Page 25 of Bartholomew
“Twenty questions?” I asked with trepidation.
“Yes. Or forty, or fifty, or wherever the day takes us. We take turns asking each other questions. Easy peasy,” he explained, bouncing on his heels and rubbing his hands together in calculated excitement.
“I don’t know, Bartholomew. What kind of questions?” I asked hesitantly.
“It’s Ollie. And that’s the beauty of the game. Any question you want. Anything that pretty little mind can come up with,” he tossed back, his eyebrow arching and that grin of his making my lower abdomen clench with unexpected interest.
He made me feel nervous. He made me flustered. I had seen men look at women with smirks like that, but never — and I mean never — had a look like that been directed towards me. I nervously fidgeted in my seat, my hands wringing themselves together in my lap.
“So, just here or…” I trailed off dumbly, gesturing to the room around us.
“Unless you’d like to adjourn to the bedroom and ask each other questions there,” he touted back without a second of thought. The way his eyes looked at me made me feel flushed and heated and awkward.
“Here is fine,” I responded, my throat tight, pushing the pitch of my voice up a whole octave, it seemed. “I’ll be nice. You can start.”
“I’m not sure I would call that nice,” I mumbled under my breath. Where did one even start with a game like this?
“What was that?” I felt his eyes on me as I looked anywhere but at him, fixing my skirt and getting more comfortable on the couch. He sat opposite of me, and I simply ignored his question.
“Okay, my first question. When is your birthday?” I asked, sparing him a look.
“Really? That’s your question?” He asked with a quirk of his brows.
“You were the one who said I could ask any question,” I responded quickly, blushing at my audacity. I should not have been so blunt with him, but he sort of egged it on. Just like my sisters had when we were young. It was hard not to respond to him in such a way.
“Fair enough. Fair enough. My birthday is on November 14th,” he answered with a sigh.
“Wait, that’s in just over a week!” I all but squawked.
“Yes. Now, it’s my turn for a question,” he said, his eyes full of far too much mischief for my liking, but I was still stuck on his answer.
“Wait, no! I don’t have supplies! And it’s our honeymoon, so we can’t even invite people over and —”
“Hey, Delilah. It’s okay. It’s just a birthday. Not Christmas or something,” he chuckled lightly, and I could do nothing but look on at him in shock. Birthdays were always huge for my family. My parents would host a small gathering of friends and loved ones for my sisters and me. How could his birthday not be a big deal?
“But we can’t do any sort of celebration and that just feels wrong,” I admitted with a sigh of defeat. I couldn’t make a gathering happen. I would just have to set my mind to doing something for him. The question was, what could I do? I barely knew the man. Perhaps this game would turn out more beneficial than I had planned. “But go ahead with your question.”
“Why won’t you eat my food?” He asked without a moment’s pause.
“What?” I asked in surprise, my eyes quickly finding his.
“Why won’t you eat my food? Or your food, for that matter?” He reiterated. I didn’t want to answer this question. That was too heavy, too quickly. Who was I kidding? It was too heavy ever. I had no intention of divulging that kind of information to Ollie. It just simply wasn’t done.
“Can I pass?” I asked with hesitation, not wanting to upset him or end our little game, but that was just too much.
“Hmm,” he pondered. “You pose an interesting question there, Delilah. I suppose you can pass.” I let out an audible sigh of relief. “If you do something in return.”
There was a light in his eyes that made my stomach flip and flop.
“Something in return?” I questioned with a gulp.
“Yes. If you want to pass on that question, you have to do something else,” he reiterated.
“Like what?”
“How about this? If you want to pass on the question, you have to kiss me.” I couldn’t speak. He wanted me to kiss him? He wanted me to kiss him?
“I… uh… um…” I stuttered like an imbecile.
