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“I don’t want to,” she said.

“Me neither. I just don’t know what to do about it. We’re clearly something more than friends at this point. Seeing as how most friends don’t want to take their other friend’s clothes off.” She snorted.

“Yeah, I definitely want something more than that. But why do we have to stick a label on it right this minute? We can see how things go. There’s no shame in that.” It wasn’t the shame factor, I just couldn’t explain it. The only thing worse than being in relationship limbo would be cutting this off altogether, so I just reached out and squeezed her hand.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” I pressed my lips to hers.

“Okay.”

Five

I woke the next morning with Molly’s arms wrapped around me. I was actually a little hot and the minute I moved away from her, she opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Hey.” She smiled sleepily at me and I couldn’t resist the urge to kiss her, so I didn’t.

“Hey.” I grabbed my phone as she blinked and stretched. It was still early; we hadn’t slept that long, but I wasn’t worn out. I had a scheduled day off, so I’d planned on sleeping in and watching movies all day, but now that Molly was here, I had other plans.

“Do you need to go?” I asked, and hated how whiny I sounded.

“Um, I need a change of clothes, but other than that, I can take a day.” I felt my face light up.

“Really?”

“Yup.”

I hopped out of bed.

“Don’t move,” I told her.

“Sure thing,” she said, rolling onto my side of the bed and closing her eyes again.

Rushing out to the kitchen, I set up a tray with tea, some ricotta-filled croissants, a few lemon poppy-seed scones, and a cinnamon swirl muffin. One of the upsides of being a baker was that I always had fresh baked goods in my house that were leftover from the café. I also brewed some strong coffee.

“That is the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen,” she said when I walked back into the bedroom with the tray.

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” She went for the coffee and moaned as she smelled it.

“I definitely meant it that way.” I went for the tea, pouring in some honey and stirring it up.

We both sat cross-legged on my bed and demolished the tray. Neither of us had eaten much last night so we were both starving.

“I always knew you were going to be a baker,” Molly said through a mouthful of scone.

“Really? I didn’t.” I’d played with all kinds of career goals. I just never thought being a baker was a thing I could succeed at. I didn’t think it was a “real” job. Or something.

“Yeah. Don’t you remember when you were making those intense cakes in the Easy Bake Oven? You like, made your own recipes and everything.” Oh, yeah. I’d almost forgotten about that. My mom had gotten me one for Christmas on a whim, and I’d used it until it literally stopped working. By that time I’d graduated to a real oven.

“Huh.” I guess I’d never thought of it that way. Baking was such a natural part of my life, I didn’t consider it all that often.

“Yeah, I always knew that’s what you would do.” I couldn’t stop from kissing her again. Sweet Molly with rumpled hair and puffy eyes and she was still the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.

“What made you get into PR?” I asked and she started telling me about the parts of her life I’d missed. How she went to college not knowing what she wanted to do, got a degree in Communications and sort of fell into it.

“I guess I’m really good at getting people to click on things. And it’s creative. I get to design campaigns and track numbers and all that little weird stuff that for some reason I love.” I laughed. She’d always been more into math when we were kids. She’d always done that homework first and I’d often talked her into doing mine for me.

“That’s amazing,” I said, and I meant it. I was also wondering if maybe she’d give Sal some ideas how the café could up their online presence. It wasn’t great, but no one really wanted to deal with it.