Come Alive (Experiment in Terror #7)

CHAPTER TWO

There’s sleeping in and then there’s sleeping in. We did the latter, burrowing into my bed like we were hibernating for the winter. Her soft skin, my comfy duvet—it’s all I ever needed. I could die there, death by relaxation, preceded by death by p-ssy.

“You’ve always belonged in my bed,” I whispered into her ear as I pulled out of her and wrapped my arms around her chest. That was orgasm number a billion for the both of us, which explained why it was so hard to get out of bed. After I followed through with my promise to f*ck her senseless last night, I added a 3AM session (blowjob, finally), and two rounds in our warm, half-asleep state.

She snuggled into my arms and I could hear the smile in her voice when she said, “I guess Fatty Rab will have to make room for me then.”

“There’s no way that dog is sharing a room with us. You only get one dog in your bed, baby, and that’s me.” I had half a mind to call up Rebecca and beg her to take care of Fat Rabbit for a few days more, giving Perry and I plenty of time in this faux-honeymoon period, but I knew I’d start missing the stinky bastard sooner or later.

“And you’re one bad dog,” she teased.

“Woof, woof. Give a dog a boner.”

She giggled and smacked my arm. And that’s why I loved this woman. She let me say the stupidest shit, and on occasion, actually found it funny.

There it was again. That word, that feeling of sinking, falling, drowning. Good, wonderful, delicious, scary. I was going to have to get used to it. I was going to have to start being okay with being in love and hope to hell she’d start to catch up with me.

“Hey, Perry,” I said, kissing the top of her head. F*ck she smelled amazing, like sex and vanilla.

“Mmmm?”

“What are you doing tonight?”

She turned her head and smiled up at me.

“Besides you?”

I grinned. “Baby, doing me is always and forever a given. It’s like Newton’s law of gravity, or Amazon taking over the world.”

She pursed her lips playfully, as if she had no other option, as if she’d ever turn down my cock again. “Good to know. Then I don’t know what else I’m doing tonight. I was thinking about unpacking…”

“Unpacking here, right?” I didn’t know if it was a stupid question or not, so I had to ask.

She stared at me for a few beats. “Yes, I’m unpacking here.”

“And here, in this room, our room…not the den?”

She nodded. “If you’d like.”

I sat up and adjusted myself so I could look at her better. “Perry…you know what I’d like, what I want. I want you to stay here permanently. I wasn’t joking with that making me your home business. As cheesy as it sounded, I f*cking meant it.”

“I know,” she said, her eyes softening, sky blue in the morning light.

“I don’t want you in the den. I want you in this bed, forever. I want to be with you. Not just as a partner, not just as a friend. I want us to be together, to be one, to be…I don’t know, a f*cking couple.”

She rubbed her lips and I had the urge to kiss her hard enough to make her see just how I felt. Finally she said, “I want those things too, Dex, I do. I just…I want to take it a bit slow. I’m just…” She trailed off and exhaled loudly. I could see the worry on her brow and knew I was coming on too strong for her right now. Perry had other things to consider instead of just me. She was my everything at the moment, a challenge to overcome. But she’d just been uprooted from the only home she’d ever known, been ostracized from her family on account of me, and was dealing with the ever-looming threat of becoming someone like her grandmother. In my impatience, I had forgotten all that.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, stroking her head. “I’m getting ahead of myself. Seriously. I know you’re going through so much shit right now, and if I could carry all of it for you, baby, you know I would. Take all the time you need. You know I’ll be here.”

She gripped my arm hard and looked up at me with questioning eyes, as if she didn’t really believe that.

“It’s fine,” I reassured her. “Let’s just start with you, right here with me, and go from there.”

A smile slowly spread across her lips, her eyelids lowering seductively.

“I’ll go first,” she said. What a f*cking little horndog she turned out to be. She started running her hands down my chest and stomach, marveling at my muscles, before groping my dick. “You’re hard again.”

“I’m always hard,” I told her, leaning back and closing my eyes, succumbing to her touch. “Another constant you’ll have to get used to.”

She began stroking me back and forth, her grip enticingly firm. If she wanted to take it slow, I could think of a million ways to make the time pass.

***

It was around noon when we finally dragged ourselves out of bed. We showered together, another slippery session that had me coming in her mouth, before she booted me out, telling me she had to beautify herself. When I was with Jenn, the beautification process usually took half the day—shaving, waxing, scrubbing, sanding, welding—so I let Perry be and went about tidying up the apartment.

