Chapter Text
Felicity buttoned up her coat and tightened her scarf to prepare for her walk across the snowy campus. On her way, her phone started to buzz in her pocket and she slipped it out to answer it.
“Hey Oliver,” she greeted him, a smile on her face as she heard the distinct sounds of his busy kitchen behind him and knew he was at the restaurant that bore her namesake.
“Hi Felicity. How are finals going?” he asked.
“Just stepped out of my last one actually.” She swerved a patch of ice on the sidewalk. “I feel pretty confident that they all went well. So now I just have to pack and I’ll be ready to get picked up tomorrow morning.”
“Perfect. I can’t wait to see you.”
“I’m excited too. And you’re sure that it’s okay with your family for the jet to pick me up?”
“Yeah. Thea’s been over on the East Coast visiting some friends this past week, so it’s just going to make a quick stop in Massachusetts and bring the two of you to Starling.”
She sighed gratefully, “Thank you.”
“Of course. With your luck, if you flew commercial you’d probably get stranded somewhere and have a romantic adventure with a ruggedly handsome, small-town guy. And we can’t have that,” he teased, eliciting a laugh from her.
“Oh, I think those are one in a million instances. But I will appreciate not having to deal with the craziness of commercial airports during the holiday travel season.
Oliver didn’t reply right away and she heard muffled voices coming from the other end of the phone before he spoke up again, “Hey I’m sorry, I have to go deal with a minor, baking-related crisis.”
She laughed, “It’s okay. See you tomorrow night.”
Hanging up, she continued her trek to her dorm room to pack her suitcase for her winter break. She was going to be spending the first week in Starling with Oliver before heading to Vegas to stay at home with her mom for the rest. Although, after having spent the summer in Starling, it definitely felt more like home than Vegas ever did. While she was doing her internship at QC, her and Oliver had had the chance to actually give a relationship a try and when the time came for her to return to Massachusetts in the fall, they decided that long distance would be worth it. Especially considering she only had a year left before graduating ahead of schedule. She didn’t have any concrete plans for after graduation though. QC had made an advance offer at the conclusion of her internship, and there were a few companies in Massachusetts that had their sights on her, but every time Oliver talked about his restaurant, she thought about how much she would love to have something of her very own like he did.
Back in her dormitory building, she walked past a door that she used to open all the time. There was a new occupant in the room now, the former currently residing in a prison cell. It was sobering to think how easily she could have been in a similar position if she hadn’t ended things with Cooper, hadn’t handed him her algorithm and taken off to Starling. All because Oliver hadn’t forgotten about her. All because he sent her that package of her favorite chocolate cake and she realized she didn’t want to keep trying to forget about him, how much she regretted letting him go after the whirlwind that their week on the road had been.
Swallowing, she continued on down the hall to her room and unlocked the door. The semester had flown by, her studies keeping her very busy, but she had a feeling these next few hours until she would head for the private airport might drag on forever with nothing to occupy her except for her impatience to see Oliver. They facetimed multiple times a week and texted a lot but it wasn’t the same as getting to be with him in person. She picked up the picture frame that was sitting on her desk and smiled at the picture that had been taken over the summer of him holding her bridal style in front of the restaurant. Setting it back down, she turned to her closet and started pulling things out to deposit into her suitcase.
Thea waved at her when she stepped into the small private airport the next morning, “Felicity!”
Over the summer, she had gotten the chance to meet Oliver’s younger sister and quickly understood why he adored her. Despite Thea only being 15, she was quite mature and they had had fun hanging out together when she was done at QC for the day but Oliver still had a few hours at the restaurant. She had been her official tour guide to all the best places in Starling and her co-official taste-tester for Oliver when he was developing new recipes.
She walked over to her and gave her a hug, “Hi Thea.”
“It’s so good to see you. You all ready to go?”
She nodded and they made their way out to the tarmac to board the Queen Consolidated jet.
“Wow,” she whispered as she settled into one of the big, comfortable seats. “This is nice.”
