“You and me both, brother.” Tim clapped him on the back and went to stand next to him, waiting for me. “Lead the way, oh creative one.”
Jenny and I decorated the display while we got the guys to move stuff around. When we were done, the store had a shot of attracting some attention with the display. Tim rewarded us by buying us each a coffee and one of Jenny’s bear claw pastries.
After the bookstore, we kept doing mundane things. We walked down the street and went window shopping. Jeremiah was expressly forbidden from pulling out his fancy black card to buy anything—which was a novel experience for him.
“I don’t get it. I can always just come back tomorrow and get it,” he said. He tried using that reasoning when I made him leave behind a leather jacket with a price tag that almost made me swallow my tongue. Worst of all, he wanted to buy it for me.
“Then come back tomorrow, but today is about doing normal things remember? Also, I won’t accept it even if you do come back for it.”
“Fair enough,” he said, then grinned. “I’ll just have to keep working on it.”
My heart fluttered when he said stuff that made it sound like he wanted to keep doing… whatever it was we were doing. “You do that.”
After window shopping, we ate a late lunch from a food truck and went to see a short film Tiana refused to come watch with me. We listened to street performers and ate ice cream. It was worlds away from the stuff Jeremiah and I had done together in the weeks we’d known each other, and yet it felt strangely familiar. Like us doing this kind of thing was normal. And what was more dangerous was that I was starting to feel like we might just be able to make this thing work and… date.