There was a knock at the door that had me puzzled. I knew Perry and I could be pretty vocal, so I hoped it wasn’t a prudish neighbor, irate that I was getting some and they weren’t. But then I heard a snuffle and a scratch at the door and knew the person on the other side was the opposite of a prude.

I opened it and saw Rebecca in the hallway as a white devil darted through my legs and scampered into the apartment, his claws scratching up the hardwood floors.

“Hey sweetheart,” I told her with a grin as Fat Rabbit tore about the living room in circles.

She smiled tightly, looking a bit off. Oh, she looked as f*cktastic as she usually did—tight dress, fishnets, Betty Boop shoes, a Louise Brooks bob. But she wasn’t wearing her trademark red lipstick, and that was strangely troubling. It was like seeing Homer Simpson without those two squiggly lines on the top of his head. >

“I’ve been trying to call you,” she said, her English accent sounding clipped, and stepped in and walked past me. She heard the shower running and raised her brow. “Perry’s still here?”

I looked at her askew. “Why wouldn’t she be?”

She shrugged. “So I guess everything went fine in Canada?”

“Yes…kind of. Sorry I didn’t call you, I didn’t have time to recharge my phone yet.”

“When did you get back?”

“Late last night…”

Her eyes drifted to the shower again. “Everything okay between you guys now?”

I folded my arms as Fat Rabbit sniffed around my ankles. “What’s with the one hundred and one questions, Miss Rebecca?”

She rubbed underneath her eyes and it was then that I noticed her black as death eyeliner was gone too. Who was this imposter?

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Are you okay?” she asked right back.

We stared at each other. Fat Rabbit flopped down to the floor, bored with us.

I said, “I told Perry I loved her” at the same time that she said, ‘”Em and I broke up.”

Then she smiled and I frowned. “Shit, I’m sorry.”

“You told her you loved her?”

I waved my hand. “We can talk about that later. What happened?”

She exhaled loudly and walked over to the couch, sitting down in a similarly dejected pose like the dog.

“She wanted different things than me,” she mumbled, her face in her hands. “And I knew, I knew this day was coming. I knew I’d have to choose what I wanted over her, even though, f*ck Dex, all I ever wanted was her.”

I bit my lip, unsure of how to comfort her. I’d never seen Rebecca rattled before. “I’m sorry. You wanted to get married, didn’t you?”

She nodded. “Yes. I mean, I wasn’t pressuring her, at least I don’t think I was. But I feel like I drove her away. We could have compromised…maybe I could have been more understanding. But you know, I wanted to adopt children one day, blimey, maybe even have one myself. I wanted a family and she…she doesn’t. I knew from the start that she wouldn’t come around, I knew we were going to crash and burn. The last year I just let myself keep falling for her, tricking myself, like a bloody tailspin and there’s that little voice telling you to ‘pull up, pull up’ and I didn’t.”

She was making airplane analogies. This really wasn’t good. I came over to her and sat beside her, putting my hand on her shoulder. It was bonier than I remembered and I wondered if she’d stopped eating.

“I wish I knew what to say,” I said, feeling stupid. Usually I had tons of shit to spew, but this, what she was telling me, was hitting a little too close to home. In some ways, I knew how she felt. The need to start a family, to finally have a f*cking family, was something slowly creeping up on me, day by day. I wondered if that’s why I’d been coming on too strong with Perry, if instinctually I wanted to get started on something that I’d secretly wanted for a very long time.

And then the thought of Perry’s miscarriage hit me in the gut and I swallowed away the pain, trying to focus on Rebecca.

“I know,” she said. She lifted her head and wiped away a tear. “There’s nothing anyone can say because there’s no good and bad or right and wrong here. It’s just bloody life and it really, really sucks sometimes.” She shot me an apologetic look. “Sorry, Dex, I know you know that more than anyone.”

I smiled gently. “True. But it doesn’t mean it won’t suck for anyone else.”

The shower turned off and I heard Perry sliding back the curtain. Rebecca straightened up and plastered a smile on her face. “So tell me about Perry before she comes out here and we have to speak in code.”

I grinned and got up, fishing a handful of Kleenex out of the box on the coffee table and handing it to her.

