “Sports. We were a sports family through and through.”
Gabriel pulls his hat off. “Anything from your dad yet?” he asks, his gravelly voice softer.
My neck muscles tighten. “No. Nothing,” I say. When the emotions rise up, I turn to the fridge. “Do you like salmon?” I ask.
“Salmon?”
