“Getting comfortable?” I ask.
I'd been sitting on the couch waiting for him. And I hate to admit it, but a part of me is a little excited that he wanted to come over again. Yes, I love when the girls are here, but there's just something different about Dutton. Almost as if I get to have a friend who doesn't expect anything from me. A fresh start with a new friend. I don't know how else to describe it.
The last time he was here, I sat next to him on the couch, but that's not where he chooses to sit. Nope, he sits in a recliner across from me.
“What's on your to-do list for today?” His tone suggests he wants to get this over with, and it’s not the, dare I say, friendly tone he’d been using last night. To be fair, he didn’t have to come today.
“Today, I thought maybe we could discuss how we're goingto play this out on more outings in the town. The bar was interesting, so I think we need to be a little bit more prepared. Our ‘let's just chill and be casual because that's how friends do it’ approach was fine, but I was not prepared for all the staring.”
Dutton groans. “There was so much staring.”
“Right? Okay, good. I thought maybe it was just me.”
“No. It was weird.”
“All right, so we need a better plan.”
“Or we just need to hang out more in public and then it won’t be weird anymore.”
“That’s fair, but being at my house the other night also worked, so …”
“So, we do both,” Dutton says, as if it were that simple.
And it is. I guess.
“We’ll do both,” I agree and then open my laptop.
“Did you move your list to your computer?” Dutton asks with a laugh.
“No.”
“So what are you doing?”
“Working.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“I thought we were hanging out.”
“We are. You can get your computer out and work if you want, too.”
Dutton groans.
“I worked all day. Why would I want to work right now?”
I glance up, noticing that he doesn't even have his phone in his hand.
A fully present man.
Even more interesting.
“I work a lot,” I tell him. “I would think that of all people, you’d understand that.”
“Yeah, but I know how to turn it off once I get home.”
My fingers pause on the keyboard.
