Work Text:
You stare at the bright red EMERGENCY sign in front of you for a moment too long. When you blink, the letters are still embedded behind your eyelids.
The setting sun bathes the front of the building in golden light. A shadow of a nearby tree obscures half the entrance to Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center and effectively prevents you from seeing inside the dark glass paneled door. You shift in your too-high heels and try not to look as awkward as you feel standing on the side of the street staring into space.
You look down at your phone for the fourth time in a row. 7:30pm. Thirty minutes late.
A cold breeze slides by your skin and you cross your arms over your chest in an attempt to cover your exposed skin.
“Did you need help with anything, ma’am?”
Your eyes shoot up from where they had been tracing the cracked concrete underneath your feet to the gray-haired man standing in front of you. He’s wearing dark scrubs and a small smile on his lips. He has a tag on that clearly says NURSE.
You swallow back your nerves and return his smile. “Sorry,” you say, “am I in the way? I tried to avoid the loading zone…”
“Oh, no,” he replies immediately, “I just noticed you standing there for a few minutes, thought I’d see if you needed help.”
“I can see why you’re a nurse,” you say with a soft chuckle.
He grins and goes to walk away.
“Actually,” you say, and he turns to face you again, “do you think… I mean, if it wouldn’t be much trouble… the guy I’m seeing is an ER doctor here. We were supposed to meet up and go to dinner, but I guess he’s gotten busy?”
“What’s his name?” he says, eyebrows furrowed.
“His name is Dennis,” you say, then shake your head as you remember who you’re talking to, “sorry. He might go by Whitaker? Dr. Whitaker?”
The nurse nods his head. “Yeah I know him,” he says, “here, I’ll take you back there.”
“You don’t have to,” you say, though you begin to follow him as he heads to the dark doors. “I’m sure he’ll be out soon.”
“Eh, my break’s almost over anyway,” the nurse tells you. “I’m Jesse, by the way.”
You smile and tell him your name. He pushes open the doors and lets you step in before him.
You immediately freeze at the amount of people inside. There’s people groaning, hunched over in pain, holding gauze to wounds. You lock eyes with a woman coughing furiously into a napkin, and you suddenly feel like you need to cover your mouth and nose to prevent catching something.
You break from the stare when Jesse puts a hand on your shoulder.
“Welcome to paradise,” he tells you. More like hell, you think.
His hand falls off your shoulder and he begins to weave through the throngs of people. You shrink in on yourself at the stares that the people you pass give you. Jesse gives a wave to a nurse behind the counter and she gives you a short look before she presses the button to open the doors to the ER.
You follow Jesse as the warm waiting room turns into sterile white hallways and people standing around in thin gowns and stiff gurneys. You keep your arms crossed around yourself subconsciously as every person you pass turns to look over at you. You really shouldn’t have decided on wearing a dress.
The hallways clear to an open area surrounded by windowed doors with large numbers painted on them. There’s a circular desk in the middle where a few doctors and nurses stand by.
You look around for Dennis, but don’t see any sign of his curly brown mop.
“Hey, Dana,” Jesse calls out to an older blonde woman as you approach the circular desk.
As her eyes fall on you and Jesse, you immediately feel like you know exactly what kind of woman she is. She just looks like she knows how to get shit done.
“Who’s this?” she asks, gesturing to you. Her words are blunt, but her eyes seem kind. She gives you a once-over as if assessing for any injury.
“We’re looking for Dr. Whitaker,” Jesse tells her, “he apparently forgot he had a date scheduled before he decided to clock in overtime.”
You nervously shuffle on your feet as Dana’s eyes turn critical. They give you another cursory look over before she nods like she approved of her findings. Relief rushes over you, though you think it is silly given the fact you don’t actually know or care what the woman thought.
Dana puts half her body over the counter, a small smile pulling at her red lips. “You must be the one we’ve all heard so much about.”
You can feel yourself immediately get hot. Dennis spoke about you? To his colleagues, no less? You aren’t sure whether to feel flattered or worried. What if he’d told them all your embarrassing moments, like that time you got food stuck between your teeth at Chili’s?
“I hope only the good things,” you say with a small smile.
Dana lets out a laugh. “From the way he described you, I was expecting you to come in walking on rainbows or something.”
The smile that pulls across your lips then feels shockingly genuine. You duck your head to hide it.
“I’ll go find him,” Dana says with a nod toward you. “Jesse, you might want to go check on the septic patient in Central 2? Then head home, please.”