Thea grinned and patted the armrests, “Once you fly like this you’re never going to want to fly commercial again.”
“After I got stranded in Oklahoma I never wanted to fly commercial again,” Felicity clarified. “But I’ve still had to take my chances a few times.”
“I still can’t believe how that all happened with you and Oliver. It’s kind of like the plot of that movie we watched over the summer, Leap Year, except more… American, and Oliver didn’t propose when you showed back up in his life like Declan did. Which honestly is better, I still think that, while it made for a romantic ending, it was sort of sudden.” A mischievous smile turned up the corners of her mouth and she tilted her head towards Felicity’s left hand, “Although, if my brother wants to put a ring on it eventually, I wouldn’t object.”
She bit her lip and shook her head. It’s not that it hadn’t crossed her mind once or twice when she was thinking about her life after college, but it was still far too soon to let them be anything but fleeting thoughts.
Their flight passed quickly and blissfully uneventfully, Thea chatted about her East Coast trip and they both took naps in the reclining chairs before waking up in Starling City.
When they landed, she checked the time and knew that Oliver was still at the restaurant, so she parted ways with Thea and grabbed an Uber to take her there after making sure that her luggage would be taken to Oliver’s loft where she would be staying for the week.
Inside the lobby of the restaurant, she was immediately recognized by the hostess, unlike her first visit to the place, and was ushered over to a table near the kitchen. The waitress however wasn’t one that she knew, so she had a feeling it hadn’t been relayed to Oliver that she was there. At the end of her meal, she made a request that she pay her compliments to the head chef in person.
“Uhh… he’s very busy…” the waitress stated with a frown.
“Oh but this chocolate cake is the absolute best I have ever tasted and I would be remiss not to tell him myself. Just a Yelp review wouldn’t truly do it justice.”
“I uhh…”
She tilted her head, “Please?”
“I will see if he has a moment to spare…”
She smiled in satisfaction and handed over her empty plate. A few minutes later she saw her exit the kitchen with Oliver on her heels and she was just close enough to pick up on what they were saying.
“Andrea what did I tell you? Unless they’re a journalist or a blogger, you can just send out one of the sous chefs to receive compliments.”
“I know Mr. Queen but she was very insistent on speaking with you and I—“
Felicity met his eyes from her seat and winked.
“My apologies Andrea. Thank you for coming to get me.”
He left the befuddled looking waitress behind and strode over to her table.
“Why didn’t you just send a message to the kitchen that you were here?”
“Oh you know me, I love a good surprise entrance,” she joked as she stood up to hug him. “Mmm it’s so good to see you.”
He gave her a chaste kiss before whispering, “If we weren’t in public I would give you a proper greeting after not seeing you for three months.”
She patted his chest, “Something to look forward to for later. You better get back to the kitchen. Should I head over to the loft or…”
He checked his watch, “I have a few more hours here still so yeah, you can go get yourself settled in. Make yourself at home.”
“Okay.” She kissed his cheek, “Amazing dinner by the way. All my compliments to the chef.”
He grinned and left her reluctantly to head back to the kitchen and she gathered up her coat and purse to catch a ride over to the loft.
When she entered the loft, she felt very tired, the change of time zones having caught up to her even with her nap on the plane. The big, comfortable bed that she knew awaited her in Oliver’s bedroom was very tempting, but she was determined to stay awake until he got home for the restaurant. Instead, she slipped out of her shoes and hung her coat up on one of the hooks by the door before grabbing her pajamas from her suitcase that had been left for her to go change in the bathroom. On her way, she paused at the sofa table, where he had set some new picture frames since she had been there last, to look at the photographs. There was one of him with her and Thea at the Starling Rockets baseball game they had gone to over the summer. Another of her giving him a kiss on the cheek, wearing a waitress uniform at the restaurant on a night she had helped out when they were short staffed. A third was of them at the beach on one of the rare days he had been able to take a day off from the kitchen. And the last was the same one she had on her desk at school, with their photo strip from the carnival all those years ago tucked into the corner of the frame.
