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ONE WEEK LATER
Cole
“Table for two, right this way,”the waitress said as she led me and Raya to a table near the back of the restaurant.
I didn’t know what had come over me, but I asked Raya if she would be willing to go to dinner with me. She had, after all, fed me dinner already, and I went to her place for drinks. By now it was back to being my turn, and I was pleased when she agreed.
Neither of us called it a date, but I knew that’s what it was. At least, in my mind it was. I brought in a nicer shirt with me and left it in my truck while I worked all day, then I put it on before we headed to the restaurant. I would have liked to have the time to shower first, but I didn’t want to run her evening too late, so I didn’t.
She didn’t seem to mind, only changing her shirt, too, before the two of us rode in my truck into New York City to the restaurant. We were further into the City than I usually cared to be, but I knew the restaurant was nice, and I wanted to treat her to a nice night out after all that she’d done for me already, and the fact things were going so well between us.
She was an addiction to me. I could feel it. It wasn’t that I just wanted to spend all my time with her, but I felt I had to. I felt that I needed to be with her as much as possible to get the most out of my time with her. Every minute we spent together was the next greatest minute of my life, and the more we talked, the more I felt myself falling for the girl.
But, there was another side of me that was holding back as well.
Raya and I hadn’t talked about what we were doing yet.
I knew we didn’t necessarily need to sit down and hash it all out for us to be an official couple, but that didn’t change the fact I had been raised to be rather old fashioned, and I wanted to. I wanted to talk to her and hear what she wanted. But, I also didn’t want to put too much pressure on what we were doing or scare her away.
She was a strong, independent woman. I could see that from the day I met her. So, to think about asking her to be my girlfriend was intimidating, even if I wasn’t the kind of guy to normally get nervous about things like this. I decided on the way to the restaurant I wasn’t going to ask her to be my girlfriend yet. I wanted to see how it went.
We were taking things slow. Well, as slow as anyone who started sleeping with their coworker took things slow, but still. It was just a matter of communication, I knew that, but having that kind of communication with her was another thing.
I decided to just push it all out of my brain and go with the flow, opting for the two of us to keep talking with each other as we got to know each other, and just see what happened. This was the first time in my life I had been really serious about a girl, and I was excited. Nervous, but excited.
“What are you getting?” she asked me as she looked at the menu. “I haven’t been here before. What’s good?”
“All of it,” I told her. “And don’t worry anything about what things cost. I’m going to treat you tonight, and I want you to have what you want.”
“Geez, with some of these prices, I’m not sure how you think you’re going to pay for this with what I’m paying you,” she teased. I smirked.
“Maybe I took on that job for something to do, not because I was in need of the money.”
“I’m not in a position to judge you.” She giggled. “But I’m just saying, if you can afford to take me to a place like this, maybe I’m paying you too much.”
“Or maybe you’re just that amazing that you deserve to come to this kind of restaurant when you’re out on a date,” I said with a wink. I saw her cheeks flush, even though she tried to hide it by looking away from me and burying her nose in the menu.
“Oh, is that what this is?” she asked from behind the two sheets of paper.
“Yes, that’s what this is,” I told her. “I might have done things a little bit backward with you, but then, neither of us are really bound to do things like the rules say, are we?”
“Never,” she said with another mischievous smile. “I don’t care what the rules are. I’m having fun with you, and I’m enjoying doing what we’re doing. I don’t want things to change between us.”
“Me neither,” I told her. “I’m a huge fan of what we’re doing, and I’m glad you and I can both keep it out of work. It’s so much nicer to have the separation between us. When we are at work we are at work, and when we aren’t, well, we have fun.”
“A lot of fun.” She giggled.
I loved the sound of her giggles. The more she did, the more I wanted to make her do it. Her laugh was like magic, and every time I heard it, I felt like I was on top of the world. I wanted more and more of her, and I hoped she was having as much fun as she was saying she was. This wasn’t the kind of place I would normally bring a date. It was expensive, and I didn’t seriously date people.
But, there was something different about Raya.
I wanted to impress her in as many ways as I could, and I figured taking her to a classy restaurant was the answer. She had seen how I was in the sheets. She had seen how I was when I worked with her horses. Now, I was going to take her out and show her a night that was beyond what she normally saw. Something that would make her feel like she was really the only girl in the world.
I knew women liked that, and in my mind, she was the only one for me. My job now was to prove it to her. But, I wasn’t entirely sure how to go about doing that. The fact of the matter was for as well as we knew each other, and for as much as we flirted, there was still so much more I wanted to learn about her. So much more I knew there was to discover.
But that took time, and I was impatient. I felt that we had something of a deadline with the end of Romeo’s training in sight, but I was going to have to find another way for us to keep in touch. It might come down to asking her to be my girlfriend, but I was going to wait for the right time to do that. I didn’t want to rush into it, I didn’t want to ask her for a commitment she wasn’t ready to give.
But, I also didn’t want to lose her to another guy. I didn’t know if there were other guys in her life who were chasing her, but I could only imagine that there were. She was everything. Beautiful. Smart. Sexy. Independent. She was the catch any guy would want to have, and I was lucky enough to have caught her eye so far.