Jesse gives a thumbs-up toward the nurse and gives you one last smile before he backs away toward the room.
Dana goes to leave her desk when a room behind you opens loudly and you follow her eyes to the commotion.
Almost immediately, your eyes lock onto Dennis. He hasn’t noticed you yet, talking quietly to an older doctor beside him. He looks pensive, all hard lines and furrowed brows. You wish at that moment that you could get into his head in order to figure out the issue he was trying to solve and help him, even though you knew more about law than you did medical jargon.
You’ve never seen him in his element before. His dark scrubs highlight every detail in his body, and as his arm flexes to drag through his curly hair, your eyes catch on the muscles in his forearms that jump beneath his skin.
His eyes move away from the man beside him and land on yours almost like he could feel your stare. They stop on your form and widen to a comically large size, his mouth dropping open slightly as they drag over your exposed skin.
You smile tightly and raise your hand to give him a little wave.
“Guess my work here’s done,” you hear Dana say from behind you. You shoot her an appreciative look before your eyes drag back to Dennis.
He’s gotten closer since you last looked at him. His wide doe eyes look between the two of yours as if asking a silent question. You get a whiff of his cologne and you unwittingly breathe it in in deep gulps.
“I was waiting outside,” you tell him sheepishly. His eyebrows furrow in a silent question. “We were going to go try that new Italian place, remember?”
“T-That was tonight?” Dennis grabs his phone from where he had it in his pocket and begins flipping through it. He stops once he finds something and he lets out a quiet expletive.
“I had it set for tomorrow in my calendar. How did I mess that up?” he shakes his head and closes his phone. He looks at you, and you swear you’re looking at a little puppy begging for scraps from the table. He reaches forward to grab your hand. “I-I’m so… sorry. H-How long did you wait? Are you cold?”
You let out a soft laugh. “I’m fine, Dennis.” You squeeze his hand and look around at the hospital. “Are you up for tonight? We can always reschedule. It looked pretty busy in the waiting room, I’d hate to be the reason someone doesn’t get seen.”
“I…” he begins to reply, eyes darting around the hospital behind you. “No— I mean you’re all dressed up. I can’t bail.”
You hate the relief that rushes over you in that moment. You feel like a wilted plant and Dennis’s attention is like the watering can, your only chance at quenching your thirst. It’s pathetic.
“Whitaker!” someone shouts from across the room.
Your eyes dart to the noise. The older doctor from earlier is looking over at you two from where he stands next to Dana. He pulls off his glasses and points them at you two.
“Stop loitering and go buy this girl dinner!”
You bite your lip to suppress a smile.
“A-Are you sure, Dr. Robby—“
“Yes!” the man, Dr. Robby, says exasperatedly. “Now get out before something big shows up.”
Dennis’s lips quirk upwards at that remark as he turns to look back at you. He leans forward and plants a quick kiss to your cheek. You smile bashfully at the show of affection, eyes darting around to see if anyone noticed.
“Let me go get my stuff and change. You stay here, okay?”
You nod and Dennis practically skips away. You feel like you’ve just run a marathon. A taste of the adrenaline of being inside a hospital. Is this the high he chased?
You feel awkward standing in the middle of the hall, so you step back a few feet. You turn around and catch eyes with Dana at her desk. She smiles and waves you over.
You smile back and shuffle over to where she stands. Once you get close enough, she passes a folded piece of paper across the counter.
You pick it up and unfold it to see a phone number written in bright blue ink. Your eyes dart up confusedly to the woman’s.
“In case you ever need anything, hon,” Dana says, her voice taking on a familiar tone. “I do it for all the women I come across. Just good to have people to talk to.”
You smile slightly, flustered by the gesture. You tuck the note into your bag. You aren’t sure if you will ever use it, but you suppose it is a nice gesture.
“Who’s this?” you hear a voice from behind you say.
You spin around to see a pretty dark-haired woman standing there. Her sleek hair is pulled up into a tight knot on her head. Her equally dark eyes are narrowed as she takes you in. She’s wearing the same colored scrubs that Dennis was wearing and her badge confirms your suspicions—DOCTOR.
“This,” Dana says, “is Whitaker’s girlfriend.”
“…Not girlfriend,” you correct with an awkward smile, “we have been seeing each other for, like, three months. Haven’t made it official yet.”
“Sounds pretty official to me,” Dana says, sliding down her glasses to look at something on her tablet, “but what do I know? I’m old.”
As Dana gets distracted with work, you are left alone with the stoic doctor. She makes you nervous.
