THE NEXT COUPLE OF WEEKS were some of the most cheerful Jen could remember having since childhood. Her days were spent in the role of actress, putting on a ruse by being politely distant from Robert at work so that no one would suspect that there was anything going on between them. But when she shed off her facade in the evenings, he filled them with kisses and laughter and gentle touches, making her question why she didn't give herself full permission to fall for him sooner.

He knocked on her door on Saturday morning, come to pick her up for their date to the art museum. When she saw him there, the corners of her mouth pulled up into a huge smile. The two of them were nearly matching, both in white shirts and blue jeans. She wasn't sure she'd ever even seen him in jeans before—she was still learning about all of the sides of him that existed outside of the one she saw at work.

She pressed a kiss against his cheek, then almost giggled when she felt the beginnings of stubble on his jaw, yet another one of those completely normal things she'd hadn't experienced before now. She loved that they kept popping up, and loved how gradual learning everything there was to learn about him was. Now that she was in it, she was happy for them to take their time, to go slowly. She didn't want to fall all at once.

When you fell as lightly as a feather, you had plenty of time to enjoy the fall.

They'd decided to get to the museum in the morning this time around so that they were free to roam around for as long as they could possibly want, whether that be once they got through everything there was to see or simply when their feet grew too tired. She enjoyed being with him while their minds were still waking up for the day, even though it meant that they were a little quieter. Something about it felt more intimate, more calm, and his hand in hers was a steady, reassuring presence.

Neither of them was an art expert, but they held a decent amount of knowledge between the two of them. They were able to fill in some of the gaps in each other's understanding of different artists and movements and he could offer up a significant amount of historical and cultural context that she wouldn't have had otherwise. She could tell that he loved doing it, too—his eyes brightened and words came faster once she got him going about 18th and 19th century Europe. Dating a history nerd apparently made going to museums a lot more fun than it already was.

He glanced over at her as they left an exhibit on landscape painting. "...Please stop me if this is wearing on you," he told her with a sheepish lilt in his voice.

"Not at all," she lightly squeezed his hand. "And I did tell you to teach me, remember?"

"Not about this," he pointed out.

"But this," she held him a little more tightly now, using her free hand to loosely gesture around them – to the fact that they were here, on a perfectly pleasant date, being happy together. To the fact that this could work; that they worked. "This is part of that."

He smiled at that.

At her request, they made a pit stop in the gift shop on the way out. Everything was ridiculously overpriced, as expected, but that didn't stop her from buying them each a set of bookmarks themed around the landscape paintings they'd seen.

He looked like he was going to offer to pay for them, but when she gave him the stink eye, he zipped his mouth shut.

The next evening they saw each other, they went to the arcade. Neither of them had actually been to an arcade since college, but after their museum date, they conceded that it probably hadn't been their brightest idea to go somewhere in broad daylight where any of their other coworkers might also reasonably also be on a Saturday morning. If they were trying to be secretive, they needed to be a little more...well, secretive.

So now they were aiming for out of the box. It was a school night, so the high schoolers weren't all that likely to be out, and Pinball Palace didn't exactly sound like the kind of place that anyone associated with an upscale private school would frequent, anyway. It looked shady from the outside, but as they stepped through the doors and got their hands stamped with glow-in-the-dark ink to indicate that they'd paid admission, Jen felt like she was entering another world, a neon wonderland.

And it was some of the most fun she'd had in ages, debatably even more fun than the museum. She'd forgotten how much she loved to play skee ball and that she was actually pretty good at it, whereas Robert was, to put it kindly, a bit terrible at it. But it was much funnier that way, and they were laughing all night as they made their way around to the different games and got entirely too competitive about it.

Then they spent an embarrassingly long time at the claw machines trying to grab stuffed animals until they'd each won the other person a small teddy bear. Jen's eyebrows were knitted in concentration as she tried to focus and guide the claw into position, slowly but not too slowly. She cheered out loud when finally – finally – it dropped a little purple teddy with a diamond pattern on it into the chute. She proudly held it out to Robert as if she'd retrieved something made of gold.

"Shall we name it?" he asked, turning it over in his hands. Under the artificial glow of the arcade lights, his dark hair had a bluish tinge to it.

"Not right this second," she shook her head. "I need to wait until the right name comes to me, and all I can think about right now is that I'm hungry."

So they concluded their night by splitting a Chicago-style pizza from the arcade restaurant. It'd been a long time since she'd had any and she tried to get him to rank it against authentic Italian pizza, but he shook his head as he swallowed a bite.

"It's like comparing apples to oranges," he explained. "This stuff is awesome in its own right."

Jen was already quite full, so she nudged the remaining pieces towards him.