She smiled thinking how far they had come from that day, when they were dancing around the feelings that were developing between them, unsure that anything was ever meant to truly happen between them beyond their road trip. And now she had had time to fall in love with him, to imagine a future with him when she let her thoughts wander there before she caught herself.
After she was in her pajamas, she sat down onto the couch and turned on the tv to look for a movie to keep her occupied while she waited for Oliver. He still only had two movies on his account though: Die Hard and Julie & Julia, both of which he had made her watch more times over the summer than she would have ever cared to. She abandoned her movie idea and went to grab her Kindle to continue with the novel she had begun on the plane.
The next thing she was aware of was being scooped up into someone’s arms. Blinking her eyes open sleepily, she was met with Oliver looking down at her in amusement.
“Hey Sleeping Beauty.”
“Hi,” she croaked out groggily before clearing her throat and trying again. “Hey.”
“Did you fall asleep as soon as you got back here?” he asked as he carried her towards his bedroom.
“Mmm… I tried really hard to stay awake for you, but clearly I wasn’t too successful. I was going to watch a movie but you really need to expand your collection.”
He shook his head, “What are you talking about? Die Hard and Julie & Julia are the only two you need.”
As he settled her down onto his bed, she rolled her eyes, “You’re ridiculous. My roommate was watching a movie while procrastinating during finals week that I think you would like. It’s called The Hundred-Foot Journey and--- wait what are you doing?”
He paused from pulling the covers up over her, “Umm, getting you comfortable to sleep?”
She scrambled up to kneel on the mattress and raised an eyebrow at him, “I think that earlier I was promised a proper greeting sir…”
“I didn’t want to—You seemed pretty tired…”
Reaching towards him, she started to slowly unbutton his chef’s jacket, “I guess it’s a good thing I took a nap then.”
He kept his hands to himself as let her finish with the buttons before shedding it and the t-shirt he wore underneath. After that, all pretense of self-control flew out the window as his hands came to grip her hips and his mouth met hers in a kiss that was filled with the desperation that came from three months apart. His tongue traced the seam of her lips and a soft moan escaped her as she let him deepen the kiss. He wrapped his hands around her to ease her back down onto the mattress and came to hover over top of her, his mouth dropping to her neck and leaving a trail of kisses down to her collarbone.
“I missed you,” he murmured into her skin.
“Same,” she sighed, tangling her fingers in his hair. “I wish—“ He slid his hands up underneath her shirt to skim his fingers over her ribcage and trace the seams of her bra. “I wish I could be here for longer. But I promised my mom I’d be in Vegas for Hanukkah.”
“It’s okay, we’ll just have to make the most of our time,” he replied in a tone of voice that was filled with unspoken promises of exactly how they would do so, and she felt warmth spread through her whole body as it tingled with need.
Hastily, she sat up a bit to make it easier for him to tug her shirt up over her head and unclip her bra. Tossing both articles of clothing to the floor, he returned his attention to the newly exposed skin. She fisted her hands in the sheets as he took his time teasing her breasts with his fingers and mouth before dipping his head lower to drag his lips down her stomach before reaching fabric. Hooking his fingers into the waistband of her pajamas and underwear, he removed them simultaneously and they joined the rest of her clothes on the floor.
“A proper greeting,” he whispered, his eyes dark and hazy when he looked up at her and she swallowed in anticipation.
The next morning she woke up to the smell of something delicious filling the air and it made up for the fact that she was alone in bed. She was about to start searching for some clothes to put on to join Oliver in the kitchen when he appeared in the doorway with a tray of food.
“Good morning,” he greeted her, setting the tray at the foot of the bed and coming over to her side to give her a kiss.
“Good morning,” she echoed. “Breakfast smells good.”
“I figured you would be starving after last night,” he teased.
“Mmm I don’t know, I think I was pretty satisfied,” she replied with a wink and he tossed a t-shirt at her.
She slipped it on and sat up against the headboard to accept the tray of french toast, bacon, eggs, and coffee he had brought in.