“So why’s a pretty girl like you hanging ‘round Huckleberry?” she says after a moment’s contemplation.
You go to swallow, but find your throat has suddenly gone dry. “You mean Dennis?”
“Huckleberry,” the dark-haired doctor corrects you.
“I haven’t ever seen you before,” she continues, unperturbed by your stunned silence, “but he talks about you plenty.”
“Do… you see him often?” you ask, your nails digging into the skin of your arms.
The doctor scoffs. “Only everyday,” she says. Then, her eyes draw up to meet yours, her eyebrows furrowed. “I mean, he hasn't told you?”
“Told me what?” your voice sounds weak.
The doctor goes to say something else, but she closes her mouth as her eyes get caught on something behind you. Right at that moment, a hand grasps your forearm. Your eyes look to the side and Dennis is there. He’s changed into different clothes and looks like he’s combed his hair a bit. You give a fond smile.
Dennis looks nervous, though. His eyes dart between you and the other doctor like he’s watching a ping pong match.
“Santos,” Dennis greets, his voice thin.
The brunette doctor, Santos, lets out a low whistle. “Huckleberry knows how to clean up! Who knew?”
Standing there, between them, you feel like a third wheel.
“Don’t be condescending,” Dennis tells her.
“What? I’m not lying.”
Dennis rolls his eyes and turns to you with a small smile pulling at his lips from the exchange. You look over at Santos who gives you a two-finger salute. You bite your lip.
“You ready to go?” he asks.
You nod. Dennis says goodbye to Santos and loops his arm through yours to lead you to the door. He waves to several other doctors and patients as he passes them, a permanent grin etched across his face. His hand eventually migrates to rest over your waist, gently tugging you through the waiting room to the outside of the hospital.
You feel like you can breathe again once you have breached the outside of the hospital. You step away from the shaded awning and into the golden light of the sunset.
As you look over at Dennis, his eyes are already gazing back at you.
“You okay?” he says. “Been kind of quiet.”
You smile tensely. “I’m good. Hospitals just stress me out.”
And it was true. You were good. You liked knowing this side of Dennis. The side that helped people selflessly every day, that worked seriously and with unflinching dedication. But another part of you keeps straying back to what the doctor, Santos, implied. Of how pretty she was and their teasing dynamic.
You’ve only been seeing Dennis for a couple months. Neither of you have said anything about making it official. You don’t know anything about Santos, really. You have no claim to jealousy. And yet…
“If you’re sure,” Dennis says.
“I’m sure,” you say tersely, “want to meet up at the restaurant?”
You go to turn to where your car was parked a little ways on the street when a hand grasps your arm. You turn back, confused.
“Uh, actually…” Dennis starts, a bashful hand going to rub the back of his neck, “would you mind… I, uh, rode in with a colleague this morning.”
With a colleague. You wonder if it is the same colleague that made you feel inferior just by existing in her presence. You think your smile must come across as more of a grimace, because Dennis goes to pull his arm away.
You feel guilty for not answering, so you grasp his hand in yours before he can fully retreat.
“Of course not,” you say, “I usually take the bus actually, because I like to save money on gas…”
“Smart,” Dennis says with a nod. “I had thought about getting a bus card but—“ his words abruptly fall short and you look back at him over your shoulder. You cock a brow, wondering why he stopped.
Dennis smiles sheepishly, his eyes searching for something in your expression. “Sorry. I… don’t know the first thing about buses. I know more about herding cattle than I do public transportation. Santos calls me a huckleberry for good reason.”
You stay silent at that last comment, opening your car door to unlock the trunk. Dennis slides his bag of things into it and you close it with a soft click. You go into the driver’s seat and Dennis slides into the passenger.
Your car starts with a purr of the motor, some part of your steamy audiobook starting up immediately at volume 20 and 1.5x speed. You immediately scramble into action, hands flying to turn the volume down before you remember to mute it. About half a page goes by in the chaos, and it just so happened to be in the middle of one of the copious amounts of love scenes.
“Sorry,” you apologise, unable to bring yourself to look at him. The narrator had just said something about wet lips. You can feel yourself cringe in on yourself like a grape left too long in the sun. You could see this moment replaying in your mind later in bed tonight.
“What was that?” Dennis says, an amused smirk on his lips. “Fifty Shades of Grey?”
You pat your hand against your cheek, trying to cool yourself down. “I’m sorry, it’s some… fairy smut book my book club’s reading.”
