Page 46 of Cream and Punishment
Me: You googled it, didn’t you?
Max: I’m gonna plead the fifth on that one.
This earned him another wave of crying-laughing emojis.
Lex used to tease me about how many emojis I used while texting, but I stood by my choices. Reading people was hard enough in person. After taking away their facial expressions and tone of voice? I’d misinterpreted too many texts to risk the recipients of mine doing the same. Besides, emojis were fun. So there.
Me: Invoking your constitutional rights over text? FBI agents, I swear.
This, I followed up with an egregious amount of winky faces.
He sent a GIF of a little girl smiling mischievously.
Me: Let me guess, you’re going to plead the fifth again?
Max: You know me so well.
His message, simple and innocent as it undoubtedly was, sent my heart pinging around my chest. Iwantedto know him that well. I wanted to know everything about him—the good, the bad, and the embarrassing. Friends were allowed to want that about each other, right? It wouldn’t be breaking his dating sabbatical to spend time together just because we were opposite sexes, and I was attracted to him. I could keep my disobedient thoughts and eager lips to myself, easy breezy lemon squeezy.
I took a deep breath, my pulse ratcheting out of control as I typed out a variation of the original risky text I’d planned. Following his last text, it felt even riskier somehow. But before I could overthink it and reread it for the fourth time, I pressed send.
Me: Oh yeah? Then am I right to assume you haven’t eaten dinner yet?
Logically, it shouldn’t be risky at all, right? It was barely past five o’clock. Unless he had a meal in a slow cooker or picked something up on his way home from work, the chances were slim to none that he’d already eaten.
And yet, my thoughts still raced with all the possibilities of how this could go wrong. What if he thought I was about to ask him on a date? What if he found it creepy or weird that I even asked? What if he saw right through me into the forbidden feelings threatening to grow for him now that I knew he didn’t hate me?
For someone so risk-averse, I sure lived my life in extremes. Straight fromhe hates metosince he doesn’t hate me, I’m going to latch onto him like a mollusk.No in-between. And maybe that was why I assumed people hated me as a default. It was safer than coming on too strong and scaring them off, than letting all myweirdout only for them to change their minds once they knew all of me.
His reply came moments later, with an emoji of two eyes looking to the side preceding it.
Max: Are you offering? Because either way, the answer is yes.
I smiled in relief. He’d understood, and he didn’t seem to find it creepy at all. Halle-pancake-flippin’-lujah.
Me: In that case, I have a lasagna calling your name.
Max: Which name—Maxwell or Maximus?
I sent a few eye-rolling emojis. He’d never let me forget that, would he?
Me: You’re hilarious. See you soon?
A saluting emoji preceded his reply.
Max: Yes, Chef.
I leapt out of bed as well as my still-tender ankle allowed, giddy with excitement. An hour of frantic tidying and shoving half-emptied moving boxes into my room later, the tantalizing aroma of Italian sausage, tomato sauce, and garlic saturated the apartment. ABBA’sI Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Dosang out quietly from my Bluetooth speaker while I tossed the salad Hattie had included with the lasagna and garlic bread.
Normally, I would’ve chalked up her going above and beyond with repaying me to the fact that she felt guilty that I’d injured myself in the process. But based on the significant look she’d cast toward Max’s apartment and the scheming smile on her face before she’d left, I’d bet my dino chicken nugget throw pillow that she’d hoped I’d invite him all along. And, like the enamored guppy I was, I swam right into her trap.
Worse—I’d do it again if given the chance.
I’d barely set the salad in the middle of the apartment’s tiny excuse for a dining table when two crisp knocks came from the door. My heart hiccupped in excitement. I smiled and attempted to pat down my unruly curls on my way to let Max in.
I’d decided—after discussing the pros and cons aloud to myself in great detail, of course—not to put makeup on for dinner. Taking my hair out of its bun in lieu of attempting to style it in a half-up style and changing out of my pajamas was already pushing it. I couldn’t claim this was a purely friendly invitation and then treat it like a date, now, could I?
I could. I totally could.
