Page 14 of Ready or Not
Or was it something real?
I had to ask myself what I wanted with this beautiful woman who I just met a couple of hours ago.
What was my next plan?
Where did I go from here?
I didn’t have the answer to these things, however, I knew one thing: I caught feelings and I wasn't sure how to handle them.
“Alright,” she said, setting down her glass with a satisfied clink. “I’ve decided.”
“Have you now?” I asked, fighting to keep my tone light despite the internal chaos.
Ay mami.
When did it get so damn hard to breathe?
She nodded, raising an eyebrow like she was about to present me with the most important thing known to man.
“This drink? Absolute ten out of ten.” She gestured dramatically toward the glass. “In fact, it might be my new favorite thing.”
My lips twitched into a grin as I leaned in closer, resting my forearm on the table between us. “Your new favorite thing, huh? That's a bold statement. You sure about that, Spill-Prone?”
“Absolutely sure. You’re tripping if you try to tell me they got something better than this… wait, do they?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t really sure what I was agreeing to.
My focus had narrowed entirely on her—a lockdown of my senses I hadn’t prepared for.
The way she talked was full of energy—her hands emphasized every word, and her head tilted slightly when she laughed. It all appeared so natural, as if she was entirely free from any self-consciousness.
Why was I picking up on these things so much?
Each tilt of her head, each flick of her fingers, each easy grin—none of it should have mattered, yet all of it did. I was being overly observant… maybe evenridiculousbecause I was cataloguing things that made no sense to keep track of.
“So what about you?” she asked suddenly, shifting the spotlight back onto me as she rested her chin in her palm.
I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling like a deer caught in headlights. “What about me?”
“You know more about me than I know about you,” she said, licking her lip, and the sight of her undid me. Her tongue darted out just for a second, and the gesture was enough to derail my train of thought, imagining inappropriate things I had no business thinking about.
“You know about my obsession with this drink,” she continued, oblivious to the spiral my mind had just taken. “You know what I do for a living, my obsession with old school songs and indie films, that I love pilates and ballet,andhow I apparently have a habit of spilling things, which, for the record, I don’t think is entirely fair. But what about you? What’s something I should know?”
“You know enough about me?—”
“I know about your love life, that you’re the oldest of three with two younger sisters, you’re an art director who loves to observe people, you like cooking because your abuela taught you, the fact that you’re a Dominican from the Bronx—but that's obvious?—”
I fake-gasped. “That’s obvious?”
“Sir,” she smacked her lips and rolled those beautiful eyes of hers. “You have a DR chain on. It’s obvious that you’re a papi—omg did I just say something cringe out loud?”
I laughed, shaking my head. “Papi? That’s how you see me? That’s my new nickname?”
“I never meant—” she paused, catching onto my deflecting and narrowing her eyes at me like she was figuring out a puzzle. “You’re slick. I see what you’re doing.”
I batted my eyelashes. “Doing what?”
“You’re not getting off that easy.”