“Dang,” Dennis says and you can see him nodding in your peripheral, “I need to join a book club.”
“Please,” you beg, “I’m going to die if you keep talking about it.”
You and Dennis are waiting for your food to arrive later that night in the new Italian restaurant. It’s all ambient lighting and hushed conversations and elegant piano music in the far corner. It’s all really fancy and way above what you’re used to.
Most of you and Dennis’s dates thus far have been walks around the park, small mom and pop bakeries and that one time you went to see the latest Marvel movie neither of you liked. Nothing like this. It feels more intimate, somehow.
“Work any interesting cases today?” Dennis asks you as he wraps up the story of the emergency thoracotomy he’d done shortly before your arrival, you cringing behind your drink at the detailed descriptions of cracking ribs and clamping aortas.
“Nothing to that level,” you tell him, before you pause. “Actually, I had a funny thing happen today. This woman came in because she suspected her husband to be cheating on her. And she asked if we could sue for emotional damages. Isn’t that crazy? I mean, we’re a probate office, not an episode of Judge Judy.”
Dennis shakes his head, laughing. “Must have been watching too many crime dramas. It’s probably similar to when we get Dr.Google’s thinking they’ve self-diagnosed all their problems.”
You let out a short laugh at the description, feeling like it lines up well with your experience with some of the people who came in for legal advice. Almost once a week, like clockwork, you had someone coming in thinking they had all the answers.
The conversation lapses for a moment when the waiter delivers the food and you take your first bites.
“God,” you moan as your taste buds erupt in flavor. “It’s so fucking good.”
Dennis seems to be experiencing a similar epiphany. Eyes closed, licking his lips clear of residual sauce.
After you’ve tried the food sufficiently, Dennis’s eyes lock back onto yours.
“I’m sorry about Trinity,” he tells you, “I know she can be a lot.”
You frown. “Trinity?”
“Dr.Santos.”
“Oh,” you say, your eyes falling to your plate in an attempt to hide your dislike. “No, she was fine.”
“She can be a lot when you first meet her,” Dennis says, “but she grows on you.”
You nod, not really needing an explanation for the woman’s behavior. If you were lucky, you’d never have to see her again. If only Dennis would stop bringing her up and reminding you of your inadequacies.
A logical side of your brain says that Dennis wouldn’t keep bringing her up if he had something to hide. The side with green eyes and a clear pessimism says otherwise. That perhaps they were not together yet but Dennis was using you as a placeholder, or worse, a thing to make her jealous until he could get her instead.
You lean over to take a sip of your wine and put your fork down on your plate.
“You done?” Dennis asks, eyes wide.
“I’ll save the rest for tomorrow’s lunch,” you tell him with a bitter smile, “better than having to get up early to pack something.”
“I wish I could pack a lunch,” he tells you, “but I don’t really have time to eat it during the day.”
You shake your head. “That’s awful. I would not last without lunch.”
“It’s not so bad,” he says, “you mostly just forget you’re hungry because you’re doing so much.”
“Sounds abusive.”
“Are we ready for the check over here?” the waiter says as he approaches, an obnoxiously large smile on his face.
You look over at Dennis, who nods.
“Yeah,” you reply, “we’ll split it, if that’s okay.”
“—actually,” Dennis interrupts, “just one. I’ll pay.”
“Are you sure?” you ask, surprised. You lean forward over the table, eyes wide. “I don’t mind paying my side…”
Dennis waves your concerns away with a flippant hand and the waiter nods as he goes to fetch it. You know that he is only a new doctor and that as a med student he got paid little to nothing for his work. You had paid for a lot for things; movie tickets, ice cream in the park, bus tickets. But nothing would equal up to the amount he was putting down tonight.
It made you nervous while equally flattered.
The waiter brings the check and Dennis takes a cursory look over it, his face stoic. Then, he puts his card down and nods for it to be taken away.
“Was it a lot?”
Dennis nods, but when he sees your face drop, he quickly adds: “but it wasn’t outrageous.”
You begin to pack your food into the styrofoam containers they’d given you and Dennis does the same. You work in silence, you shooting him a glance between scoops of pasta, trying to figure him out.
Once his card is returned and the food is packed, you and him step outside of the restaurant. It is dark outside, the only light coming from amber street lamps and passing headlights of cars.
You clutch your food close to your chest as you turn to face him.
“Need a ride home?” you ask. You had never been to Dennis’s apartment. He’d been to yours once or twice, but you’d never really asked to visit his.
