Page 100 of Resorting to Romance

“So you were putting on Spanx for your not-a-date?”

“Can we stop saying Spanx beforeIneed therapy? Please?”

Kai made me a picnic. He didn’t stop to pick up slaw from the market and fried chicken from a restaurant. The man made me a picnic. And then he walked me down to the local North Shore beach and laid out a beach blanket before opening the cooler with all the food in it. And we’ve spent the past few hours filling in blanks of our knowledge about one another, coordinating the fake details of how we started dating, and sealing any holes in our stories.

We’re prepared.

I look around the blanket at the remnants of the meal we shared. Chocolate’s smeared on the dessert plate from the tart Kaipicked up at the Patisserie inside Alicante. It’s the one item he didn’t make from scratch, and I’m not mad about it.

I’m a woman who serves people for a living and loves doing it. There aren’t really words to explain what it means when someone turns the tables and decides to serve me. Kai did that. He does it all the time. A slow, soft, but surprisingly intense yearning begins to swell somewhere in my chest. It whispers and nudges:This. Him. Forever.

What would it be like to spend my life giving back to Kai Kapule? Out-serving him. Showing him how much he matters. Running my hand along his jaw whenever I wanted. Looking into his honey-gold eyes while they crinkle in the corners with amusement. Sharing my heart with him, because he’s safe enough to hold it.

Only, is he? Does he feel anything beyond friendship for me? He’s reiterated the word friend all along. He’s always treated me like this. Nothing has changed for him. He said he missed me, but then went right into how we needed this day just to get our stories straight.

And then there’s Noah. He loves Kai, but he’s about to find out who his dad is. I’ve been subtly leading up to the reveal that’s going to happen sooner than later. There couldn’t be a more inopportune time to start dating another man. What if Kai and I dated and broke up? Noah would lose the one man in his life who’s been anything close to a father figure. I can’t do that to Noah. I knew it wasn’t time to think about romance, but my heart didn’t listen.

“Mila?”

“Huh?”

“You drifted off somewhere.”

“Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry about.” Kai smiles softly. “We probably need to talk about one more thing.”

“So we’re prepared?” I ask.

“Yeah. It’s kind of important.”

Kai’s leaning back on his elbows. I’m laying down, my head propped on my hand. When he says it’s important, he sits up. I raise myself off the blanket so we’re side by side, looking out toward the ocean.

“We need to talk about that kiss.”

I cover my face. “Could we not?”

“Mila …” Kai reaches over and pulls my hands away. His soft expression melts me. “It’s okay. I already told you that. I just think we need to consider what we’re doing about kissing going forward.”

“What we’re doing about kissing?”

Do I sound panicked? Because I feel a little panicked.

“Yeah.” Kai doesn’t take his eyes off mine. “That kiss was …”

“Awkward?” I ask, fishing for a sign that would tell me he feels anything other than sweet friendship for me.

“No …” He shakes his head and it almost seems like he’s remembering our kiss. Then he chuckles lightly. “A little awkward. You definitely caught me off guard.” He smiles at me. I smile back. Then he finally settles on saying, “It was …unrehearsed.”

Unrehearsed?How can he say it was unrehearsed? The best kiss of my life to date felt unrehearsed to him? I don’t know if I should feel insulted or curious as to where he’s going with this.

“Definitely,” he says. “Unrehearsed. It looked like our first kiss ever.”

“Which it was.”

“Right. Exactly. And, if you think of it, we shouldn’t look like we’ve never kissed. It won’t do. We’ve been dating. Obviously, we’ve been kissing.”

“We have?”

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