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“Well,” he said. “Let’s see how good your cooking is. If it’s anything like your baking, I might never move out.” He sat at the table and picked up his hamburger.
She watched him anxiously as he took his first bite.
The meat was tender, juicy, and flavorful. “Wow, that’s good.”
“Right? I cooked a lot when I lived with my parents. It’s the one thing they encouraged me to do, and since my mom liked to clean, it worked out great. It’s practically the only way we connected.”
He raised an eyebrow. Kind of like the two of them, although they shared more connections.
They ate in contented silence for a few minutes. With any other person, it would have been uncomfortable, but with her... he was just happy to be near her.
She was the first to break the silence. “Can I ask you something?”
“Aren’t you already?”
She grinned. “I guess.” She paused. “Do you think you’d ever want to overcome your sensory issues?”
He leaned back in his chair and took his time chewing his homemade fry. “My parents tried. They forced me into things, like soccer. That was a disaster. I refused to come out of my room for days.”
Hannah clucked her tongue. “How sad.”
“But, yes, I’ve thought about it. And I do want to overcome it. I definitely don’t want to be alone forever.”
Her eyes twinkled as she studied him. She stretched her hand across the table, palm up. Slowly, he took it, staring at their fingers.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said slowly, “you’ve made a lot of progress throughout your life. You said it yourself. You wear jeans and other things that made you uncomfortable when you were younger.”
He looked down at his pants. They were soft, stretchy jeans, but they counted.
“And you’re doing better about letting people into your personal space,” she continued.
“Shaking anyone’s hand is still painful.” Her eyebrows shot up, and he clarified, “Except with you, the painful sensations are not there anymore.”
“Ah, but they were at one time, right?”
He thought about the first time he’d met her outside his office. She’d tried to hold his arm, and he’d snatched it away as if he were burned. “Yes, in the beginning, it was similar. It wasn’t until after you burned your hand and I wanted to be there for you that things felt different.”
She squeezed his fingers, startling him. “Remember what the doctor said? Our sensory issues could be neurological. Once we break through the barrier, reverse our thinking, we change how we feel about things. It’s something we’ll always struggle with, but I just keep thinking—you want a chance at a relationship, and you should have whatever you want.”
Their eyes connected again, and the tension returned, even more so when her thumb passed over his skin. He shivered and pulled his hands back to his lap.
“So, what were you thinking?” he asked.
“Something that will pull you out of your comfort zone completely. A few experiments, if you will.”
He swallowed the hard knot of worry gathering in his throat. “And what experiments do you have in mind?”
“Do you trust me?”
He nodded slowly. Yes, actually, he did trust her.
“Well, then, starting Monday morning, we’ll begin. You just have to promise you won’t give up.”
He thought of the possibility of being in a relationship with Hannah. A shiver rolled through him. He wanted that more than almost anything. For her sake, he would never give up. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
She clapped her hands together and cheered. “All right! Be prepared to be very uncomfortable.”
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