Tilly listened to him as he seemed to ramble on a little bit. Jake had always spoken a lot when he was nervous. She remembered when he had asked her out and on their first few dates. He hadn't been able to stop speaking the entire time which had been both funny as well as cute. With time though it had gone away but it felt weird for him to be doing it again. What was also strange was that at the moment Tilly wasn't finding so much pain thinking about all of these memories. He had broken her heart but right now it was as if her heart was fixing itself.

"How about we just head out after work?" Tilly suggested with a small smile. "That should give you enough time to think of somewhere to go, and it doesn't have to be Italian if you dont want it to be" She said not wanting him to feel restricted on choice since he might feel like something completely different this afternoon. "We should probably pack up and get back to work" She suggested as she moved over to the laptop which they had used for the presentation and began to pack it up, undoing all the chords and such. Tilly wasn just glad that the presentation was over and done with now and she would be one step closer to the future.

Jake, now fully embarrassed, just smiled and nodded a bit. "After work sounds excellent. I will find the perfect place then after we get back to our offices, I'm sure the boss wouldn't mind a little slacking after our spectacular presentation." He finished with a laugh, although he at least believed it to be true. He was all ready for an afternoon of searching through the phone book for local places. Being new into town, didn't mean that he couldn't find a decent place. The internet and a little ambition made a good combination.

As Tilly suggested that they get back to work, Jake nodded in agreement. "We probably should, once the adrenaline wears off from that presentation it'll probably be easier to work. I can't wait to see how they liked it. What do you thing they'll say? Marvelous? Fantastic? A creative vision that they could have never imagined in their wildest dreams? I'm hoping for the latter if you ask me." Jake went over and started dismantling the projector screen and whatnot. There wasn't that much to clean up, other then their stuff and the mess of papers left by some of the board members. They didn't leave them because they hated the presentation, did they?

Tilly laughed softly as Jake mentioned a little bit of slacking off this afternoon in order to find somewhere for them to go out. She knew that the boss wouldn’t mind too much and it wasn’t as if he really monitored what people did while in their offices as long as at the end of the day the work was done and they got results. That was one of the things that Tilly loved about this job since she didn’t have someone looking over her shoulders all the time.

“Oh I am sure it was the last one as well” Tilly said with a smile. She felt really positive about the presentation that they had just done and was sure that they had liked it. She finished up with the laptop and then turned to look at Jake with it in her arms. “I guess I will see you this afternoon then? Just stop by my office when you are ready to go” She said appearing a lot more friendly than she had been up until this point. In fact it appeared a lot as if Tilly might finally have began to forgive and forget what had happened between them in the past.

With a final smile Tilly headed back to her office to get back to work however she didn’t end up getting much done with the excitement from this morning as well as due to a little bit of excitement for the afternoons activities.

"Damn straight it's the last one. They didn't seem crazy enough to pick any other option." After that Jake just stood there with a smile on his face, like a 5 year old that was told he was going to the toy store. Tilly was finally starting to act the way he remembered her. Not like someone with a deep discontent for him. "This afternoon it is. It's a date." He almost cringed a bit after saying the last part. It was just the way he would always answer Tilly in that kind of situation. Although, those actually were dates. He only hoped that Tilly would take it as just a figure of speech in the moment or something, after all he didn't wanna look like a liar like he had some ulterior motive with the whole idea.

After Tilly had left Jake just shook his head at himself. He never did do well at thinking before he spoke. He finished packing everything up and headed back to his office. Tossing the stuff into the corner (somewhat literally), he jumped right onto the computer. The next few hours he spent going over places near to nearish to go for dinner. In the end he picked one of the first three he looked at, but he wanted to be thorough.

The rest of the time he sat there staring at clock. It took him back to his school years. Why did time always seem to move slow, whenever you wanted it to go by the fastest? After what seemed like an eternity, it was finally time for them to get off. Within a few days Salamander Shoes should get back to the company with their response, although Jake was a bit disappointed they hadn't gotten back to them before the end of the day. No time for disappointment though, it was time to go meet up with Tilly. He intended to do just that. Walking out of his office and over to Tilly's he knocked on the door, even though it was open. He stood in the doorway, awaiting her response.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


As Tilly walked out of the room she heard the word date and almost stopped in her tracks. She hadn't even really thought about it as a date and in fact Tilly wasn't sure how she felt about that. Maybe she did want to go on a date with Jake since she didn't instantly hate the idea. Instead of stopping Tilly just continued walking and headed to her office. Her mind was moving so fast as she sat back down at her desk.

For the rest of the day, Tilly couldn't stop thinking about it being a date this afternoon. What was scaring her the most about this was that she didn't know how she felt about it and for the life of her she couldn't work out if she wanted it to be a date or not. Tilly tried to keep herself busy with her work, writing up a few documents, doing a little research and even making a few phone calls to some clients who she needed to get back to. By the end of the day she had got a lot done but she still couldn't get Jake's words out of her mind... It's a date...

When he knocked on the door to her office Tilly was still seated at her desk. "Hey... just give me a minute...." Tilly said as she didn't even look up from the laptop and her fingers almost flew across the keyboard. She was just in the middle of finishing one of the documents that she had been working on. After a few more moments her fingers stopped and she hit save before closing the laptop and finally looking up at Jake.

"Sorry about that, I was just almost finished something..." She said as she stood up and began to put her coat on. "Did you find somewhere for us to go?" Tilly asked with a smile.

THANKS!!!!!! lol


Jake smiled a bit and just stood there. He didn't mind waiting one bit, not for her at least. He just watched as she focused in on finishing this work. He always admired her work ethic when she really focused. Even if he often swayed her away from focusing on any work when they were younger.

"No worries, we're in no rush. I should have known you'd be working, you never were really into slacking off when there was work to be done. Well, you weren't into it when alone I suppose would be better to say.... Anyway, of course I found a place. Nice little Italian restaurant, who's name I cannot pronounce. Luckily, I got the address. Sure that's all the work you need to do?" He said in a playfully teasing manner.

Tilly nodded her head as Jake explained that he had found a nice little place for them to go and smiled when he said that he could not pronouce the name. Around the area there were quite a few authentic named resturants so it didn't surprise her. However through trial and error she had also discovered that theses were often the best places when it came to both food and service.

"Yes...." Tilly said shaking her head and laughing a little. She knew that Jake was just teasing her about the way she always seemed to be so focused on work. When she was younger her obsession with work hadn't been this intesne but as she had got older and tried to exclude herself from society more and more she had thrown herself into her work. There was no time to miss Jake when you were busy with work.

"Plus I have keys to the office and the security code if I need to come back later and do more work" She joked but in a sense she was serious. It hadn't taken long after she began working here that her boss had given her access to both. Tilly had always been working back late so it just made things easier for everyone.

After slipping on her coat, Tilly picked up her handbag and headed towards the door with a smile still stuck on her lips. "You should lead the way since you are the ones with these directions"