“I’m pretty sure Perry would break that code,” I told her, my voice a bit lower.

“Let’s try,” she said, and after dabbing at her tears, she made an “O” with one hand and jabbed her other finger in and out of it. “Any of this?”

I laughed. “Oh, there’s been plenty of that.”

She smiled, no longer fake, her eyes looking brighter. “That’s excellent! And you told her you loved her. That’s so…I’m so proud of you, Dex. Finally. So what did she say?”

I raised my brows. “Uh, well, here’s the thing…”

“Rebecca!” Perry exclaimed. Our heads swiveled over to the bathroom where she was stepping out with soaking wet hair, her towel barely covering her breasts, and looking shocked.

“Hi, Perry,” Rebecca said, tearing her eyes away from mine. I couldn’t have been interrupted at a better time.

Perry grinned uncomfortably. “Let me go change before I flash you.”

“That wouldn’t be a problem,” Rebecca said, just as I was thinking it.

I cocked a brow at her. “You perv.”

She shrugged as Perry disappeared into the bedroom. “I’ve been hanging out with you too long, Dex.”

“Well, now that you’re a single woman, I’m sure we could make room for you in bed,” I said teasingly, a depraved part of me kind of hoping she’d say yes. But then her face fell at the mention of her newfound singledom and I felt like a complete a*shole.

“Dex,” she said, sounding disgusted.

“Sorry. I guess I should keep my threesome fantasies to myself, huh?”

She gave me a small smile. “Just pick your timing better.” Then she put her hand on my knee and squeezed it. “Glad to see you’re still a bit of a jerk, though. I was worried there for a second.”

“Ladies love the a*sholes, don’t they?”

Her eyes drifted to the closed bedroom door. “For your sake, I hope they do.”

I nodded and went back to chewing on my lip. I didn’t have to tell Rebecca about Perry, she already sussed it out.

A few seconds later, Perry came back out of the bedroom. Her face was fresh-faced and sexy, her body still mouthwatering in a long Pink Floyd tee-shirt and leggings.

Rebecca got up and hugged her tightly and I tried to get my head out of the gutter. I looked over at Fat Rabbit instead who was watching Perry carefully.

“Fatty Rab,” I exclaimed. “Where’s your greeting for the lady of the house?”

The dog looked at me then closed his eyes. Disrespectful f*cker.

“How are you?” Perry asked Rebecca, and I wondered if she was picking up on the same vibe that I had been. Although the bloodshot and puffy eyes were a bit of a giveaway.

Rebecca twisted her mouth. “You know. I’ve been better. Em and I broke up.”

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry,” Perry told her. “We should get a coffee or something like that and talk.”

I coughed and both of them looked at me. I wasn’t sure what they were going to talk about exactly, but I was pretty sure half of their conversation would be about me. Not because the world revolved around me but…I don’t know, some of their world had to.

“Just make sure you’re back by seven,” I said, looking at Perry.

She frowned. “Why?”

“Well, remember when I asked you what you were doing tonight? And you said you were doing me?”

Perry’s eyes widened and she looked at Rebecca in embarrassment.

“Oh, don’t worry about her, she already knows you’re doing me,” I added.

“Dex!” Perry cried out.

Rebecca rolled her eyes. “So much for speaking in code.”

“Hey, we’re all adults here. Except maybe Perry. You are dangerously close to being underage.”

“Dex,” Perry said again, her tone harder.

I reeled it back with a playful grin. “Anyway, I’m taking you out tonight.”

“Out?” she asked.

Rebecca put her hands on her hips and watched our exchange with amusement. I had hoped to ask Perry out on our first date without an audience, but oh well, too late for that.

“Yeah. You know, outside? There’s a great pizza place around the corner. I’d buy you dinner. Some drinks. Get laid after. You know…a date.”

She blinked a few times but finally smiled. “Are you seriously asking me out on a date?”

“Am I not being clear enough? Yes. Perry Palomino, will you go out with me?”

She looked over at Rebecca who threw up her hands and said, “Hey, if Dex is paying…”

Perry looked back at me, trying to hide her smile now. But I saw it. It made my heart want to f*cking burst. “Okay, Dex Foray, I’ll go out with you.”

I couldn’t stop grinning. I thought my head was going to split open.

