Roll the Dice

twenty-three. luck be a lady

[Dedicated to Ally, who is hilarious and such a great friend that I've made. She's so incredibly humble and fun to talk with. <333]

"I still kind of can't believe that you dragged me into your scheming," Dom murmured in my ear as we tiptoed around my kitchen in the dying light of the dusk. I caught my breath-I still couldn't quite get over his warm breath on my neck. How did I, Lottie Ingham, get here? How had I gotten so far with my crush? Did I fuck up somewhere and get lucky?

I elbowed his stomach as an excuse to get him a little farther away from me. (I didn't think I could function with him standing so close.) "What did you expect from me?" I answered lightly even though my voice shook on the last few words.

Dom chuckled. "Oh, I don't know." There was a pause as I gingerly turned on the kitchen lights, illuminating the room in a hazy, yellow-ish light. My parents were a fan of the candle light look. He continued. "I thought you'd only go this far when it comes to Guys and Dolls."

"Matchmaking is kind of fun," I admitted to him. "And I've found that I'm kind of good at scheming, you know?"

He shrugged, and we settled back into the silence that we'd shared previously.

And as the two of us grabbed candles and vases from the cabinets, I realized that Dom and I had never hung out in the evening alone before. We went on runs in the morning together, we went to the beach with our group of friends toward noontime, we watched Guys and Dolls in the afternoon-but nothing in the evening. Maybe it was because the evening was a time to which both of us were hesitant to commit. The evening did insinuate something more intimate. There was a reason that dinner sounded more romantic than lunch did. And yet here the two of us were, working side by side with the sky darkening outside.

It was almost night time, and that fact alone made me so, so nervous.

"This tablecloth is nice," Dom commented as he lit the candles in the middle of the little table we'd set out right next to the kitchen island.

I nodded, absentmindedly squinting as I gingerly placed a napkin that I'd just folded in that fancy way that restaurants did on a plate. "Well, I thought that we'd put to use one of my mom's tablecloths. She never uses them anyway, and why not now?"

We both looked up at the same time, and our eyes met. For an inexplicable moment, we couldn't seem to look away-I caught my breath. Why was he so gorgeous? And what was this? My palms broke out into a sweat as Dom passed a fork to me, still maintaining our eye contact. I licked my lips, accepting his fork.

It was quiet in the house. Surprisingly, Carter wasn't taking one of his naps. It was a little strange to not hear his snores-I hadn't realized that my brother's snoring had become a sort of familiar background noise over the summer. I bit my lip, frowning a little. Even though my brother was an idiot, I had to admit that I was going to miss him when he would go back to college.

Dom broke our connection, abruptly straightening and clearing his throat. Dazed, I exhaled emphatically, putting the fork on another napkin next to the plate.

It was odd these days. Dom and I had a lot of those moments, those moments that deceived me into believing that, just for a second, we weren't quite friends. For those few moments, I believed that we were something more, that I meant something to him. I couldn't quite figure out why, and there was something about those times that told me to keep it a secret between me and him.

My friends didn't have to know something that I didn't understand myself.

After a couple minutes, Dom and I finished setting up the table, and we stood back to take a look at our work. We'd done well. The table was simple and effective with a single daisy sitting in the middle in a vase. Dom and I had placed two chairs facing each other with dinner plates for each place. The candles were my favorite. Something about the flickering flames and the scent of jasmine set the mood. And God, was it all perfect.