The next night they saw one another, it was nearly 10 p.m. by the time he showed up at her apartment, but they could get away with staying up as late as they'd like since it was a Friday. She took him by the hands and pulled him in for a kiss, coaxing the door shut with her foot as an afterthought.

"What are we reading tonight?" she asked once their lips were free to speak, though her arms were still wound around his neck and he was still holding her.

"I have Dr. Zhivago and Anna Karenina," he informed her. "Take your pick."

"Let's read Anna." A book was automatically better if a girl's name was the title.

He made himself at home on the couch. Jen grabbed a knit throw to drape over them and then scooted into his arms. She wanted to close her eyes while he read to her, but just before she let them fall shut, she noticed that he'd tucked one of the bookmarks she bought for him into the front of the book.

As his voice began to softly read, she smiled.

She did not know how long they stayed there for, just that she wanted it to last as long as it could. The rhythm of his voice was ever-steady, slowly lifting and then subsiding like waves brushing against the shore. She felt the slight rising motion of his chest with each breath he took, and his body did much more to keep her warm than the blanket did.

After a while of this, their euphoric state was suddenly interrupted by a knock on the door. Jen frowned but reluctantly climbed up from the sofa and crossed the room to look through the peephole and see who was there.

Celie.

That was a small problem.

Aware of the fact that the walls to her apartment were on the thinner side, Jen turned around and lifted a finger to her lips, motioning to Robert to be quiet. When she gestured for him to follow her down the hall, he looked confused, but he still only hesitated for a second before coming along.

Sorry, she whispered. Stay here.

She shut him in the bathroom and returned to Celie.

"Hi," she greeted, perhaps a little too enthusiastically, when she opened the door for her guest.

Celie was eyeing Jen a little suspiciously, and the latter realized it was probably because she was still fully dressed at a time when she'd normally be in her pajamas.

"I wasn't tired, so I've been reading," she explained nervously. It wasn't a lie.

"Can I come in?"

"Oh, of course..." As Jen stepped aside to let her friend in, she chided herself for doing such a subpar job at acting natural. Celie would be the hardest to fool, so she needed to be putting on her best performance. "Did something happen?"

She shook her head. "No, sorry—I was just at a restaurant right around the corner from here...on a date."

"A date?" Jen repeated.

"Yes, but don't tell my brother," Celie added quickly. "I don't know if it's gonna turn into anything."

Jen was intrigued – almost intrigued enough to forget about the man hiding in her bathroom. "What's his name? How'd you meet?" she asked, ushering her into the kitchen so that they might sit at the table. If Celie sat on the couch and happened to notice that the cushions smelled faintly of men's cologne, it was game over.

"Gabriel," she said. Her eyes were cast downwards towards the table like she was embarrassed to admit that she was attracted to such a repulsive creature as a man. "We met at the coffee shop. I kinda noticed him looking at me while one of my baristas took his order, but I didn't think much of it until I came to bring him a refill and he just asked me on a date right then and there."

"Wow."

"After he had the audacity to ask me out before he even knew my name, I was nervous that he might be arrogant, but he actually seems sweet." She tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. "He was quieter than I expected, honestly, but it was nice to feel like he was listening to me and not talking over me."

Jen was grinning now, which made Celie look even more bashful. "Sorry, I just needed to get that off my chest. You know how things sometimes don't feel real until you tell someone about them?"

Jen nodded. She might have known a thing or two about that.

Celie stood up like she was just now processing that she'd shown up here rather late without warning. "Mind if I use your bathroom before I head out?"

"Uh-" Jen floundered, scrambling up out of her seat. "Uh, sorry, it's clogged. Very clogged. I need to fix it."

A muffled sound that might have been Robert snickering came from the general direction of the bathroom.

"And it also makes...noises," she added quickly.

She and Celie stared at one another in silence for a few moments before the latter, looking a bit aghast, quietly cleared her throat. "Well, um, not to be an unsupportive friend or anything, but I'll let you handle that one on your own."

Jen could feel that her face was the color of a beet. "That's probably for the best. Be safe getting home."

"Thanks, you know I will."

Once Celie was out the door, Jen put her face in her hands and shook her head. What a mess. Marching to the bathroom, she flung open the door and gave her only slightly apologetic-looking boyfriend an unamused look.

"You almost blew my cover!"

He came and placed his hands on the sides of her shoulders, gently rubbing them. "I'm sorry. But next time, maybe don't send me to the room your guests are most likely to want to use while they're over," he suggested sweetly.

She sighed, letting her head sink against his chest with a muted thump. "I hate it when you have to go all logical on me and make sense," she complained.

He was grinning as he tilted her chin up with his thumb, drawing her lips to his. "I'll try not to make a habit of it."

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A/N:

If any of you have read my other two books, did you catch the reference from them in this chapter? I was trying to be subtle but I feel like I'm not.

thanks for reading!