“Wow. This tastes so good after eating dining hall food or microwave oatmeal for breakfast for months,” she commented around forkfuls.
He climbed onto the bed to sit next to her, “Just one more semester and then you can have my cooking all the time. I mean, I don’t want to assume that you’re going to move to Starling just because of me. I know you weren’t sure yet what you were going to do after graduation…”
She tilted her head, “You know how I told you, back when we were on our road trip, that Vegas never truly felt like home to me? And that I hoped Massachusetts would?”
“Mhmm…”
“Well, as much as I love MIT, Massachusetts never quite got to the point for me where it felt like home either. But last summer, being in Starling, I got this sense that it was where I was supposed to be. I think a part of that is because of you and Thea, but there’s also just something about this city. Yesterday, when I got off the plane, I felt like I wasn’t just visiting you but that I had made it back home.”
“So…”
“So I think after I graduate, I’m going to move to Starling. Not just because I obviously want to be where you are, because long distance sucks and I want to be able to kiss you goodnight and sing along to the Hamilton soundtrack in the kitchen and watch Die Hard and Julie&Julia with you for the millionth time and have breakfast in bed, but also because I just feel like I belong here. And I think it’s the perfect place for…” She bit her lip. She hadn’t talked to anyone yet about her dream but she really wanted to confide in Oliver. “And I’m thinking of starting my own software company and I think this is a great city for a tech startup. I see how invested you are in your restaurant, something that’s yours, and I really want that for myself.”
He reached for her hand and tangled his fingers with hers, “I really want that for you too. And you totally secretly love my movies and you know it.”
Shaking her head in amusement, she relocated her breakfast tray to the bedside table to crawl into his lap. “Maybe I do.” She kissed him, “Or maybe I just love you.”
“Both, I think it’s both,” he teased. “I love you too. Also, I took the day off and left the kitchen to my sous chefs so we can spend more time together.”
“Ooh and do you have any plans for our day?”
“I planned out our whole day.” He replied seriously, “First we’ll make snow angels for a two hours, then we’ll go ice skating, then we’ll eat a whole roll of Tollhouse Cookie dough as fast as we can, and then we’ll snuggle.”
It took her a second, her brow furrowing in confusion, before she burst out laughing, “Okay so you have actually seen more than two movies.”
He tapped the tip of her nose gently, “Everyone has seen Elf, Felicity.”
It turned out that Oliver wasn’t entirely joking with his Buddy The Elf impression though as she listened to him lay out his plans for the day.
“So I was thinking that since it’s not too cold today we could go ice skating at the outdoor rink that they have set up in the square downtown.”
“Mhmm,” she hummed in agreement. “Can you hand me my shampoo?
He grabbed the bottle from the ledge that she had left there over the summer and handed it to her before continuing, “And then I really wanted to try making gingerbread houses. The other day I was watching this episode of Food Network Challenge where—”
She cut him off as she started to wash her hair, “Oliver you already told me about this on the phone, please don’t tell me we’re going to build a life sized gingerbread house.”
“No, just little ones,” he grumbled. “But that would be cool.”
She laughed, “Oliver what would we do with a gingerbread house that big?”
“Crawl inside it?”
Grabbing one of the detachable showerheads, she sprayed him with it, “You’re crazy.”
He pouted, “You love me.”
“Yeah those two facts are not mutually exclusive.”
He grinned and took the showerhead from her so that he could pull her into him for a kiss.
“Mmm you better not start anything,” she mumbled against his lips. “Or we might never get to the rest of your plans for the day.”
“I wouldn’t complain too much,” he replied, even as he took a little step back.
“So what’s after gingerbread house making?” she asked.
“Then I’ll make you dinner and after that we can cuddle and watch that movie you were starting to tell me about last night before we got distracted.”
“Sounds like a pretty good day,” she remarked. “And you’re going to like The Hundred-Foot Journey. Not sure it will top Julie&Julia, because you have a weird love for that movie, but this one is about chefs too.”
