The Introvert's Guide to Blind Dating (The Introvert's Guide 3)

“She was an idiot,” Josh agreed.

“Excuse me, I’m right here.”

“You wanted us to get along.”

“Not at my expense!”

“Doesn’t work like that,” Kinsley muttered, dipping her spoon into her snow cone and scooping out a little shaved ice. “Trust me.”

“This seems highly unfair,” I grumbled.

“It is.”

Maverick looked at Josh. “Do you hate funfairs or are you an actual adult?”

“Fucking love them,” he replied. “Kinsley hates them, too.”

“Rollercoaster?” Mav asked.

Josh looked at us then back at him. “Yeah, fuck it. Let’s go.”

I watched in disbelief as they both got up and headed toward the rollercoaster, talking as if they’d been friends for their entire lives.

Even Kins stopped dipping her spoon into the snow cone and watched them go. “I’ll never understand men,” she said when they’d disappeared into the throng of people.

What just happened?

I blinked after them. “Now what do we do?” I asked her.

“I don’t know. I thought he was just going to apologize, and we’d leave you to it. You’re clearly on a date.”

“How do you know that?”

“We’ve been stalking you for half an hour. He only came over because I finally shoved him and made him.” She scooped the last of the ice out of the cup. “He’s a big wimp.”

I wasn’t going to argue there. “Do you wanna go back to the bakery, eat half a cheesecake, and drink wine?”

“Hell yeah.”

***

“Try this!” I shoved a mini cheesecake toward Maverick. It’d been a week since the funfair, and I’d finally perfected the second dessert.

At least in my opinion I had.

I kind of had to ask for his since, you know. He was still paying me, even though we were dating.

Hey, a girl had to pay for her dreams somehow.

“What is it?” He pushed his laptop to the side looked at the ramekin I’d put in front of him.

“It’s a chocolate, cherry, and honeycomb cheesecake,” I replied. “I finally figured it out.”

“Since when did you put chocolate in it?”

“Since I wanted to.”

He snorted. “Fair enough. Got a fork?”

I passed a clean fork to him and stepped back, wringing my hands in front of my stomach. Unlike with the muffin where he’d watched the creation process of the final mixture, I’d taken Josh’s suggestion of honeycomb and somehow managed to create this.

The original iteration didn’t have chocolate, like Maverick had so helpfully pointed out just a second ago, but who didn’t want chocolate on their cheesecake?

He dipped the fork into the cheesecake and scooped out a small piece. The mixture on the base was the perfect amount of crumbly, and I drew in a deep breath as he brought the fork to his mouth and tasted it.

Oh, my God.

I couldn’t breathe.

“Holy shit,” he said, stabbing it with the fork again. “This might be the best thing I’ve ever put in my mouth.”

I gasped. “Really?”

“Really.” It was muffled, given the chunk of cheesecake in his mouth. “This is the best thing ever.”

I finally relaxed. I’d been working on it all morning while he’d been sitting at his favorite place in the kitchen writing. He couldn’t move into his new house for another two weeks, so he was still alternating between the bakery, the bookstore, and my apartment on an evening.

I would be glad to get him out of my kitchen, but kind of sad that he wouldn’t be spending all his evenings in my apartment. He even had his own little section of my dining table at this point. There was a pen and notebook and mug permanently there, and he’d even purchased another charger for his laptop because he kept leaving one at his crappy apartment.

Still, I missed having a quiet kitchen.

All right, so I’d also miss his food. While he’d been writing here we’d fallen into a comfortable routine. He no longer woke up at four-thirty to observe the goings on of the bakery, and over dinner, I’d answer his questions. When he was done cleaning the scenes up, he’d pass me his laptop to read them, and I’d edit where necessary.

Then, of course, Mav would go home, and we’d do the same thing the next day.

It was comfortable. Too comfortable. And it scared me a little because it wasn’t the kind of thing I did. I wasn’t the kind of person who fell hard and fast for someone. Everything was slow and steady for me.

I had to stop and ask myself if I was falling too hard. I wasn’t, though. Despite the amount of time we spent together, not a lot of it was actively dating or doing anything crazy like that. It was just a natural progression of a relationship from a friendship and attraction into something more.

The more we learned about each other, the more I realized our weird pairing made sense. He really was incapable of putting caps back on the milk or juice cartons, and I really was food obsessed.