“Uh…” he says, “I can call an Uber.”
Your heart sinks at the blatant rejection. You flatten your lips and nod.
“Well, I had fun,” you tell him softly.
“Yeah, me too,” he says with a genuine smile. For a moment, you think the rejection may have all been in your head. “Want to—“ he’s cut off by his phone as it rings a pleasant tune in his palm.
You can’t see the caller id before he answers it.
“Trinity?” he whisper-shouts into the receiver.
He tries to keep his voice low enough that you can’t hear it, but you do. You feel your blood run cold. It’s nearly 9:00pm, why is she calling? She knew you were on a date. She had to have.
You turn your back as tears unexpectedly well in your eyes. You feel like a fool.
“Yeah, I can head over there,” he tells her and it feels like you've been shot.
You begin to step away, but you’re stopped by a hand grabbing your arm.
“Hey—give me a second, Trinity—“ he says, his eyes wide and questioning at you trying to leave. He looks even more startled by the tears in your eyes.
You slip your arm out of his, a rush of embarrassment clogging your senses, and you walk away.
You get into your car and put your food into the passenger seat and it starts with a quiet rumble. As you drive away, tears blur your vision, the streetlamps are long streaks of color and the road ahead is cloudy and disfigured.
It’s silly, especially considering you had only known him for at most three months, but you can’t help it. The jealousy that overwhelms you in that moment is one of the worst emotions you’ve ever felt.
— — —
A few days later, you decide that it is probably best you don’t continue to see Dennis.
You consult friends, your favorite shows, and a bowl of ice cream almost every night after the miserable date. You think they’re all telling you the same thing. That if he really liked you, then he wouldn’t be talking about another woman—or calling her.
There’s still a lingering fear, though. That perhaps you’ve completely misjudged the situation and that you’re overreacting. But there had to be a reason, right? Normal people didn’t try to hide friends of the opposite gender, didn’t look ashamed when talking about them, didn’t lead every conversation in their direction. It feels inane, hasty; but the question remains.
Did he really like you, or was he just using you?
He texted you almost non-stop, or what felt like non-stop. You haven’t looked at any past the first one where he asked if he did something wrong. You don’t have the heart to tell him. It feels like a bad dream that you just need to wake yourself up from with a bucket of ice water.
The realization comes into the fifth day of self-imposed isolation from Dennis, when you’re loading several boxes of files into your trunk.
There’s a black duffel bag in your car. And it feels like an ice pick just went through your chest.
You think back to the night, of how Dennis had loaded his bag into your trunk before you two headed off.
“Damnit,” you mutter.
Because as much as you wanted to ignore it, throw it on the side of the road and forget it like everything else to do with Dennis, you couldn’t.
You groan as you grab the bag and hustle it back into the elevator of the parking garage to take it back to your apartment. You unlock your phone and finally open your text conversation with him.
It’s not much. The question about if he’d done anything… a day later, a question about going to some concert together… the next day, another question if he did something wrong and an apology. And most recently, a text asking for his bag to be returned.
You drop the bag inside your apartment and pinch the bridge of your nose.
You look back at your phone and type a response: Sorry, I have your bag, can you come by and get it sometime today?
You put your phone down beside you and let out a heavy sigh.
It feels like mere seconds pass before you hear your phone buzz. You grab it quickly and unlock it.
Dennis<3: Yea, I’m in the area. Can I swing by now?
“Shit,” you say, but you aren’t sure why. He had to come to get it, why delay the inevitable?
Sure. You finally send back.
After it is sent, you jump up from the couch and hurriedly begin to clean your apartment up. Admittedly, in the past few days you’d become a bit of a slob. You don’t just clean up when people come over, but a huge motivator to stay on top of things was Dennis, so without that in your life things had kind of fell by the way side.
In the middle of picking up the last shirt off the ground, you hear a sharp rap against your door. You feel your heart pounding against your ribs as you throw the shirt into a hamper and go to the door.
You open it just wide enough to see outside and Dennis comes into full view. He’s wearing a loose shirt with some sports logo on it you don’t recognize (some team from Nebraska, most likely) and sweat pants. His hair is a mess, but in an endearing way. His doe eyes look so earnestly sad that you have to avert your own in order to stay calm.
You reach down and grab the bag by the door and hand it to him.
“Uh, thanks,” Dennis says, grabbing the bag.
You nod with a tight smile and go to close the door, but he sneaks his hand in to prevent it from closing.
“Wait—“ he says, eyes wide, “uh, can we talk?”
