“Seriously?” she had asked, when I’d requested that she place the order.
“Have you ever known me to kid about pulling a good old-fashioned prank on someone?” I responded.
“Not really. I mean, no. I mean, yes,” Ava said, tripping herself up. “I mean, geez, that’s an odd way to phrase it. Kind of like a trick question. I know that you’re very serious about your silly pranks. But usually you play them on your guy friends. So, it’s just I haven’t seen you make such romantic overtures before. Isn’t your usual pick-up line just something like ‘Hi, I’m a billionaire’?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
“You’re not in love with one of the dozens of girls you’ve banged?” she asked, as if daring me to spill all.
“We haven’t banged yet. We just, you know, talked.”
“Well, that’s a first!”
“I know, I know,” I said.
“It really must be love,” she said. “If you didn’t bang her and you’re playing a prank on her? I know my brother, and this is love at first sight.”
“Stop saying that word,” I insisted.
Finally, I got her to make the call. Now I was literally watching the clock, waiting for the estimated arrival time, looking forward to the chance to see Sally again. At five to the appointed time, I heard the knock at the door, and was glad that Ava had remembered to give Sally the passcode to the security gate out front.
“Oh, my God, it’s you. Hi!” Sally said, seeming happy to see me.
But then her face looked confused and I realized she probably thought I was having another woman over, and that I had ordered the cake to eat with someone else.
“Oh, good, you’re early,” I said, playing it cool.
After I let Sally into the apartment, she put the cake box on the dining room table.
“Are you having a party or something?” she asked. “I was told this was for no special occasion….”
She opened the lid of the cake box for me to inspect the contents inside.
“Yeah, that’s about it,” I said.
“That’s what?” she asked.
“I asked for a smiley face because that’s how I knew I would feel if you actually ended up delivering it,” I said. “And that one matches the look on my face right now.”
“You ordered a smiley face because of me?” she asked.
I decided not to answer, unable to find a way to say what I was thinking without embarrassing myself.
“Oh, I see,” she teased. “You were looking for a way to see me again.”
“Yeah,” I admitted.
“Good job,” she said, seeming to mean it.
“Can’t let your good work go to waste, now can we?” I said.
“What did you have in mind?”
“Trust me?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, with only the slightest hesitation.
“Good, come with me.”
I picked up the cake box and led her up to the roof of the building. I owned the whole thing, so I could basically go up whenever I wanted and I had even made a place to hang out in up there. It hadn’t been hard to set up. I just hired a local firm. The Chinese lanterns hung over the table had been my idea.
“Wow,” Sally said, when she saw it, “who is this for?”
“You, well, us. I wasn’t sure if my ploy would work and didn’t want to make a reservation somewhere, just in case that’d jinx it. I figured this would be as nice a first date as any.”
“You thought right!” Sally enthused, leaning in to hug me as if by instinct.
I was so glad I had made her happy. I was happy, too, for the first time in a long time.
I gently lay may hand on the small of her back, a bit of physical contact to which she did not object, and led her over to the table, pulling out her chair for her and putting down the cake box I had carried up beside the other food I had set out on the table just moments before she arrived – luckily she hadn’t been too early.
I couldn’t help but glance down at her ridiculously hot ass as I did so. If she noticed, she didn’t care.
When the course was finished, Sally putting away an impressive amount of food with what can only be described as aplomb, no matter how pretentious it might sound, I put two candles in the cake and lit them.
“No way!” Sally exclaimed, when she saw the numbers the candles had been shaped into.”
“What?” I asked.
“No way you’re 35.”
“Yet it is true. How old are you?”
“23.”
“Didn’t you say you and Gia were in the same class?”
“Yeah, so?”
“Gia’s freshly 21.”
“Yeah, I kinda got held back a couple years. Once in elementary school and once in high school. It was nothing really bad. I got sick as a kid and had to repeat fifth grade and had to get a job in high school to help my parents.”