You arrived at the coffee house at exactly 4:30, but by the time you pulled around the back and lugged all the groceries out of your car and up the stairs to Laura's apartment, it was closer to 5. Laura was waiting patiently at the top of the stairs, foot propping the apartment door open, a goofy smile on her face, and already changed into her NYU pullover accompanied by a pair of black and red flannel pajama bottoms and pink fuzzy socks. Her hair was pulled up in the same ponytail she wore that morning, albeit a bit more unkempt, her curls a tad more unruly.
You nearly tripped up the last step because you were too busy staring- admiring. You thought it entirely unfair that someone dressed in that looked so incredibly beautiful. And then you had a fleeting thought that maybe you should've changed before you left, you were a tad bit overdressed, still in the clothes you wore to work.
Once you managed to regain your footing, Laura grabbed a bag from you (thankfully not the one with the dessert in it - you wanted that to be a sort of surprise) and held the door open for you to walk through.
"You really went all out huh?"
You laughed, the nerves of the upcoming evening finally catching up to you and nodded, following her through the entryway and into the kitchen. "I told you, I aim to please."
"No kidding," she breathed, starting to remove the contents of the bag and placing them on the counter. You followed suit, leaving the dessert ingredients in the bag and placing them in the fridge. "So, what're you making me?" She wasn't one for surprises, you noted.
"Pesto Chicken for the main course, fresh green beans and cherry tomatoes with basil for the side, and I brought a few bottles of wine because I wasn't sure what you liked, and then I thought maybe we could make dessert after?" If your heart was threatening to beat out of your chest, you ignored it, instead choosing to focus on the smirk Laura was currently giving you, trying not to read too much into it.
"I think that's the most I've ever heard you speak in one breath," she teased. You shrugged.
"Yeah, well…"
Get it together, Karnstein, she's just a girl (yeah, ok, keep telling yourself that).
"Well, it sounds perfect. You're welcome to use whatever, but the back left burner of the stove is broken."
You nodded again, but realizing she was facing away from you, you spoke up, "Noted."
"Anything you need me to do?"
"Cut up and wash the green beans while I go change out of this?" You picked at your button up, untucking it slightly from the waistband of your red wine colored pants.
"Aye, aye, captain." She soluted you with an over exaggerated hand move that wasn't even remotely regulatory by Marine standards, you were sure, but she looked adorable doing it so you couldn't really fault her.
The bathroom wasn't hard to find, the apartment wasn't more than a bedroom and some floor space for a tiny kitchen and the living room. You changed into a pair of gray sweats and a Rolling Stones tshirt you found at the bottom of your dresser drawer. You were sure it had belonged to your father at one point in the '80s, before he met your mother and lost his cool.
Upon returning to the kitchen, you found Laura with her shoulder deep in a cabinet next to the oven, pulling out cookie sheets one after the other, the green beans, cut and washed, drying on a paper towel by the sink.
You silently wondered what a girl who lived alone needed twelve cookie sheets for, but decided against actually voicing the question and set about preparing the tomatoes and preheating the oven with a silent shake of your head.
Laura turned out to be more of a distraction than anything else and you ended up charring the tomatoes a bit more than you would have liked, but overall you thought the meal turned out pretty well and the night seemed to keep getting better and better.
The two of you finished off one of the bottles of wine shortly after dinner was consumed and before dessert was mentioned. Laura nearly took out the coffee table to get to the kitchen as soon as the word fell from your lips, the movie on the tv across from you completely forgotten. Your surprise didn't stay a surprise for very long. Laura got one glimpse of the chocolate you brought and practically melted into a puddle on the kitchen floor.
"No-bake chocolate cheesecake sound good?"
"Sound 'good'? It sounds amazing! How'd you learn to do this stuff?"
"'This stuff'? You mean, cook?" You laughed as she eagerly nodded her head and set about removing the ingredients from the grocery bag. "It was kind of a necessity in my house. My parents traveled a lot and left me and my brother with an Austrian woman whose specialty was Tafelspitz. It tastes as dreadful as it sounds, trust me." You shuddered involuntarily at the memory of the unfortunate dish you only ever forced yourself to completely consume once, only for the sake of your nanny. Everytime she made it after that, you would feed it to your mothers dog under the table and sneak into the kitchen late at night to make four peanut butter and jelly sandwiches; two for you and two for Will.
"I have a feeling I'd rather not know what that is…" Laura's face twisted in disgust with a hint of something that resembled sympathy for your past self.
"I'll save you the gory details then," you replied, a smirk on your face, as you recalled the recipe for the cheesecake from memory and helped yourself to grabbing two bowls from the cupboard and opening the bag of chocolate cookies needed for the crust layer.
Meanwhile, Laura was clutching the bag of chocolate chunks to her chest. "My hero," she sighed, extremely over dramatic.
Maybe it was the half a bottle of wine, but you couldn't hold back the wink you sent her way even if you wanted to. And as it turned out, you didn't, because the blush that spread like wildfire up her neck and across her cheeks was well worth it.
"Something tells me you'd do just fine on your own though, Cutie."
"And you'd be absolutely right." She stole a cookie from the package under your hands before you could crush them all into tiny crumbles and took an exaggerated bite to drive her statement home, but then she paused in her chewing, debated over what she was thinking of saying and said it anyway, never breaking eye contact. "...but what if I didn't feel like being alone?"
It took you a second for your brain to catch up to what words left her mouth and why she was looking at you like that, but when it finally registered and you successfully forced a sentence through your parted lips, it was a miracle it actually made sense.
"Then I'd tell you that it's perfectly fine and that maybe I didn't feel like being alone right now either."
At your confession, she took a step closer to you, your hands pausing in their effort to find all the whole cookies and crumble them into the perfect sized chunk.
"And what if I told you I wanted to kiss you? What would you say then?"
Maybe it was the way her eyes were burning holes into your retinas or the way she grabbed your wrists and the way her fingers burned imprints into your skin, or maybe it was the warmth in your belly that intensified every time she glanced down at your lips, or the pull in your heart from being this close to someone so breathtaking and kind. It was hard to say which made you speak the truth to her right then.
"I'd say I've been wanting to do the same for a very long time."
You were speaking in whispers now, afraid of breaking the moment.
"And since technically this is our second date, it'd be totally okay for me to just lean forward right now…"
You nodded, even as she began to lean forward anyway.
"Totally okay…"
You caught a slight smile pull at the corners of her mouth just as her eyes slid shut and she whispered, "good," a hair's width away from you, your lips brushing together for the briefest of seconds. That touch was everything. You weren't sure who leaned in the rest of the way, but any retort you had come up with died on your tongue the second Laura's lips touched your own.
And you hate to be cliche, but it was almost like every kiss leading up to now suddenly lost their standing on the theoretical list of all the kisses you had before, because the gentle press of Laura's lips to yours suddenly filled up every spot from one to infinity. The only one that topped it was the kiss she gave you when she pushed you back against the counter, her hands on your hips, yours on her cheeks, and that shy, gentle pressure turned into a sure, brazen force that drove a gasp from your lungs and a moan from your throat.