nine
Date.
Candace turned the word over, exploring it like hard candy, testing the flavor to see if it was sweet or bitter. Saying yes to Colin was riskier than to any other guy who’d asked her out. There was friendship on the line.
From the earnest look on Colin’s face, a no would put an end to the friendship sooner.
“What time should I be ready?” She twirled the end of the scarf she’d tied around her head as she’d run out of the apartment. Oddly, Colin hadn’t even commented on her headwear. Most people did comment the first time they saw her without hair. Of course, he had seen her in a scarf on video call, but this was the first in real life. And he was more concerned about asking her out than her lack of follicles.
His eyes lit up. “Five thirty? I’ll take you to dinner before the show.”
“What show?” Candace wondered if it would be one she hadn’t seen yet.
His face pinked. “I wasn’t sure how to get tickets . . .”
“Please tell me you didn’t ask Sabrina for help.”
“No, I asked Bonnie.”
A safe option. Bonnie wouldn’t pick something awful. “She wouldn’t tell you where you are going?”
“She texted me the time but not the show. I called you and realized I didn’t know what I was asking you out for.” His voice trailed off. That explained why he had frozen on the call.
“You could text her now and ask.”
“I could, but Bonnie might not answer. You know how she was with Daniel and Mandy.” She made Daniel deal with his problems himself, causing any number of problems. “I’m surprised she helped me. Although it could be a high school production.”
“It will still be fun. Some high school shows are brilliant.”
“Really? I’ve never been to one.”
“Not surprising. The school you went to wasn’t exactly typical.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I know—the whole boarding-school thing.”
She didn’t express her thoughts on the matter. Families should stay together, and sending eleven-year-olds to live with other preteens did not make for strong familial bonds.
“What else are you going to do tonight?” Candace thought of the empty apartment downstairs and realized she didn’t want to go back.
“I don’t know. I have an app to work on. I thought of watching a show, but all I found was a rerun.”
“Don’t you have streaming?”
“Oh yeah. I forgot about that.” Probably because he was always thinking of the next project. “Do you want to do something with me? Like we can play a game. I have chess.”
“I don’t think I stand a chance at chess. Maybe I can introduce you to a new show.” Anything Candace picked that wasn’t sci-fi should be new to him. Not a bad thing. Colin never made time to watch TV and, as a result, was the most productive person she knew.
“Sabrina, turn on the TV and bring up streaming.”
A list of channels appeared on the screen as the TV sprang to life. “Which streaming channel?” The computer voice asked the question without inflection.
Colin shrugged and turned to Candace.
She looked up at the ceiling, where the voice came from. “Sabrina, the Hearthfire channel.”
The screen didn’t change
“What did I say wrong?”
“Nothing. Sabrina has a voice-recognition feature. She only responds to my voice. We can teach her to recognize yours.”
“How do we do that?”
“When I give the AI the command and she says ‘Ready,’ you will say, ‘Sabrina, this is Candace’ five times. It helps if you change the inflection in your voice from fast to slow to angry, etc.” Colin opened an app on his phone.
“Sabrina, program new voice recognition.”
“Ready for input,” said the computer voice.
“Sabrina, this is Candace.” She tried to keep her voice as even as possible. Then she tried an annoyed-sounding voice since she figured if she talked to the AI often, she would be annoyed. By the time she hit her fifth “Sabrina, this is Candace,” she was laughing hard.
“I’m not sure that last one took.” Colin typed into his phone. “Now try asking her for the channel you want.”
“Sabrina, Hearthfire channel.”
The channel appeared on the large TV screen.
“Yes!” Colin punched the air. “You are in!”
“Of course I’m in. You wouldn’t design something that didn’t work.”
“Funeral flowers.”
He had a point there, but he had thought of buying flowers, which she doubted he had ever done before. “That wasn’t your design. It was lack of input data.” Colin never gave himself enough credit. It was one of the few things that annoyed her about him.
Colin watched the rom-com with only half interest. Candace hadn’t moved over when he’d sat next to her on the couch. According to everything he’d read, he should hold her hand next. Unlike with Dora Greenwood when he was thirteen, he wanted to hold Candace’s hand.
During the scene where the guy finally noticed the girl, Colin’s pinky touched Candace’s. She didn’t move away, so he slid his hand over and watched how it covered hers, his thumb involuntarily rubbing the back of her knuckles—not the reaction he’d expected. Candace moved an inch closer, and his chest swelled with warmth. Strange . . . none of the articles he’d read included that reaction.
Candace’s fingers moved in a duet with his, the TV noise becoming background to the new feelings he was experiencing. The music swelled before the credits rolled. As he had programmed them to, the lights in the room brightened slowly.
Candace sat and pulled away. “Sabrina, what time is it? “
“10:26 p.m.”
“I should go. I am starting to paint the upper mural tomorrow. If I don’t get enough sleep, sometimes my hands don’t want to work right.”
“May I walk you down?”
“The stairs?” A soft, teasing smile graced her lips.
“Ten flights? I thought the elevator would be better.”
She nodded.
The trip down lasted only a few seconds. He wondered if he could install a variable-speed mechanism in the elevator. At the moment, he would prefer a snail’s pace over the standard high speed of the penthouse elevator. Maybe he could push every button like a little kid. But that would mean other people could get on.
The elevator dinged at her floor. Colin had Candace exit first but didn’t let go of her hand. Her apartment door wasn’t exactly like the front porches from the scenes in the Hearthfire movies he had been studying. The fluorescent lights of the hallway were anything but romantic. How was he to attempt a first kiss here?
“Thanks for letting me barge in and stay.” Candace dropped her hand and unlocked her door.
“Thanks for running up and rescuing me from my blunder.”
Candace turned to face him. “Good night, Colin.” She rose up on her toes and kissed his cheek.
Frozen in place, he watched her enter the apartment and close the door.
Candace had just kissed him.
He needed to move. What if she was watching his reaction through the peephole? He returned to the elevator and went straight to the penthouse level, where he pushed the fingerprint-scanning button.
Once in the penthouse foyer, he paused. Just how did one go about kissing the most incredible woman in the world? If only he hadn’t spent so much time figuring out computers at school.
Watching the twenty-five best movie kisses according to Sabrina didn’t help either. The only one that made much sense to him was the animated dogs kissing over a plate of pasta. Grab-a-girl-and-kiss-her-silly wasn’t his style. Apparently kissing wasn’t something he could read about and learn.
Maybe for now he would stick with holding hands. That act evoked sensations he had not anticipated. Holding hands was good. It was more than good. It was stupendous.