Chapter 46 (1/2)

so reluctant to go over past history. I would’ve been excited, grateful, happy. Now it just feels weird. It doesn’t quite settle the way that it should.

Dakota hasn’t answered me yet, and her words already feel somehow stilted as her eyes scan the room and her chest fills with a breath too deep to hold good news.

“Can I have some more water?” she asks, keeping her response to my question to herself.

I nod and get up, meeting her eyes one more time in hopes for an answer. Half of my brain tells me that I should ask again, that I should make sure she doesn’t want to change the status of our relationship. Would we fall back into old routines so easily? How many days would it take before she’d be effortlessly falling back into my arms, forgetting about her need for independence and adventure?

I grab her glass and once in the kitchen open the small drawer next to the fridge where the Tylenol is. If her hiccups and stumbling steps are any indication of how much she’s drunk, she won’t be feeling so hot in the morning. I open the bottle and dump three into my hand, then fill her glass with more water. In the sink is a cake pan. On the counter next to it, the elaborate tiered cake with purple icing and flowers Nora and Tessa made earlier.

Nora has left traces of herself all over my apartment.

I debate whether it would be worth it to eat a piece before I go back into the living room to deal with Dakota. Or I could cut one for each of us. I doubt that she’d eat it, though, with her strict diet and all. I lift up the corner of the plastic wrap and dip my finger into the icing.

Dakota walks into the kitchen just as I shove my finger between my lips.

Shit.

“Really, Landon?” Her lips lift into a smile and I lean against the counter and face her. She looks at the cake, then back at me. All I can do is shrug and smile.

I grab the glass of water and hold it out to her. She inspects it for a moment, thinking of something to say, I’m sure. Dakota’s lips press to the side of the glass and I move back toward the delicious cake.