“Thank you.” Bella bent down and kissed Mrs. B on the cheek.
“Are those for me?” she asked when she stood back up.
I’d completely forgotten I’d stopped by the Posy Pusher florist to grab the wildflower bouquet. “They are.”
“They’re beautiful!” she exclaimed as I handed the colorful arrangement to her.
“I don’t… have…um…” Bella looked around.
“I’ll take care of them.” Mrs. B reached up and took them from Bella. “You two get goin’.”
“Thank you!” Bella smiled from ear to ear.
“Thanks, Mrs. B.” I nodded toward her.
“Have fun, you two.” Mrs. B pointed the rolled-up paper in my direction. “But not too much fun.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I waved and when I lowered my arm, I rested my hand on Bella’s back. It felt totally natural and no big deal, and completely foreign and a huge deal at the same time.
I opened the door for her, helped her in, and we were on our way.
As we drove, I realized that I’d refrained from ever really participating in any sort of romantic gestures like putting my arm around a girl, or holding hands, or any sort of PDA, really. When I was twelve, my pop gave me his version of the talk. It basically consisted of him handing me a box of condoms and telling me to use them. Then he said that sex was sex, it was a physical act. But if I did ‘lovey dovey shit’ with girls they would think it was more than that.
I hadn’t realized how much that one talk had imprinted on me. In all the years I’d been hanging out with the opposite sex, I’d never come close to doing anything that was remotely ‘lovey dovey’ until now. With Bella.
I wondered if that had been unfair to the women I’d spent time with. I’d made sure that they all knew the deal. But somehow, I still felt like I’d maybe been an asshole by treating them like that.
I wanted to do all those things and more with Bella. She made me want to be a different man. A better man.
“Are you okay?” she asked from beside me.
My eyes sliced to hers. “Yeah, why do you ask?”
“You just seem…quiet.”
I didn’t think I should share the thoughts I was having about my past, or that I wanted her in my future. I didn’t want to spook her. “I was just thinkin’ about how new this is for me.”
The look on her face told me that she thought I was trying to sell her ocean-front property in Arizona. “I doubt that.”
Even though her response was a kind way of saying she thought I was full of it, I still couldn’t help but smile. Her calling-bullshit-on-me face was damn cute. “Why do you doubt it?”
She squared her shoulders as she turned her upper body toward me. “I don’t believe for a second this is the first time you’ve driven down backroads, windows down, listening to country music, with a girl by your side.”
I dipped my chin toward her. “True, but never this girl.”
And this girl was the only one that mattered.
She smiled, but I could see that she thought it was a line I was handing her. I figured that I wouldn’t try and convince her it wasn’t. I’d let my actions do the talking for me.
“How did lunch go with Cheyenne?” I didn’t have a lot going for me in this relationship. We were from two different worlds. She lived hundreds of miles away from me. She’d shown zero interest in any sort of commitment. But she knew my sister. That was a connection I planned on exploiting for all it was worth.
Maybe the saying was true, all really was fair in love and war.
When she didn’t answer I glanced back over and her lips were pursed. As soon as she caught me looking, she covered her expression with a smile.
“Did it go okay?” Damn. I’d thought that her knowing Cheyenne was in the pro column of things I had going for me. I didn’t even consider it might be in the con.
“Um, yeah, actually I wanted to talk to you about that. I, sort of, told her I was seeing you. Or, you know, that I have seen you. That I saw you before and now I’m seeing you tonight.” She spoke so fast I barely caught every word.