Rebecca shook her head. “I never thought I’d see the day. Are you sure I’m not making things awkward by standing here and watching all of this? Perhaps you’d like some pre-date privacy?”

“Nah, we’re a good threesome,” I told her with a wink.

She glared back at me. “Anyway, there was a reason for me coming over here other than returning your fartin’ mutt and telling you my sob story. Jimmy.”

“What about Jimmy?” It was hard to concentrate on work matters when Perry had just said she’d go out with me. I know it was reducing me to a thirteen-year-old kid all over again, but I didn’t care. I felt like running down the halls of my old high school and yelling it to the world.

Rebecca’s stern look reminded me that I was living in an adult world. “He’s been trying to get a hold of you too, and when he couldn’t reach you yesterday, he started harassing me. Seems a police officer from wherever you were in Canada called him wanting to confirm that both you guys did in fact work for him.”

I wiggled my jaw back and forth. “Huh. Was that it?”

She looked at me dryly. “Was that it? It was kind of distressing to learn that you guys were involved in some police matter. Some local man was killed by an animal.”

“Sasquatch,” I corrected her.

“Right. Sasquatch. Of course.”

“We’re serious,” Perry said. “It was Sasquatch. Or some terrible missing link. Definitely not a mangy bear.”

I could tell that even Sasquatch was a stretch for the usually open-minded Rebecca. “Either way, it freaked Jimmy out and then it freaked me out. And then he started barking at me, like I had something to do with it. Apparently the police confiscated your footage?”

I was starting to get the feeling that perhaps Jimmy wouldn’t be as understanding over the whole thing as I had thought.

“They did, for evidence,” Perry explained. “And anyway, it wouldn’t have been right to air what we shot. A man seriously died.”

A man that probably deserved to die, I thought, feeling all the anger coming back over catching Mitch trying to rape Perry. But even with that fact, I knew that not showing the footage was the right thing to do. Whether he deserved it or not, death was death and his death must have been a terrible one.

“I understand,” Rebecca said sympathetically. “But I would not count on Jimmy feeling the same way. He was throwing around the words ‘fire’ and ‘cancellation.’”

“Oh come on,” I said. “He can’t seriously consider cancelling us again. We’ve barely been back!”

She shrugged. “You know how he is.”

I groaned in frustration, rubbing my forehead. “Can’t we just have one day of peace before we get shit on?”

“You do get one day,” she said. “He told me to tell you to come to his office tomorrow, both of you, at two. Until then, go back to…what was it, doing each other?”

Perry’s cheeks flushed adorably at that. She cleared her throat and looked at her feet. “So, Rebecca, did you want to get that cup of coffee now? Leave Dex here with his dog?”

She agreed and soon they were leaving the apartment for Top Shop Donuts, promising to bring me back a double chocolate artery-clogger. Whatever they ended up talking about, I hoped a skittish new lover and a jaded lesbian would take it easy on me.

***

“I’m going to go powder my nose,” Perry told me, and I instinctively reached across the table and tapped her on the end of hers. My sexy bunny.

She slid out from the booth and made her way to the washroom. She was wearing a low-cut, bright blue dress that hugged her in all the right f*cking places. Watching her walk away was dessert before dinner.

After she came back with Rebecca, she didn’t seem any worse off than she was before. She seemed pretty normal actually, and from the way she yammered on about poor Rebecca and her break-up, I could tell that maybe they didn’t spend much time discussing our relationship at all. Maybe there was no relationship to discuss. I still had a hard time with that one.

There was one thing that was off, however. Despite my smooth moves (which, honestly, was just feeling her up in the kitchen), Perry didn’t succumb to my advances and more or less brushed me off from our sex session, saying she needed to go for a run to clear her mind. Okay, so maybe she and Rebecca did discuss me.

And, keeping in mind what Rebecca had told me, her fears that she pressured Emily too much and drove her away, I quickly removed my hands and told her to go get some fresh air, that jogging was a good way to get to know the city, and other such bullshit that covered up the fact that I wanted to stick my dick in her, make her scream my name, and f*ck her until she felt something for me.

When Perry returned from her run, she looked a lot calmer, more pliable. I kept my distance a bit, getting sucked into yet another Mythbusters marathon with Fatty Rab, while she showered yet again and then joined me on the couch. >

The interesting thing was that she sat on the other side of the dog. The farty little thing was being used as a goddamn buffer!

