Stuck With You: A Sweet Romantic Comedy

Part 14

Bianca

The next day, I left work promptly at five, over the objections of Chad.

"I'm going to have dinner at Liberty's," I told him. "It's a special occasion."

"Adam cooking?"

"How did you guess?"

At six, I was down in the lobby of the Mission Tower, waiting for Timo.

During the forty-minute drive, Timo listened as I chattered away about this and that: mostly a gossipy backstory on the Liberty/Adam/Professor McNotty unrequited love triangle.

Then Timo told me about all the amusing things my nieces and nephews had done in my absence. The forty minutes to Liberty's flew by.

When we arrived, the other guests were already there: Professor McNotty, Shasta, and Shasta's new boyfriend. Shasta is Adam's ex-girlfriend and the creative force behind Liberty's glow up.

I introduced Timo to everyone who hadn't already met him, leaving our relationship intentionally ambiguous.

There's no graceful way of saying, "Listen up, folks! Let's get one thing straight; despite appearances, Timo and I are just friends."

Except Timo and I weren't just friends, exactly. I wasn't sure what we were, but I had no intention of getting any more emotionally entangled with Timo than I already was. Despite the startling revelation that Timo appeared not shocked and completely OK with my decision to live a childfree life, I was still far from convinced that we were meant for each other.

For one thing, I pretty regularly worked sixty-hour weeks, and Timo had made it abundantly clear that he'd rejected that lifestyle.

Dinner, as I had anticipated, was impressive. There doesn't seem to be any major world cuisine that's managed to defeat Adam. He had cooked Thai food, and it was delicious.

"This may be the best Pad Thai I've ever eaten," Timo said as he accepted seconds.

"It really is," I said.

"You always were a terrific cook," said Shasta. "That was one of the things I loved about you."

Adam glanced over at Liberty, to see if she was listening to all this adulation, but she was engrossed in a conversation with Professor McNotty about some finer point of his research on the lost plays of Shakespeare.

Shasta's boyfriend, however, was paying attention and didn't seem too pleased with how much Shasta apparently missed Adam's cooking.

After dinner, Liberty suggested that we climb out the attic window onto the porch roof and look at the stars. According to Professor McNotty, there was supposed to be a meteor shower.

I was tired and wanted nothing more than to go back to the penthouse and take a long hot bath in the enormous tub overlooking the terrace and the city lights beyond, but after Timo voiced enthusiasm for watching the meteor shower, I could hardly ask him to take me home early.

Shasta and her new man cried off, but the rest of us climbed the rickety pull-down ladder into Liberty's attic.

Worming our way through all the stuff stored up there wasn't easy. Liberty has always been a bit of a packrat—an orderly packrat—but a packrat, nonetheless, and the addition of about twenty boxes of my belongings hadn't helped matters any.

"Watch your head," I told Timo, as I held my phone aloft.

I should have paid more attention to my own advice because I ran smack dab into a rafter.

"You sure are accident-prone," Timo said as I rubbed my smarting head and ignored Adam's admonition to hurry up and get out of everyone's way.

"I'm not normally this clumsy," I insisted.

"She really isn't," Liberty told Timo. "I'd better go back down and get an icepack out of the freezer."

In the end, Timo went instead, and I shakily descended the ladder behind him.

As Timo held the icepack to my head—the second time he'd done that for me—I couldn't help wondering aloud, how the Liberty/Professor McNotty/Adam love triangle was progressing up on the roof.

"I predict that Professor McNotty will soon be getting a decisive kick to the curb," said Timo.

"Who by? Liberty or Adam?"

"Liberty," said Timo.

But I wasn't so sure. Based on the dark looks that Adam had been throwing Professor McNotty all during dinner, I wasn't so sure that Adam might not crack long before Liberty herself realized that she and Adam were not destined to be just good friends forever.

"I'll bet that Liberty gets kissed before the night is over," said Timo.

"That's obvious," I said. "Why else would she have suggested star gazing on the roof? That's a prime first-kiss scenario."

"True, but I don't think it's going to be Professor McNotty who ends up kissing Liberty," said Timo. "I don't think Professor McNotty is that into her. I get the impression that McNotty views Liberty as a human card catalog."

"You may be right," I said. "But what if Liberty makes the first move."

"I don't think Adam will let that happen. I think he'll kiss her first."

"You think Adam's just going to suddenly and randomly kiss Liberty out of the blue? Right in front of McNotty?"

"Not exactly. I think McNotty will leave first," said Timo. "Also, Adam strikes me as the sort who asks for permission."

"Does he?"

"He does."

Timo had been standing over me, holding the icepack to my head. He now bent down, so we were eye to eye.

"Where do you stand on asking permission first?" he said.

"Permission for what?"

"Permission to be kissed."

"Isn't that usually implied?" I asked.

I was stalling for time. I wasn't sure if Timo asked permission to kiss me, what I was going to say. The emotional half of my brain was screaming yes, and the pragmatic side of my brain was saying no.

"Not necessarily."

"Are you asking permission?"

"I am."

While my right and left brains had been duking it out upstairs, my body had been staying out of the debate, but it suddenly decided to weigh in solidly in favor of kissing Timo.

"OK," I said.

"OK as in, 'I understand,' or OK as in 'it's alright to kiss me'?"

"Both, I guess."

I expected Timo to lean in slowly, allowing me time to adjust to his closeness, but instead, before I fully registered what was happening, his lips were on mine. The icepack slipped from my head when the hand he'd been using to hold it wrapped itself around the back of my neck.

Our first kiss had started out polite. This one was anything but polite right from the get-go. Timo seemed to have abandoned all restraint and good manners immediately after so decorously asking permission to kiss me and getting it.

I wasn't feeling awfully restrained myself.

"We can't do this," I said, coming up for air.

Timo didn't ask why, and when I said I wanted to go home, he didn't question that, either.

On the way back to the penthouse, I texted Liberty to explain our sudden departure. I said my head was hurting, although it wasn't my skull that was in pain. It was my heart.

I wasn't ready for a relationship with a man like Timo. I wasn't sure I'd ever be ready for that. Timo was a man who deserved at least the chance of a forever, and I wasn't chance-of-a-forever material.

I rolled down the window and stuck my head out into the cool night air as we drove.

"You OK?" Timo asked.