They finished up in the shower and then got dressed in warm clothes to go ice skating. It was only a short walk from Oliver’s loft to the downtown square and all the shop windows were decorated prettily for the holidays. His fingers tangled with hers as they made their way down the sidewalk and she enjoyed just being able to walk hand in hand with him after their time apart. It was the little things that she seemed to miss the most with their relationship having been long distance for the past few months. They talked all the time, and so they didn’t have to play catch-up with their conversations, but she liked getting to see his smile not through a computer screen, run her fingers through his hair, hold his hand, wrap her arms around his waist and rest her chin on his chest to look up at him while he was talking to her. Little things.
They made it to the rink and rented skates before heading out onto the ice and joining in the swarm of people making loops around the perimeter.
It wasn’t long before she noticed the photographers. Over the summer she had gotten used to them always seeming to be a few steps behind them.
“Didn’t take them long to figure out you were back in town,” Oliver commented when he noticed them too. “Does it bother you?”
At first, she was a little uneasy at the intrusion. She remembered Oliver telling her how that was one of the things that would make leaving Oklahoma hard, giving up his life of obscurity and privacy. When the first articles started to surface though and she realized they were a far cry from the scandalous smear pieces about him that used to be in the gossip magazines her mom read, and instead were good PR for his restaurant, she relaxed a bit. The city of Starling seemed to believe in the changed man he had come back as and, before she had even shown up, they were enamored with the “mystery girl” that his restaurant was named for. A few harmless pictures of them skating would remind people to book their holiday dinners at the restaurant and she was okay with that.
Besides, she gotten some pretty cute candids of the two of them thanks to their shadows with cameras.
“Does it bother you?”
“They’re not as bad as I remember, although I don’t exactly give them as much of a reason to be anymore anyway. As long as they don’t start staking out our home, or making up rumors that you’re pregnant with my triplets, it’s whatever. I knew I was going to have to deal with the attention when I decided to move back.”
“Our home,” she echoed.
“Unless you want to get your own place,” he back-tracked hastily. “I just thought…”
“No, no of course I want to move into the loft. I just hadn’t really thought about it as our home yet until you said that.”
That thought definitely made the last semester they would have to spend apart seem easier.
“It wasn’t the triplets that you got hung up on?” he teased.
Her eyes widened and she shook her head, “You don’t really think they would make up a story like that, do you?”
He shrugged, “Wouldn’t be the wildest thing they’ve said about one of my girlfriends. But don’t worry, I think they’ve gotten soft on me since they started eating my baked goods.”
Laughing, she tugged on his hand to pull him faster around the ice. After a while her nose and toes started to get cold and she was ready to head home to warm up.
And make gingerbread houses apparently.
She sat at one of the barstools and watched as he pulled out the pieces of gingerbread he had baked before he went into work the day before, as well as a wide assortment of candies for decorating.
“I’ve never done this before,” she commented while he whipped up the icing.
“It’s been a long time for me. Thea and I used to help Raisa build one that my parents would display at their annual Christmas party. And by help, I mean we ate the candy,” he added as she was dipping her hand into a bowl of m&ms and she gave him a sheepish grin.
He filled her a piping bag of icing and she set to work, biting her lip as she concentrated on assembling the walls and roof of her little house.
“Now just imagine how fun this would be if the pieces were like 10x bigger,” Oliver remarked, obviously still a little hung up on the episode of Food Network Challenge.
“That just sounds frustrating,” she countered. “And super time consuming.” She nudged him with her hip, “I can think of a lot more fun things to be doing all night long.”
“Fair point.” He kissed her cheek. “This is why you’re the genius in this relationship. But theoretically… a giant gingerbread house…”
She rolled her eyes in amusement and started to pick out what candies she wanted to use.
An hour later, she put the finishing touch on the decorations and took a step back to look at her house proudly. “Not bad for my first gingerbread house ever, wouldn’t you say?”
“It looks perfect,” Oliver commended her.
“Yours turned out great too. I like the way you did your roof.”