“You know,” I said, turning to face her, “when you sit over there, it makes it a lot harder to put my arm around you.”

I knew I was putting her on the spot. Didn’t care. I wasn’t too proud to admit that Dex Foray needed cuddles. Just because we were f*cking each other didn’t mean I’d stop being affectionate after the last drop was milked out of me.

She looked at the dog shyly, her hair falling in her face. I reached over and tucked it behind her ear.

“What is it?” I asked and took my hand back.

She fidgeted in her seat, still avoiding my eyes. “Don’t you find this a bit weird?”

“Weird?”

“Yeah.” Her eyes darted to mine. “You and I. Together like this. Suddenly.”

My heart thumped like it took a hit of crack. Now I was really starting to worry about what her and Rebecca talked about. Becs had always been on my side, but chicks before dicks and all that. And in her case, it really was chicks before dicks.

I licked my lips, trying to be careful. “I don’t find this very sudden, Perry. And I don’t find this weird. I’m a bit weird, you’re certainly weird, but this? This is the opposite of weird.”

She smiled. “So it’s normal?”

It’s destiny, I thought. I leaned over and kissed her softly. When I pulled away I said, “Whatever it is, it’s good. It’s very, very good.”

And then I picked up the dog and tossed him to the ground and put my arm around my motherf*cking woman.

The pizza place I took Perry to, Zeke’s, was just down the block from the apartment, along the monorail tracks and close to the Space Needle. We got a small booth by the window and put an order in for our pizzas and beer.

I could tell she was nervous by the way she downed her beer and kept playing with her hair. It was pretty damn cute. It was also refreshing, considering I used to make her nervous for different reasons.

While she was in the bathroom powdering her nose or whatever, our server came back over. His name was Marcus and I’d gotten to know him pretty well over the years. He was a good looking guy for what it’s worth, one of those Italian types with black curls the ladies seemed to go gaga over and really hairy arms, like his testosterone needed a place to go.

“How are things?” he asked, loitering around the table, hands folded behind his back. He was also really tall, which I hated. I could obviously take him in a fight though and I was certain my dick was larger.

“Fine,” I told him, eyeing him inquisitively. “I mean, the beer’s fine, if that’s what you’re asking.”

He smiled and jerked his head to Perry’s empty seat. “Who’s the chick?”

I frowned. Look, I’ve called every woman a chick, from the old lady at the post office to my teacher back in university. But it didn’t sit right to hear it from another guy when talking about Perry, not in the tone that he was taking, anyway.

“The woman, you mean?” I asked slowly. “Her name is Perry.”

“Nice,” Marcus said with a grin. “Two women at the same time? I promise not to tell.” He made a crossing motion over his heart.

I was a tad confused. “Two women? I don’t have two women.”

“What happened to the super hot Maxim babe? Your girlfriend?”

“Jenn?” I asked. “We broke up.”

He shook his head. “I swore I just saw you guys in here.”

“It’s mid-March, Marcus. That was back in December. We broke up. I’m with Perry now.” I felt like I was talking to a two-year-old.

He stared at me like he didn’t quite believe me. “And,” I added, feeling defensive, “Perry’s also a super hot babe. She just wasn’t in Maxim. Because it’s a shitty publication.”

Marcus nodded, his eyes going over to the other side of the restaurant where Perry was coming out of the washroom area. “She is pretty hot, I’ll give you that. You lucky bastard. Her breasts are so much better than the other ones. Gotta get them when they’re young, am I right?”

“Hey,” I growled at him. “That’s my girlfriend you’re talking about.”

And there it was. I had just said the G-word. I had just publicly announced Perry as my girlfriend. Thank god she was too far away to hear it.

“Now, if you don’t mind, we’d like another round of beer, stat,” I said to him, watching her come closer. She was turning a few heads as she walked and I was met with this strange combination of worry and pride.

“Gotcha,” Marcus said, firing his hand at me like a gun. He walked past Perry, ogling her bouncing breasts like I wasn’t there. I gripped the edge of the table and tried to keep Hulk Dex at bay. Now wasn’t the time. In the middle of the Canadian Rockies was, but in the middle of Zeke’s Pizza in Belltown wasn’t.

“I ordered you another beer!” I told her, smiling too much.

“Uh, thank you,” she said, taking her seat. She moved her purse to the corner and gave me a funny look. “You okay?”

