Page 154 of How to Win the Girl

That is not what I was expecting him to say.

“Yeah. I’m not great at it, but I like brownies and cake.”

He likes baking brownies and cake?

“What ’bout you?”

“I…guess I like cookies? Chocolate chip cookies.” I haven’t had them in forever. “The gooey kind that have just been taken out of the oven are the best kind. Once they get cold, I’m not interested.”

“I stopped makin’ cookies when I fucked up the last few batches I made. I hate wastin’ ingredients.” He pauses. “I think the stove is a piece of shit. It ruins everything.”

Wastin’ ingredients.

I’m not thinking about kids right now or nothing like that…

This conversation is killing me.

“So you’d like someone who cooks, because you like to bake.” Got it. Noted.

“Do you want kids?” Drake suddenly asks, and it sounds like he’s chewing on something—I wonder what it is, given that my pizza is almost done.

“I’m not sure,” I answer honestly because I have no idea what I’m doing next week, let alone for the rest of my life. “I don’t know. I don’t think about it all that often.”

I open the door to the oven, oven mitt on my head, ready to reach in and pull out the pizza.

“Yeah me too,” he drawls. “I have no idea what I’m doing next week let alone for the rest of my life.”

I straighten. “Did you just say exactly what I was thinking?”

“I have no idea what you were thinkin’.”

“I was thinking exactly what you just said.”

“Well, don’t that beat all.” He’s chuckling again, and I get the feeling he’s humoring me. “What are you up to?”

Tucking my phone beneath my chin, I slide the pizza out of the oven, cringing as the pizza sheet grates along the metal oven rack. Like nails on a chalkboard.

“Taking a snack out of the oven.”

“What kind of snack goes in the oven?”

“Pizza.”

He hesitates. “Thewholething or a few pieces?”

I swipe some tomato sauce onto my finger and lick it off.

Yum.

“Whole thing.”

Drake laughs again. “A light snack, hey?”

I shrug, going to the drawer for a pizza slicer. “Honestly, I haven’t been grocery shopping in days, so there wasn’t much to choose from, but I’m also in the mood for…pepperoni.”

The pizza is actually sausage and cheese, but I wasn’t about to tell Drake I was in the mood for sausage and give him an opening to make a dumb joke about meat or his dick.

Cause: sausage.

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