It took me about ten minutes to finally extricate myself from her grip - she was amazingly strong for her size - but I finally managed to escape without waking her up.
After checking to see that she was still asleep, I padded over to my refrigerator, opened the door and grabbed a coke bottle. I quickly twisted the cap off and chugged the 20 oz of caffeinated goodness. When I was a kid I'd never been able to stand the smell of coffee, just walking down the coffee aisle would make my stomach turn. After watching my parents always drinking the stuff in the morning I'd sworn to myself that I would never become reliant on caffeine in the morning to get going, if only to avoid being forced to need that foul smelling java. I chuckled mildly to myself, I still ended up being like ninety percent of the first world, I just had a different delivery system for my poison.
I was about to let out the routine belch I normally made after chugging a coke but stopped myself and was a little more discreet instead. I DID have a lady over, after all, and I didn't want to wake her up with a burp I swore had made dust fall from the ceiling at least once. Once I'd vented the carbonation from my stomach, I tossed the bottle into a bin saved for recycling and then set to work making breakfast. It was just some simple scrambled eggs as I wasn't usually one for the so-called most important meal of the day, preferring to eat a bigger meal later on, but I didn't know Shizuka's own eating habits and I'd always heard that a guy who made breakfast for a girl he had over was a good one.
That made me pause for a moment and think about the odd situation I was in. Back home, if someone had told me that I was going to be fixing breakfast for a gorgeous woman after she'd spent the night at my place, I'd have never believed them. Yet here I was, funny how the world worked sometimes. The question was, did I want to keep this, whatever 'this' was, going?
I glanced over towards Shizuka's sleeping form, who'd just so happened to kick off the blanket she'd been covered with, shirt I'd loaned her hiking up, exposing most of her midriff…
...whelp, that had answered that question.
Resolving that question, I pushed the eggs off the skillet onto a plate, placed said plate with silverware on my small table that officially sat two, even though I'd had trouble eating on it just by myself sometimes. Then I walked gently back over to Shizuka and gently shook her awake. "Shizuka. Could you wake up? I've got breakfast if want any."
It took her a while before she managed to return from the land of Nod, her eyes almost completely shut as she tried to take in her location with her sleep-addled mind. Eventually she looked down at the clothing she was wearing. That must have clicked in her mind, panic flooded her as she turned bright red. It was oddly adorable, but I'm not the sort to allow people to wallow in misconceptions.
"Relax, Shizuka, nothing happened. You were too drunk to tell me how to take you home and your friend had left earlier without telling me where you lived and she wouldn't answer when I tried to call her. Things kinda went downhill from there as I decided to have you sleep last night off at my place. Unfortunately, the weather decided to disagree and we got soaked. I lent you some dry clothes and you managed to change yourself in my bathroom while I changed out here. Don't worry, everyone's honor is intact." I finished my explanation with a grin.
Shizuka proceeded to go beet red and bowed her head. "I'm so sorry Tom-san. I shouldn't have drunk so much. I know I get silly when I drink, and I also got the both of us soaking wet, we could have gotten sick from that."
"Relax, Shizuka, it wasn't any trouble. Well, okay, it was frankly a pain in the ass, but that was the rain more than anything else and that was neither of our faults." I frowned. "If anything, it was your friend Rika's fault that we were in that mess. Seriously, she could have told us ya'll's address when she was leaving. Next time you see her, could you tell her that I'd appreciate it if she wouldn't vanish on an incapacitated friend?"
Shizuka spoke up then. "It wasn't Rika-chan's fault, if she's called then she has to go, no matter what she was doing before." An angry glint flashed in her eyes and I knew that I'd overstepped myself.
"Alright, alright...sorry I said anything. That offer of breakfast still stands if you like." I said a bit sheepishly.
Shizuku humphed before getting out of the blankets and striding over the table, sitting down and after looking at my eggs for a moment she took the fork I had placed on the table and took a bite of the eggs. She chewed them for a moment before swallowing. "Not bad, Tom-san, do you have salt?"
"Yes, let me get it for you." I quickly retrieved the salt and placed it in front of her. She added a small shake and took another bite.
"Better." She said in a short tone.
"Glad you enjoy it. I'll admit I'm not the best cook around." I replied, slightly relieved.
We sat there in silence for a while before I ventured to talk again. "So, Shizuka… I had fun last night with you and your friends. I'm glad that you invited me."
Shizuka must have calmed down from my slighting of Rika as she smiled back at me. "I'm glad that you could come. It was fun as well. My old classmates seemed to like you."
"Well, that's good…" I paused, unsure of how to continue. I rubbed the back of my neck and glanced around my apartment, nerves making finding what to say next damn near impossible.
Shizuka noticed my discomfiture after finishing off her eggs and spoke up; "Yes, Tom?" I noticed that she'd dropped the honorific again.
"Oh, erm, well... I was just thinking... I wouldn't mind going out with you again... just the two of us... there's a movie that's coming out soon and I was wondering if you'd like...to go see it... with me?" Eloquence, thy name is NOT Tom Brody when asking women out, especially gorgeous women, even IF you've become pretty good friends with them. I KNEW I'd screwed this up and I could feel my cheeks flushing. Dammit, I thought I'd gone beyond this shit!
Shizuka watched me doing an impressive impression of a fire hydrant for few agonizing heartbeats, then with that grin that'd nearly made me street pizza that first day I'd arrived here she replied. "I thought you'd never ask, Tom-kun. Rika-chan assured me her plan would work but I didn't believe her."
What.
Her smile widened as she got up from the table and patted me on my cheek, the touch of her skin almost like a brand. "You know, Tom-kun, you shouldn't make a girl wait, she might decide to be sneaky to get things moving. Sunday sounds wonderful, but let me go see if my clothes have dried off, we'll talk about which movie we'll go see after that."
With that she walked into the bathroom.
"So, was that a yes?"