They moved their houses onto some cake stands that Oliver had pulled out to display them on the counter and cleaned up the counter so that they could eat the lasagna Oliver had popped into the oven while they were decorating.
Once they had finished eating dinner, she started to help him with the dishes when he stopped her.
“I’ll finish up out here,” Oliver offered. “Why don’t you go get comfortable to watch our movie.”
“Can I borrow one of your henleys?” she asked, knowing full well he wasn’t going to refuse her wearing his clothes. She had “accidently” ended up with some of his clothes in her suitcase when she left for school at the end of the summer, and he had pretended not to notice that she was often cozied up in one of his sweatshirts during their Skype dates.
“Same drawer as always,” he replied and she headed for the bedroom.
She was digging around in the drawer for her favorite soft, navy blue one when her hand hit the box. Eyes wide, she pulled it out and, despite the little voice in her head that was telling her to just put it back, she cracked it open and snuck a peek at the, very obviously an engagement ring, ring inside.
“Although, if my brother wants to put a ring on it eventually, I wouldn’t object.”
Had Thea known something?
“Felicity?”
She tried to shut the box and put it back into the drawer without him noticing what she was preoccupied by, but he must have realized what she had found.
“I forgot that I had put that in there. Isn’t it pretty?” he commented, walking over to her.
That’s kind of an odd comment to make.
“Uh huh.”
“Tommy is proposing to Laurel on Christmas and he asked me to keep the ring in the meantime so she wouldn’t accidentally find it.”
“Oh. That makes way more sense,” she muttered, unsure if she was relieved, disappointed, or a mixture of the both. Snapping the box shut, she nestled it back into the drawer before pulling out the shirt she had been looking for.
“Wait, you didn’t think…”
She laughed nervously and avoided looking at him, “What? No—I—No.”
He joined in her nervous laughter, “I mean, it’s too soon right?”
“Yeah, of course….” She met his eyes, “But you’ve thought about it?”
He smiled shyly, “Yeah. I mean, I like to think that your flight getting cancelled in Oklahoma wasn’t just an accident, but the way that two people who were meant to be, but might have never met otherwise, got their chance. A story like that deserves a happy ending, and for two years after I left you in Massachusetts, I didn’t think there would be one. But I can picture it now.”
She could too. She had thought that the home she had grown up in would make her afraid of marriage, of promising a forever to someone who could decide to one day just leave, but it didn’t seem so scary with Oliver. It was definitely too soon, but after she had graduated and they had more time together without an entire country in between them to strengthen their relationship, she would be pretty excited to eventually get a diamond ring for Hanukkah.
“You’re really sappy, you know that right?”
His smile grew into a grin and he pulled her in for a kiss.
They got a little distracted making out, but eventually they made it back into the living room to finish off his checklist for the day by watching their movie.
Half an hour in, his hand was on her thigh and she snuck a glance over at him. He was seemingly completely absorbed by what was on the screen but his thumb started stroking her skin. Turning her attention back to the movie, she tried to pay attention to the story and not the slow torture that he was intent on causing.
She swallowed when his hand moved up a little higher a few minutes later and slipped underneath the bottom hem of his henley she was wearing. A part of her wanted to swat his hand away until the movie was over but the side of her that wanted him to continue his teasing won out.
“This is a really good movie,” he remarked nonchalantly as if he wasn’t making it completely impossible for her to pay any attention to what was going on.
“Mhmm,” she mumbled in an attempt at agreement, attempting not to squirm as his hand inched up further.
Finally, he made the discovery that she wasn’t wearing anything underneath the henley and his hand stilled, the faintest of groans escaping him.
Biting her lip in satisfaction that she had turned the tables ever so slightly on him, she looked over at him and commented on the scene that was playing, “I know, that’s so disappointing that they had to go through that.”
He blinked at her, his hand still frozen in place between her legs, “Tragic.”
She wrapped her fingers around his wrist, “We’re probably at a good spot to pause. The movie.”
“Yeah. Just a quick intermission.”