You want to say no. You should say no. You already feel like you could cry tears of shame just looking at him, much less actually talking to him.
But for some inexplicable reason, you nod.
You pull open the door a bit to allow him to come in.
Dennis steps inside, but lingers by the door as he takes you in.
“H-Have you been okay?” he says, eyes sweeping across your ruffled loungewear and tired expression.
“Yep.”
“A-Are you sure?” Dennis continues, “I-I haven’t heard from you since our last date… I just wanted to know if I’d done something wrong?”
“I-I’ve been busy,” you say. You can’t meet his eyes and the words fall flat. You know immediately he isn’t buying it.
“Right…” Dennis says, “well, do you have anything planned this weekend? There’s going to be a fair in town on Saturday and I have the day off.”
“I don’t know,” you say curtly, “I’ll have to check my schedule. Maybe Trinity will go with you?”
Dennis frowns. “Trinity?” he looks close to laughing. He shakes his head. “I don’t think Trinity would hang out with me outside of work if she had a gun against her head.”
Your eyes dart up to meet his from where they’d been tracing the pattern of the flooring beneath you. You narrow your eyes, trying to understand what he’s saying.
Dennis steps forward, reaching to gently grasp your arm. “What’s going on? Seriously?”
“I talked to Dana,” you tell him, worrying your lip beneath your teeth, “I know you and Trinity ride to work together. I know that you guys are roommates. I know that you probably see her way more than me and I know she’s been friends with you for much longer and she’s so pretty—“
Your words cut off when Dennis captures your lips in a kiss. Your eyes flutter shut on instinct, a hand reaching up to grasp the back of his neck. His arm wraps around your waist as the chaste kiss gets deeper. Your chest flutters beneath your skin, a tremble in your hands.
He breaks the kiss, but doesn’t move far, a small laugh escaping his parted lips.
“Trinity and me,” he starts to say, another laugh escaping his lips at the thought, “we’re just friends. We are always going to be just friends.”
“But…” you say.
“Also, I’m pretty sure she’s a lesbian. She’s been having this other doctor, Garcia, over, like, every night,” Dennis tells you, which shuts you up immediately. “It’s funny, because I was worried she might flirt with you. She’s been talking about how pretty you are for, like, days.”
You let out a small laugh.
“I’m sorry,” you tell him, unable to come up with much more in response.
“She took me in when she found out I didn’t have anywhere to live when I started interning,” he explains, “I’d been sleeping in an empty wing of the hospital…”
“Oh wow,” you say, eyes wide. “Did you get in trouble?”
“No,” Dennis says, “she helped me, gave me a place to stay. I just didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want you to think of me any differently. People always pity me once they find out. I didn’t want that from you.”
“I’m sorry,” you say again, “for assuming.”
He just shakes his head with a small smile. “I’m just glad we got this all straightened out. I’ve been, like, seriously stressing over it.”
“Me too.”
You pause for a moment, twirling a piece of his hair at the back of his neck around your finger. You remember something. “And the date? When she called?” you ask.
He frowns for a moment as he tries to remember. Then he nods. “Oh, Trinity saw a cockroach in the bathroom. She wanted me to come get it.”
“Because you’re her huckleberry,” you say with a teasing grin.
Dennis lets out a soft laugh. “Yeah, I guess I am,” he says, “I’m pretty sure the only reason she keeps me around is for pest control.”
“That’s not true,” you say with a grin, “you’re plenty likable. If you were my roommate, I’d keep you around for a while. The pest control is just a plus.”
“Is that an invitation?” he asks, a flirtatious smile pulling at the edges of his lips.
“Dennis,” you say, smiling, “don’t you know you’re supposed to ask a girl out before being so indecent? I mean, we haven’t even made it official yet.”
“We haven’t?” Dennis says teasingly, “that’s embarrassing. I’ve been telling people we’ve been dating for weeks.”
You roll your eyes and let out a short laugh.
“Do you…?” he says, his eyes suddenly wide, “do you want to make it official?”
You bite your bottom lip to stop the grin from pulling at your lips. “Of course I do,” you reply immediately, “well, as long as you promise you don’t have any more surprises in store for me.”
“Can’t promise that,” Dennis says, bringing his hand up to cup your cheek. “I’m full of surprises.”
“I guess I can live with that.”
You punctuate the statement by leaning in to give him another kiss and as he leans into you with full abandon, you think perhaps there is a benefit to indulging the green-eyed beast every once in a while.