I went with a simple pasta sauce and salad. Not too much to go wrong there, and I’d made it frequently enough that I felt confident. I made sure there was lots of beef in the sauce, because I was feeding a hockey player. I was cooking extra pasta too.
Even though it wasn’t a complicated meal, I was surprisingly nervous.
My nerves weren’t about the food. Josh had never been a picky guy, and despite that expensive restaurant we went to before the hockey game, he hadn’t seemed to be any kind of a food snob now.
But talking to Jayna and Callie had made me self-conscious about being with Josh. They’d thought we were dating. Was that a problem? Was Josh not hooking up with anyone? Not in the city, because I knew what he was doing here, but on the road? Was that why they’d thought we must be together?
I didn’t like thinking about that. Something else to brush aside.
The buzzer announcing Josh took me out of my thoughts. No one was making Josh spend time with me. He was here because he wanted to be. And it wasn’t my business what he was doing when we weren’t spending friend time together.
When I opened the door, it was amped-up Josh who was waiting on the other side. He was almost vibrating. His hands clenched and unclenched on the handle of the bag he was carrying, and he was bouncing on the balls of his feet. Probably because of last night’s game.
“Hey Katie.”
I stepped back. “Come on in. Still excited about beating Minnesota?”
“Oh yeah. I—oh, that smells good.”
“Thanks.”
“I brought a bottle of wine. I hope it’s a good one.”
I rolled my eyes. Like either of us were wine snobs. “I’m sure it’s fine. And congrats on the game again. I know you were worried about that one.”
He nodded jerkily. “Especially because they did play Mitch like I’d suggested.”
Josh sat on a stool to tell me about the game. It was nice, sharing his thoughts. I opened the bottle of wine and poured some into two of Madeline’s wineglasses. The less expensive-looking ones.
“That is amazing. See, you are smart. You figured out what the team was hung up on, and your idea got them over it.”
His cheeks turned pink. “I know hockey pretty well.”
“All the guys in the league must know hockey. But you thought of that idea because you know people as well.”
“Thanks. I’m feeling really good about that.”
“You should. Hungry?” His hand was tapping on the island, and I knew his feet probably were moving too.
“Yeah, but there’s something I need to ask you first.”
“Oookay.”
His mouth twitched as he watched me. I started to fidget too, like it was contagious. His gaze was intense. It didn’t feel like he wanted to ask a question about a TV show we watched, or if I’d come to another hockey game.
He cleared his throat. “Can I kiss you?”
My eyes blinked, but nothing else was moving. Had he really asked if he could kiss me? Josh wanted to kiss me?
I’d kissed him last month. And he’d said I could kiss him anytime, but that had just been a joke, right? Because we’d gone into friend mode after that and?—
“Katie?”
My mouth finally moved, dropping open, then closing again so I could swallow and speak. “You want to kiss me?”
He nodded. He wasn’t moving any longer, still and waiting. Like he was waiting for the puck to drop.
“Why?” I didn’t understand and my brain didn’t seem to be operating.
