Noelle stifled a giggle.
“What?” he asked, worried he was supposed to have done something.
“You really do do what you’re asked, don’t you?” she smiled at him – and now took hold of his hand again. Even in the low light of the street lamps, she looked so beautiful it made his chest tighten up so it was hard to breathe.
She was holding his hand.
Oh, it felt so incredibly right – but what did it mean? She really was interested in him? There was a storm of butterflies now howling inside his stomach. He felt a curious mixture of sheer excitement and a slight tinge of nausea from his jangling nerves.
“Of course,” he said, and then as he was going about the process of closing his mouth, it suddenly went off on its own accord again: “For you, I’d do anything at all.”
That secured another of her incredible smiles – dazzling, even in the half light.
“Most guys would have sat there and probably grunted at me that they were all right, they’d be okay even though it’s freezing cold,” she said. “The guys I know, anyway.”
“I think your friends were amused that we’ve gone off together,” Dylan said, thinking he might make her smile again at the thought that her friends were already making baseless assumptions that this whole trek to the car to find blankets was some kind of pretext for some kind of romantic –
“They’ve been trying to set me up with various guys for months,” she interrupted his thoughts. “I think they’re just excited I actually found someone worth talking to.”
Dylan had to conceal a gasp.
Found someone worth talking to?
What was going on? He felt as though he was walking on clouds, somehow. Were his ears deceiving him now? She was excited about being with him?
He tried to change the subject, if anything to distract himself from all the confused feelings he had, to calm himself down and prevent himself from misunderstanding this situation.
He said: “So are you actually excited about this new iPad?”
She gave him a blank look, and nearly dropped his hand.
“Only, I’m sitting there in the line trying to mind my own business…”
“And not doing so great at that, huh?” she flashed him a grin.
He shrugged, “Kind of hard to keep my ears to myself when you’re talking about vibrators and stuff like that.”
“I guess it must be. Pervert.”
“Hey, it wasn’t me talking about sex toys in a queue for the new iPad.” She smiled and rolled her eyes, and he said: “The emos sitting behind me in the line were talking about iPads the whole time – you can’t blame me for trying to distract myself from that.”
She laughed. “That doesn’t get you horny, talking about 4G and Retina display?”
He couldn’t quite tell whether it was going to turn her off that he wasn’t completely obsessed with Apple products like his sister, or whether it was a good thing.
“Well, I mean they’re handy to have…”
She laughed, “You’re worried we’re all geeky girls and I’ll find you boring because you’re not in the waiting list to work on the Genius Bar?”
To be honest, he’d never thought any of them might be termed ‘geeky’.
She said: “It’s Chrissy. She’s a total tech geek. And she has to have the latest new anything the minute it’s out.”