AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He barked out a laugh.
“Does this make me a shoe?”
“I think it means you’re showing me new worlds. Ones outside the sock drawer.”
New worlds, huh? Jason liked to think he wasn’t a seventeen-year-old boy looking to strut his sexual prowess, but he’d buy a throw pillow that advertised that he took women to new worlds—even if she referred to a piece of bedroom furniture. Even if Marsie was the only woman he ever took there again.
Even under his ego, he knew her answer wasn’t quite enough. “So all the interesting, witty men couldn’t show you new worlds. What, then, am I?”
“Interesting and witty, of course. But it’s more than that. You’re not repeating me back to me. If I asked you what travel destinations were on your bucket list, you would probably tell me someplace that I’d never considered—maybe not even heard of. It’s more than wanting to go to a city instead of the beach or skiing instead of hiking.
“I didn’t know who Thomas Day was until you talked about him and his woodworking, but there’s probably a museum somewhere of his cabinets and woodworking. I wouldn’t even know to look for a museum like that. You would know and want to go, and my world would be bigger.”
Jason finally took a sip of his coffee. It was cold and he grimaced. He stood, poured his coffee into the sink, sat back down and refilled his cup with coffee that he was actually going to drink this time. “So where do we go from here?” he asked as he poured cream into his coffee.
“A date? I don’t know. I’ve never gone from friends to lovers before. Once you’ve crossed the line, do you keep on like lovers trying to get to know each other, or like friends who are having sex?”
He smiled into his coffee as he took a sip. Marsie sure did like rules. “I think there’s a third way. Or maybe there’s our way, and it doesn’t have to be measured.”
She frowned at him, but he knew the scowl was a fake so he continued to smile. He was probably going to be doing a lot of smiling for a long time. “We’ve not gone out to celebrate your poker winnings yet. How about we get dinner?”
She scoffed. “Let me get this straight. For our first date as a couple, I’m supposed to take you out with the money I won off your friends at a poker game you invited me to so I would teach them a lesson about not underestimating women?”
“Well… I really just wanted them to get their asses kicked in person by a woman. I hope they learned a lesson, but I’m pretty sure they will need you to win the shirts off their backs a couple more times before they’ve learned anything close to a lesson.”
She was cutting the other doughnut in two and looked up at him, amusement dancing in her eyes. Of course, it was dancing with something akin to irritation, but that was a line they’d been walking through their entire friendship. It wasn’t like their relationship would be reborn as something different because now they got to sleep with each other.
It just meant he’d get to wake up next to her. And that was awesome.
“But I’m paying for our first date?”
“We could look at it two ways.” He put down his fork and lifted one finger. “One, you’re paying for our first date and I’m enough of a feminist to be okay with that. My masculinity will survive.”
He lifted another finger. “The other way to look at it is that my friends are paying for our first date. They just didn’t realize it at the time.”
“And neither did we.”
He inclined his head to her. “And neither did we. But, we had said we’d use some of the money for you to take me out to dinner. So that’s what we’ll do. It’s just that the parameters of the date will be different.”
“When?” she asked.
“When are we going to dinner?”
“I want to know that, too, but when did our relationship start?”
“Do you have a date that you need to know if you should cancel?”
She giggled. “No.”
“Are you planning a first month anniversary present already?”
“No.” Marsie always looked so tickled to be teased, and it was such a pleasure because all her stiffness seemed to dance when she was amused and didn’t think she should be. He had always wondered why more people didn’t tease her.
