The Girl Who Read The Dating Manual

rule five: don't get caught

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Dedicated to @sarcastictothelimit for her long comment last chapter. Thank you also to everyone who answered my questions. Because of that I now know what you guys will enjoy. Hopefully this will help your reading experience :)

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Sountrack:

Funny Little Feeling by Rock 'n' Roll Soldiers - The food fight

Broken by Seether - When Ava and Candi talk

The following night, I stood in Rive La Belle, scraping out the remnants of a chocolate sauce from a large saucepan as Will blasted his tunes and washed up across the kitchens.

            Will and I had offered to take cleaning-up duty and let everyone else off the hook, since the restaurant had been absolutely filled, and they’d worked particularly hard tonight. It gave me a chance to spend time with Will, which was something I’d definitely never turn down. Even if it meant slaving over a large saucepan scraping out crusted bits of desserts.

            I cursed as I spilled a splash of hot water onto my apron, and it seared my skin raw underneath.

            “You okay, love?” Will called from the distance, and I saw through the gaps between work stations that he was drying his hands on a dishtowel and hurrying over towards me.

            “Yeah,” I replied, smiling sheepishly at him as he rounded a metal bench and faced me. “Just a klutz, that’s all.”

            He looked down at my wet apron in concern and reached out, untying it and tugging it over my head. Then he lifted up my shirt and surveyed the red area. I glanced down in embarrassment, and he walked over and grabbed a clean dishtowel and a few ice cubes from the icebox. It reminded me with startling clarity of the second time Chance and I had ever met, when he was working in a café near campus and spilled hot water on his hand when he made me a macchiato. I’d barged through the café and fixed it, and our relationship had blossomed from there.

            I shook the memory off and fixed my stare on Will, watching the contours on his face as he frowned in concentration. He hurried over and pressed the cold compression to my stomach, and I smiled at him. “Thank you.”

            He bent down and kissed me on the cheek gently, and my eyes involuntarily shut as I smiled at the familiar contact. “Are you all right?”

            “Better now that you’re here,” I told him.

            He leaned back and grinned, obviously noticing our closeness at the same time I did. He bent down and kissed me gently, his lips soft against mine. But it wasn’t enough, so I twined my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, kissing him harder. My back pressed into the metal bench as he pressed me against it, and we were pressed so close I could feel the body heat emanating off of him. I tiptoed my fingers up his neck and gently held his face, enjoying the feel of his lips on mine and the way one hand kept the iced tea towel on my heated stomach, and the other cupped my jaw. He tilted my head, and I felt his kiss from the tip of my head to my toes. Will had this way of kissing, where it seemed like the whole world melted away, and you could feel his love purely through his kiss. It made me dizzy.