Isaac stood and reached for my hand. He pulled me to my feet and across the room, then put my fingers against one of the leaves.

“See? Plastic.”

I blinked. Holy shit. It was plastic. I’d been watering a plastic plant for two years.

“Oh, my God,” I whispered. “I am such an idiot.”

He leaned into me, laughing quietly. “I watered it for three days until I realized. Then I only watered it on the last day so you wouldn’t think I was abandoning your plant.”

“And you never thought to tell me I’d asked you to water a plastic plant?” I stepped back. “Thanks!”

“I thought you had another plant somewhere you meant!”

“Did you look for it?”

“No.”

“Then why are we having this conversation? Oh, my God.” I dropped back onto the sofa and buried my head in my hands. “This is embarrassing.”

“It’s just a plastic plant, Hannah. I did the same thing.”

“Yeah, but you figured it out! I wasn’t even close to doing that! I’d be watering that fucking thing for the next fifty years without realizing.”

Laughing, Isaac sat down next to me on the sofa, closer than he had before. A shiver ran down my spine at the exact moment his knuckles brushed my knee when he reached for his wine glass. He hesitated for the tiniest second before he grabbed it.

He saw it.

Damn it.

I picked up my glass and sipped, looking at the boxes on the table. I didn’t want to look him in the eye right now, because sitting next to him was quite enough.

The texts.

The texts were all I could think about. They were buzzing around my brain, asking me all sorts of questions. Was he a dirty talker in real life? Did it sound hotter in a British accent? What would he do if I initiated something?

Which wasn’t going to happen. Besides, I didn’t sleep with people on the first date.

Masturbating to text messages didn’t count, okay.

I forced back a sigh. I didn’t want him to know that I was thinking about this stuff. Until now, until he’d taken my hand and sat right next to me, this had been easy. Like we were actually friends who were just eating together.

Now…

Well, now I kinda wanted to sit on him and kiss his face off.

It was problematic, to say the least.

I think it was worse that I knew what it felt like to be kissed by him. I knew it sent tingles dancing over my skin and made my heart beat faster.

I think I was just scared to be kissed by him again. Scared to feel that way, scared that it would be the last time I ever would feel that way.

Which was irrational. I knew that. I knew that somewhere, in this world, there was somebody who would make me feel amazing with a kiss.

One of those somebodies was sitting right next to me, after all.