Page 58 of One Little Problem
“Um—"
“Right,” I said, remembering that I was trying to be on board with this idea. “Even when, if that happens,” I smiled sweetly. “It will still be an adventure and a good day because I’m with you.” And I thought I might not ever top anything more romantic than ‘I love you too, asshole.’ I had such a way with words.
“Wow, Lemon Drop, good stuff.” He tilted his head in thought and admitted, “Though I do get why our friends call us disgusting now.”
“Now? I’ve always known.” I leaned in to press my nose against his, Eskimo kiss style. “I just don’t care because of you, Genius.”
“Aww, babe.” We shared a sappy, happy little moment while we stared into each other’s eyes and grinned like idiots, ignoring everyone and everything going on around us. We got into Luke’s car when we pulled apart so that we could start on our exciting adventure. Of driving around until we got bored. I mean, of magic and mystery.
When Luke turned on the car, the radio started, but I didn’t have time to hear what song it was as he quickly jammed his finger on the switch to turn it on and off. He kept the car in park and turned to me, expression serious but excited. “I have an idea.”
“Did it hurt your brain?” When were too cute sometimes, I had to balance out all the sap with snark.
Luke narrowed his eyes at me. “You would so be sleeping on the couch tonight.”
“I love you,” I informed him happily.
His face tried to stay grumpy but couldn’t quite manage it. “Love you too,” he grumbled back like he had to. Then he shook it off, going back to excited and urgent. “Okay, here and now, we find our song.”
“We let destiny decide?” Again. Sure, that’s what we’re doing, taking all of it out of our hands, no choices for us today. Maybe that wasn’t too bad. We’d made a lot of difficult decisions lately.
“Just think relationship thoughts,” Luke instructed. “And then we’ll turn the radio on together.”
I nodded. There was a moment of silence where we both thought relationship thoughts. I looked at Luke, he looked back at me, and I stuck my tongue out at him. He sighed and closed his eyes, but he took my hand instead.
Relationship thoughts. We were the best. Cutesy and sappy one minute but derogatory the next. There were so many things about Luke and our relationship that I loved and I was becoming less afraid of leaving every day. Not because it would be easy but because Luke had turned me into a romantic and an optimist. I just had this feeling that as good as things were between us, the best would be yet to come.
Maybe I just wanted that to be true, but the more I focused on that instead of the uncertainty, the more it seemed possible. The best was yet to come.
We each played a role in selecting our perfect song. Luke turned on the radio and I twisted the dial on the tuner and when our eyes met, I stopped adjusting the station.
The selection? A commercial for hamburgers. From Wendy’s to be specific. Not just an ad saying, hey, go have a burger. That would be weird.
“Should we pick again?” I asked Luke. He was the one who started all this ‘leave it up to the universe’ crap, so I looked to him for guidance.
“I think so,” he decided slowly. “Our song should probably be, you know, actual music.” We looked at each other solemnly for a moment before we couldn’t take anymore and started giggling. “The wires got crossed somewhere,” he said when we calmed down. “This is the universe telling us how to spend our day.” He would say that. That fast food restaurant had a location about 15 minutes away, but I liked the burgers at the diner nearby better.
“Maybe the universe thinks it’s being funny.” I explained that, “This commercial was on when we were coming back from the planetarium.” I moved my hand towards the tuner dial. “Ready to go again?”
Luke grabbed my hand. “No, this should be our song.”
I stared at him. Seemed like he was being serious. “It’s not a song,” I pointed out.
He waved a hand. “Details, details.”
“Luke, it’s a commercial for hamburgers.” Duh.
“It’s the soundtrack to our love story, we’ve heard it twice now!” Him being passionate about this was all kinds of adorable, but I couldn’t give in. It wasn’t even music!
“They’ll stop playing it eventually. Not like something we could hear—" Don’t say 20 years from now, that’s too long. “After the summer is over.” They’d have a new commercial then.
That gave Luke pause. “Okay.” Thank god. “It’s not just this commercial, it’s any Wendy’s hamburger commercial.”
I rolled my eyes. “So romantic.”
“It’s not like they’ll ever stop advertising. Whenever I think of their burgers, I’ll think of you.”
Crap. That made a certain amount of sense. “Again, it’s not the most beautiful choice.” Had to make one last protest.
