Page 65 of A Dream for Daphne

“What is?”

“You’re the first guest I’ve ever had.”

“Really?” he asked.

“Yes. I had friends over to my house as a kid, but the older I got I was too embarrassed. And that doesn’t count.”

“But I’m not a friend,” he said. “I’d like to think I’m not a guest either.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m still trying to navigate all of this.”

“Your water is boiling over,” he said, laughing.

She never lost her attention when cooking before and moved quickly to take care of it.

“Sorry,” she said. “Can you get the dishes down? They are in the cabinet to the right of the sink.”

He reached over her and got them down, found the silverware, and set everything out, then she brought it to the island.

“I’m used to serving myself off the oven,” he said, laughing. “Sorry about that.”

“It’s fine,” she said. “I do that most of the time too. Like I said, my first guest.”

She felt like a fool that she was making a bigger deal about this.

“So you’ve never had an overnight guest then?” he asked when they started to eat.

“No,” she said. “I never wanted any guy to spend the night at my parents’ house even if they weren’t home. I’d stay at their place and that was few and far between. I didn’t normally spend the night with someone.”

“Does that mean you don’t want to?” he asked. “Just trying to understand.”

“I do,” she said. “It hasn’t come up until now. But I should tell you that I did tell Aster about us and he wants to meet you.”

“I figured. My mother wants to meet you.”

Her eyes got wide and she choked on her bite of food. “You told your mother about me?”

He laughed. “Yes. You told your brother.”

“Yeah, but...I guess they mean the same in our lives.”

“That’s right,” he said. “If you weren’t going to tell people about us, I’d start to think it was a secret. It’d make me feel bad about myself.”

She rolled her eyes over the impish grin on his face.

There he was trying to make her laugh again.

“I doubt that.”

“You don’t know if I’m joking or serious. But I’m serious about this dinner. This is great.”

“You work hard,” she said. “You need to replenish at the end of the day.”

“I do,” he said.

“Can I confess something else to you without sounding clingy or like a weirdo who is planning out the next ten years of our lives?”

“Sure,” he said. “As long as you don’t tell me you want to make yourself a basketball team full of kids.”

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