She snorted, “Quick is right, you’ve had me ready for the past 45 minutes. I’m dying here.”
“Sorry,” he replied in a tone that was definitely not apologetic as she released his wrist so he could pause the movie before finally touching her where she needed him.
After their “intermission,” she rested her head on his lap, a blanket draped over her to finish watching the movie. His fingers combed through her hair and she sighed in contentment, trying not to think about the fact that in a few days she was going to have to leave him for another couple of months.
When the credits rolled on the movie, he deemed it worthy to be among the rankings of Die Hard and Julie&Julia.
He switched off the tv, “Good pick babe.”
Sitting up to look at him, she smiled, “I really liked it too.”
“So…” He took her hands in his, “I was going to send you home with your presents so you could open them during Hanukkah, but I’m kind of impatient and I want to give them all to you now.”
“You won’t get any protest from me. But you didn’t have to get me anything, just getting to spend time with you is a gift.”
“Now who’s being sappy?” he teased. “Although I agree, today has been a really good day. I did find some things that I think you’ll like though.”
“Well, let me go get your presents then and we can open them together.”
She hopped up from the couch to retrieve the wrapped package in her suitcase before returning to him.
“You first,” she insisted, handing him the gift.
He tore away the paper and opened the box to pull out the different things she had inside. A “kiss the cook” apron, an original edition boxset that she had found on Ebay of Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” cookbooks, and a picture frame containing a nice paparazzi shot of them walking down the street holding hands and looking at each other like they were in their own little world that she had printed out in black and white.
He looked up and smiled at her, “Thank you. I love this picture. I remember when it first surfaced, my mom called me up and just said, ‘you found the one, didn’t you?’”
She blushed and returned his smile.
“Okay now you,” he said, handing her a huge box.
She opened it excitedly and reached in for the first present. Unwrapping it revealed a copy of “Cooking for Dummies,” and she glared at him, hitting him with the book teasingly.
“To be fair, I bought that for you before you confirmed that you wanted to live with me and I wanted to make sure you were properly fed. But now you don’t have to worry about it because I’ll just cook for you all the time.”
She laughed and pulled the next item out of the box, a pair of pajamas with Ferris Wheels printed on the fabric.
“In honor of our first kiss,” he supplied.
“Oliver, we’ve been over this before; we didn’t actually kiss on the Ferris Wheel. Tommy called and ruined the moment and then you chickened out.”
“That’s not what I remember happening,” he protested.
“Okay well you remember wrong, because obviously our first kiss was in the kitchen at the B and B while we were making everyone breakfast.”
A look of recognition passed over his face, “Oh yeah, you’re right I remember that now."
She rolled her eyes in amusement, “Yeah. I still love the pajamas though. I will dream of you when I’m all alone in my uncomfortable dorm room bed.”
She pulled out the remaining six presents, a jar of the dry ingredients of his chocolate cake recipe with the recipe affixed to it so she could make her own at school, a frame with the picture that he had sitting on his sofa table of them from the night she had helped at the restaurant, a necklace with a pendant shaped like a map of the US with a heart stamped over Starling City, a soft t-shirt with the logo of the restaurant on it, a beautiful hard-backed copy of The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (he had seen the poster she had hanging on her dorm room wall when they had Skyped), and… plane tickets.
“Oliver what are these?” she asked, holding them up.
“Look closely,” he nodded his head at them.
Reading over them, she realized that they weren’t real, “One roundtrip flight between Cambridge, MA and Starling on the Queen Family jet whenever Ms. Smoak is so inclined.”
“I know school keeps you busy but… maybe let’s not go a whole semester without at least seeing each other for a weekend here or there?” he explained. “It’s so hard for me to be that far away from the restaurant or else I would come to you but—“
“But it looks like I’ll be paying you a few visits,” she finished, a grin on her face. “A little extra motivation to get my homework done ahead of time is never a bad thing. Thank you. See you did end up getting me the best present, more time with—“ She was cut off by a yawn cracking across her face and he scooped her up to carry her to bed to end what had been a very perfect day.