“Great,” I said, my voice unnaturally high. I needed to calm the f*ck down. What the hell was wrong with me?

She pursed her lips, studying me. I felt like she was looking into every crevice. I busied myself with a beer, wishing Marcus would bring back a pitcher instead.

“You’re nervous,” she observed.

I almost choked on my beer. “No, you’re nervous!”

“Yeah, I am, Dex. But you know what? I think that’s okay now. I think we should be nervous. I don’t think we ever gave us this chance.”

She put her soft hand on mine, milky white against light tan.

“I’m pretty sure I used to make you nervous,” I told her. “When you first met me. You looked like you were about to run away every five minutes. Every time you were in the car with me it was like you were being trapped with a mental patient. Which, I mean, was a fairly accurate assessment.”

She smiled and squeezed my hand and the affection was doing weird twirly, tingly, unmanly things around my heart. “You did make me nervous. You make a lot of people nervous, Dex.”

“Cause I’m too awesome for them to handle.”

“Yes, well, that’s also true. But I was nervous because I didn’t know you…I didn’t know how you thought. I didn’t know what you thought of me.”

“And now?”

“Now I know you. I’m starting to know how you think. And I think I know what you think of me. I’m nervous for a whole new set of reasons. Because I’m…scared. And I’m excited. This, this us, this is totally new for me.”

We stared at each other and I felt blessed with her bout of honesty. “It’s new for me too. But new can be good.”

Marcus came by with the new beers and the pizza and he escaped with only a death glare. As I munched away at my prosciutto pie, I found my mind wandering to the time I first met her, that f*cked up night in the lighthouse. I’d felt something at that moment for her, whether it was lust or a certain connection, I couldn’t be too sure. I had no idea I’d be lucky enough to have her sitting across from me at Zeke’s as something more than a stranger. I had no idea that this tiny little woman with all her insecurities and bravery would become my everything.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked after she drank a healthy swig of her beer.

“About the first time we met.”

“In Oregon?”

“In the lighthouse. You ran into me. Remember?”

“That’s something you can never forget.”

“So what was it like for you?”

She put down her beer and stared out the window. Fat raindrops began to fall, hitting the glass with the gusts of wind that were whipping up. Looked like a stormy night, much like the one that brought us together.

“I thought you were…”

“Nuts?”

She let out a laugh. “Well that was a given, considering you were in an abandoned lighthouse, alone, and trying to capture a ghost on film. Seriously, if that’s not nuts, I don’t know what is.”

I finished my beer and wiped my mouth, leaning back in my seat. “Oh, I don’t know, Miss Pot Calling the Sexy Kettle Black, how about a girl who decided to go off by herself in the darkness to explore said lighthouse, just for, what was it again? Kicks?”

“I don’t do anything for kicks.”

“Well you kicked in the window with your weird ninja moves.”

“At least I wasn’t trespassing,” she shot back, as if it all happened just yesterday.

“Trespassing gets you everywhere. If I hadn’t broken in and explored that lighthouse, I wouldn’t be exploring you right now.”

She rolled her eyes. If she hadn’t seemed so nervy I would have joked about the futility of a Keep Out sign on her vagina.

“So that’s it,” I pressed. “You thought I was nuts? Nothing else?”

“Obviously I thought you were cute.”

“Just cute?”

“Hey, you think I’m cute.”

I shook my head. “I think you’re cute and sexy and gorgeous and outstandingly f*ckable. You meet all the requirements for one infuriatingly hot piece of ass, an ass that I’d love to shoot hot—”

She shot me a warning look. The mother of a family of four across from us was giving me the stinkeye. Whoops.

“I’m sorry,” I apologized to the mother. “It’s our first date.”

“And will probably be your last,” she muttered to herself and turned back to her kids. One was still staring at me with a frightened expression. I’d forgotten I had that effect on children.

“I get it,” Perry said quickly, bringing my attention back to her. “Though I have to say your wooing skills need some work.”

“These are my wooing skills,” I said, raising my hands and wiggling my fingers, “and from what I can tell, they work just fine.”

“Dex.”

“Miss Palomino.”

We watched each other for a few moments before breaking out into simultaneous grins. For a first date it was going pretty well. For Perry and I, getting to know each other on another level, it was going spectacularly.

And we hadn’t even gotten to dessert yet.