Moving Forward (Completed)

Chapter Nine

Katherine walked into the overly crowded restaurant, glancing passed the hostess to see an annoyed looking Amanda staring back at her.

"You kissed Barba a year ago?" Amanda snapped as she sat down.

"Have you been stewing on that all week?" Katherine chuckled. It was Friday and the first time their schedules had allowed them to get together since Rafael had outed the details of their first kiss.

"I can't believe you kissed him after I specifically told you not to rebound with him." Amanda grumbled.

"I didn't do it after. I kissed him impulsively when he was trying to make me feel better about my failed marriage. It was probably less than five minutes after I had gotten off the phone with Scott." Katherine said, smiling at the memory.

"You're smiling. I've never seen you smile while talking about that call with Scott."

"I'm not smiling about the call." Katherine grinned.

Amanda rolled her eyes and picked up her menu.

"It was a great kiss." Katherine added.

"So great you weren't going to tell me about it?" Amanda huffed.

"I would have eventually."

"What did Barba say after you kissed him?"

"Ok, maybe a little crazy." Katherine chuckled.

"I think I'm going to need more context to follow." Amanda said, rolling her eyes again.

"Never mind." Katherine chuckled again. "Basically, I apologized almost immediately afterward and he told me there were worse things than being randomly kissed my a beautiful woman. Then I mentioned getting back to you and he tried to hide how amused he was. We exchanged names, he made a joke about it being nice to know the name of someone whose tongue's been in your mouth, and then told me he'd ask me out, but didn't think I was quite ready. I was going back to Atlanta at the time and told him as much. That was it." Katherine shrugged.

Amanda closed her eyes and exhaled a puff of air. "You're tongue was in his mouth?"

"It's not like he didn't reciprocate."

"You know what? I don't want to know." Amanda stated, holding a hand up as if to stop the conversation.

"It's a very talented tongue." Katherine smirked.

Amanda glared at her, clearly not amused by her last comment.

"I'll stop." Katherine smiled.

"You're parents are coming next week?" Amanda asked.

"Their flight gets in at three on Sunday." Katherine sighed.

"Are they meeting Barba?" Amanda smirked.

"We have dinner reservations for Monday evening."

"Don't looks so glum, your mom is going to love him." Amanda assured her.

Katherine exhaled before speaking. "Yes, but not for the right reasons. She's going to love that he got us into Carbone, great seats for the shows she wants to see, and I can only imaging what she'd say if they see his apartment... Those aren't the things I love about him."

"Love? ...about him." Amanda said, lifting her brows.

"Like, whatever... we were talking about my mom loving him. Forgive me for using the same word." Katherine protested.

"Uh huh..." Amanda smiled, "and what do you like about him?"

The corners of Katherine's lips twitched upward as she thought. "That he's patient when Scott comes up and doesn't push for information about my marriage, just leaves it in the past where it belongs. That he's kind and considerate of me. He can be really cute when he's grumped about something. And he has this fun playful side... he makes me laugh all the time. He's smart, but you know that. Then there's the way he looks at me, like I'm the only one he would ever want to look at..." Katherine paused for a moment, not even noticing the smile that had formed. "It doesn't hurt that he's extremely attractive... and my god does he look good in a suit. The sex is amazing, and I have realized that that is important to me, but it's mostly the other stuff."