Page 66 of Cinnamon Roll Set Up

I take another step. I’m in her space, but she just goes on looking up at me, hands still behind her back. “Are we imagining the date went well then?”

She swallows and presses her lips together. “I think we should, yes. Is a kiss part of your goodnight routine?”

This conversation is going to kill me.

“You have a misguided idea of what my dating life is like if you think I have a ‘goodnight routine.’”

“I think it is.” She ignores my protest. “I think you probably do kiss her goodnight.”

I gaze from one green eye to the other, trying to hear her with no misunderstandings. “Do you want me to kiss you?”

She smooths her lips between her teeth and back. “Do you think you need the practice?”

“Maybe. It’s been a while.”

She nods again, staring up at me with mountains of trust in her eyes. “For me, too.”

The writer in me wants to freeze this moment so I can write a poem about Georgia’s exact eye color as she stares at my mouth. Take down every nuance of the blush that warms her cheeks. Immortalize her soft pink lips that are finally, inexplicably, waiting for me.

The man in me just wants to kiss the hell out of her already.

I lean down agonizingly slowly. I have never felt my height quite so keenly. My mouth is called to hers on an inevitable journey, but before I reach my destination, she whispers to me.

“We can kiss as friends.”

The lava coursing through my veins turns into glacial ice. Whether her caveat is a warning for her or for me, it stops my momentum entirely. I won’t kiss Georgia as friends. Not when it would be so much more than that for me.

I angle my face to one side and press a kiss to the corner of her mouth. The smallest touch of heat, and then gone. If I kiss her skin anywhere for longer than that, I just might forget all my noble intentions.

I straighten in time to watch Georgia blink herself out of a daze.

“I think on the first date, I’d just kiss her on the cheek.”

She nods, darting away from the door and out of my reach. “That’s smart. Always keep them wanting more.”

Her shaky laugh doesn’t reassure me. The trouble is, I do want more. But I need to be sure she truly wantsme.

Chapter 22

Georgia

Have you ever seen a guy really whiff it in baseball? He’s at bat, he’s focused on the ball, and he throws everything he has behind his swing—only to miss the ball entirely and stumble to the side from all that wasted momentum?

That was me last night. I whiffed it with Miles. We were standing so close and he smelled so good, and he was leaning in tokiss me on my mouth, when…I panicked. What if he truly only thought of us as friends? What if he really was only practicing? I didn’t want to kiss him and think it meant something when it really didn’t.

But how do you just say that? “Um, hey, Miles, before we get down to it, is this a really-real kiss or just a friend kiss?” It’d seemed like a stroke of genius to follow Willa’s lead and call it a friend kiss before he could. I hadn’t expected him to skip it entirely.

I probably shouldn’t take relationship advice from eight-year-olds.

But that’s okay. It makes sense. We don’t need to kiss. Wearefriends.

And now, we’re friends who almost kissed but didn’t, sitting in Miles’s car as he drives us to my dad’s house.

I thought I could use his behavior when he showed up to gauge where we’re at. But he’s acting perfectly normal—a few smiles, a little teasing, nothing out of the ordinary. Which probably means he didn’t really care about the kiss that almost was. So it’s probably a good thing I whiffed it.

Doesn’t feel like a good thing, but I can’t be sad when I’m on my way to an eight-year-old’s birthday party.

“You really took my advice,” I say. There’s a huge gift bag spilling bright pink tissue paper in the back seat.

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