Never Been Nerdy(72)

I listen to him whisk the milk. “That’s a lot to ask of somebody.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m single.”

I snort, rubbing my eyes and cheeks again. “You’re single because you want kids? Yeah, there’s got to be something else wrong with you.”

Dean shrugs and pours the hot chocolate into giant-sized mugs. He then gets to work on the whipped cream, even beating it by hand. I admire the bulge and contractions of his forearms and biceps. Wow.

“I’m sure there’s lots of things wrong with me to at least one person on the planet. But I don’t see anything wrong with me. I just haven’t found the right girl, I guess.”

“And who’s the right girl, what’s she like?” My heart’s thumping hard, and all I want to yell out is: Me, me, me!

“She calls me out on my bullshit, and laughs a lot. She knows all my favourite movies and leaves me alone when the Habs are playing or if it’s playoff season. She won’t mind my patchy beard growth during November, and she won’t mind at all that I collect comics and toys. She’ll love my dogs, and won’t mind getting dirty when we go for long walks. She lives in sneakers, and doesn’t care what she looks like without makeup on, but to me, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

“We can spend evenings with Netflix playing in the background and we just sit reading whatever we feel like. I don’t mind cooking for her, because she loves my cooking, and doesn’t care if I put butter, and use all the real ingredients. I could spend the day planning out a meal and just watch her enjoy it, listen to all the sounds she makes as she devours the food.

“We can go for long walks with the boys, and I’ll be completely enchanted by the blush on her cheeks, or the way she puts her hands in the bend of my elbow. She wouldn’t mind that I read too much, or spend most of my time thinking about how to design my own Death Star and if I really could be seduced by the Dark Side. Nah, she wouldn’t mind that at all.”

Dean’s finished with the whipped cream and tops it delicately on top of our mugs. He adds a sprinkling of cocoa on top with a few shakes of a Darth-Vader-shaped sieve, and walks over to hand me my hot chocolate.

I stare down at the awesomeness that I’m about to devour and want to bite my lip. I don’t want to say, that sounds nothing like me. But what’s the point? Dean just blatantly told me that I’m not what he wants, and that doesn’t even matter – I’m going to break his heart, again, and he’ll never forgive me for that.

So I keep quiet, and slurp up some decadent hot chocolate, getting whipped cream on my nose and laughing because I probably look ridiculous.

“This is amazing,” I smile up at him, and watch him wipe the whipped cream off his nose.

He takes another sip then concentrates hard enough to get his tongue to swipe the bottom of his nose and get the cream. I let out a giggle and slap my hand over my mouth. I don’t think that sound’s come out of me since the third grade.

“You have a nice laugh, why do you cover it up?” he says, grinning at me and it’s like we’re back in high school and that smile destroys me all over again.

“I don’t like the sound of my laugh. It’s too girly. Not professional at all.”

“Kat, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard, and I’ve seen a lot of shit movies in my time, so I know what I’m talking about. “

I shake my head, slurp up some more hot chocolate. “Do you have any straws?”

Dean nods, and turns around to go into his cupboards. He fishes out a green one for him and a blue one for me, the special silly straws that were the coolest thing you’d ever seen when you were a kid.

I wanted to keep my nose from being cream-ified any longer, but Dean’s gone ahead and started blowing bubbles into his hot chocolate. Giant bubbles erupt from the mug and Dean’s face is a perfect mask of concentration, keeping the bubbles from exploding over the rim of the mug and spilling onto the countertop.

He’s just a big kid and I don’t think he’ll ever grow up.

“C’mon, kitten, blow some bubbles and get your face dirty. You’ll still be beautiful if you get chocolate milk on it, I promise.”

How can he just say those things to me and go back to blowing bubbles like what he just said hasn’t made my eyes all big and my heart trip over itself?

How does he do that – disarm me completely?

“You and Sera okay now?” Dean asks, and that’s it. There’s no probing for details just a general question if everything’s okay now. And I like that a lot.