After clocking off from work, Michelle and Caledon went to a nearby diner for dinner.
They sat in a booth and studied the laminated menus their server, a bright-eyed brown-haired girl, had handed them.
"Before we continue, I need to clarify something," she said, looking up.
"Uh huh," Caledon said, still focused on the menu in his hands.
"Just so you know, I've been single, like, my whole life. I don't know what couples do."
"Me too. I've never even gone on one date."
The wariness that had bunched up in her stomach receded. He was just as inexperienced as her.
"Me neither!" she said, mentally heaving a sigh of relief.
"We'll figure things out together, then," he said, flashing her a quick grin before returning his gaze to the menu. "Man, I'm starving. I didn't eat anything before my shift today."
"Why not?"
Michelle usually got the fried chicken and waffles at this place, so all she had to decide on was what drink she wanted.
"I overslept. I only had enough time to get ready for work."
The strawberry milkshake looked appetizing. Michelle put down the menu and looked around the restaurant for Elaine, their server.
"Then let's hurry up and order," she said. "Do you know what you want?"
"You've already decided? That's fast." He glanced up from his menu to look at hers, which was now lying flat on the tabletop.
"I usually just get the same thing here," she said. "I don't really have to think about it."
"Oh. I like to try something new every time I come here. Okay," he said, setting his own menu down, "I think I know what I want now."
Catching Elaine's eye, Michelle waved and flashed her a smile. Elaine finished setting down the food at another table and nodded at her.
"Great. I'm hungry, too," she said.
Her energy was in need of replenishment after the busy day they'd had at work.
Elaine came over, wearing a friendly smile on her face, and they placed their orders. When she left for the kitchen, Michelle got her phone out.
"I want to take notes," she explained.
Nodding, he took his phone out as well. "Good idea. So, we're officially together now."
"Yep, we totally are." She drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Actually, I don't really know what we should do."
"Are we going to hold hands?" Caledon asked. "Couples are always holding hands and walking in twos."
He had a point.
Her friends were almost always holding hands with their boyfriends. It just seemed like the quintessential thing to do in a romantic relationship.
"I don't mind," Michelle said, "as long as you don't have clammy palms. No offense if you do."
She used to hold hands with her older brother, Nathan, all the time when they were younger, since he had to take her everywhere with him. It wasn't really a big deal to her, especially since she and Caledon were now officially in a relationship.
"No," he said. "My palms are pretty dry all the time."
"Great. I don't mind holding your hand every now and then."
A thought suddenly struck her, causing her to straighten up in her seat. Michelle shot her hand out to steady the pitcher of water she'd almost knocked over with her elbow.
"What? Did something happen?" Caledon asked, his eyes instantly on her.
"No," she said, wrinkling her nose. "I just realized something. Are we going to kiss?"
That was definitely a couple thing. But did they have to do that?
As she attempted to imagine his lips on hers, Michelle felt herself immediately recoil in her seat. Sure, Caledon's boyishly handsome face, with his short wavy brown hair, was easy on the eyes, but that didn't mean she wanted to kiss him.
She had no plans on doing that any time soon.
His grimace came almost immediately. "Oh. Uh, I'd rather not, if you don't mind. It's nothing personal, but I don't really want to kiss you. I mean, we don't have to, right?"
Instantly, she said, "Absolutely not. Okay, that's good. The idea of kissing you isn't appealing to me either."
He looked as relieved as she felt.
Elaine returned with their drinks and set them on the table. Michelle gratefully reached out for hers. Opposite of her, Caledon was already inhaling his chocolate milkshake.
"Moving on," he said. "What about texting? You have my number, right?"
"Yeah. We should probably text each other at least once a day."
On the rare occasions that Michelle needed someone to cover her shift, she texted her coworkers to ask for their help. Of course, Caledon was one of them.
Her friends were always texting their boyfriends.
"You're right, we should." He typed something down. "I don't mind if we don't text each other all the time though."
With a hasty nod of her head, she said, "Please, no. I won't be able to send you constant replies, anyway. I have a lot of things to do."
Michelle couldn't envision herself texting Caledon all day the way Sylvie texted Jordan, her boyfriend. Spending every hour of her day on texting made no sense. Putting the concern of poor productivity aside, it was simply a waste of time in her opinion.
She enjoyed a good text conversation with her best friends sometimes, but a text every hour just seemed excessive. Besides, what would she and Caledon have to talk about over text?
"Great. Me too. Unless we have something we need to discuss, we can just send each other good morning and good night texts?"
"Perfect." She typed that down.
She loved that they agreed on so many things—obviously, they had a lot of things in common. Caledon was already turning out to be a great boyfriend.
He shifted his now half-empty glass of chocolate milkshake to the side. "If you happen to be free, you'll accompany me when I'm going out with my friends, right?"
"Of course." She raised an eyebrow. "That's, like, the whole point of us getting together. You'll accompany me too, won't you?"
His laugh was bright and warm. "Yeah, you're right. I don't know why I asked that."
"Is there anything else you think we should cover?" Michelle looked critically at the short list she'd compiled on her phone.
"Not that I can think of."
Just then, the delicious aroma of fried chicken and freshly toasted waffles wafted over to her, cutting off her train of thought.
"My love," she said dramatically, spreading her arms out as the server approached their table with their tray of food.
Used to Michelle's antics because she was a semi-regular here, Elaine didn't react, only placing her dish in front of her. Caledon had ordered a double cheeseburger with fries on the side. In Michelle's opinion, it was a totally boring dish, but Caledon hadn't asked, so she respectfully held her tongue.
"Your love? Seriously?" Caledon said, looking amused.
While Michelle began cutting her waffle, he started with demolishing his fries. They disappeared off his plate in record time.
"What? It's so good," she said. "Have you tried it before?"
"Yeah, I think it was the first dish I tried here. It's pretty good."
"Right?!" she said in between bites of chicken. "I hardly ever order anything else."
"Why? Don't you get tired of eating the same thing every time you come here?"
"Nope. I don't really want to try something new," she said. "I don't like change."
That could have been why she had been so resistant to the change in her friends' relationship statuses. After all, it was practically impossible to get girls only time with them now.
"But sometimes change can be good."
Unable to suppress the snort that escaped from her, Michelle said, "You sound like my mom."
He rolled his eyes. "Thanks. You know, your life would be boring if you never tried new things."
"Now you really sound like my mom," she said. "Sometimes we don't need change."
"Us getting together is you trying something new," he pointed out.
She couldn't refute that, so she simply narrowed her eyes at him. "Fine. But this is a change that I know is good, so it's different."
Caledon grinned lazily at her as he took another sip of his drink. "I'm not going to argue with that. Come on, cheers."
They clinked glasses.
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Later that night, after Michelle had brushed her teeth and gotten ready for bed, she received a text message. The ping startled her because her friends rarely messaged her late at night after they all became busy texting their own boyfriends instead.
She unlocked her phone to see that it was only two words.
Caledon: Good night
Caledon hadn't even bothered punctuating it with a period, but she smiled anyway, thankful for the reminder. She had totally forgotten that they were going to do that.
Out of laziness—and what she thought was a stroke of genius, really—Michelle copied and pasted his message directly into the text field and sent it back to him.
As she lay in bed and pulled up her covers, she knew that she was going to have a restful sleep that night.
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AN: guys, thank you so much for the support and interest you've shown this so far! i'm going to start posting this, but i'm not sure if i can make it on Monday for the next update since it's already Tuesday here. anyway, as with yastmt, i plan on having Monday updates for this story! i've been really busy lately, but i'm going to try to spend more time writing.