Chapter 9 #2
“We brought provisions,” Jo announces, pushing past me into the house. “And questions. Mostly questions.”
“How did you—”
“Dean told me about Rex’s adventure.” Jo’s already in my kitchen, hunting for wine glasses. “Which means I know Levi was here. On your porch. Alone. For an extended period of time.”
“It wasn’t that extended—”
“Long enough to help with the wedding song,” Michelle adds, settling onto my couch like she owns it. Ruffy immediately goes to investigate her, decides she’s acceptable, and flops at her feet. Traitor.
“The wedding song thing is not a big deal.”
“The wedding song thing is a huge deal.” Amber sets her pie on the counter. “You helped your ex-boyfriend write a love song. That’s peak romantic comedy behavior.”
I open my mouth to protest, but Jo returns with wine glasses and starts pouring flawlessly like she’s done this many times. “Okay. Start from the beginning. Rex escaped. Then what?”
I accept a glass of wine because I’m clearly going to need it. “Then Dean and Levi tracked him down. He was in my backyard. With Ruffy.”
“Cute,” Michelle says.
“The dogs are not the point.”
“The dogs are absolutely the point,” Jessica says. “Dogs are always the point. Continue.”
“There’s nothing to continue. They came to get Rex. Levi stayed for a few minutes. We talked. He left. End of story.”
Jo narrows her eyes. “Dean said Levi described it as ‘a moment.’”
“Dean needs to stop narrating my life to his fiancée.”
“Dean tells me everything. It’s called communication. You should try it sometime.” Jo settles into the armchair with her wine. “So. Was it a moment?”
I take a very long sip. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means,” Amber says, cutting into her own pie because apparently we’re skipping dinner, “did you feel something? Butterflies? Stomach flips? The overwhelming urge to touch his face?”
“I did not want to touch his face.”
“Liar,” Michelle says mildly.
“I didn’t. I wanted to...help him with his song. That’s all.”
“That’s not all.” Jessica leans forward. “Scott told me something interesting. Apparently Levi’s been blocked for months. Couldn’t write anything. And then he came back from your house and wrote for three hours straight.”
The room goes quiet.
“He wrote for three hours?” I ask.
“Three hours. First real writing he’s done since he got here.” Jessica’s watching me carefully. “Scott says he keeps mentioning your name.”
Something flutters in my chest. I squash it immediately.
“That doesn’t mean anything.”
“It means everything,” Jo says. “You’re his muse. You unstuck him. That means—”
“That means we had one conversation, and he happened to have a creative breakthrough afterward. Correlation isn’t causation.”
“Correlation is absolutely causation when it involves ex-boyfriends and love songs,” Amber says through a mouthful of pie.
Michelle reaches over to scratch Ruffy’s ears. “What did you talk about? On the porch?”
“His brother’s wedding. The song he’s writing for the ceremony. He was stuck, and I just...suggested he write about what makes Dean and Jo work. Two people who are brave enough to let each other in.”
The silence that follows is deafening.
“What?” I ask.
Jo sets down her wine glass carefully. “You told him to write about being brave enough to let someone in.”
“For Dean and Jo. Not for—it wasn’t about us.”
“Sweetie.” Michelle’s voice is gentle. “Everything is about you two. You just haven’t admitted it yet.”
I look at Ruffy, hoping for backup. He’s too busy accepting belly rubs from Michelle to offer any support.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” I finally admit. “He’s going to be here for two months. Dean lives one street over. The dogs are apparently soulmates now. I’m going to see him constantly, and I don’t know if that’s a disaster or...” I trail off.
“Or what?” Jo prompts.
“Or exactly what I’ve been running from for ten years.”
The women exchange looks. The kind of looks that suggest they’ve been waiting for me to say this.
“Running from something doesn’t make it go away. It just means you’re tired and lost and still thinking about the thing you ran from,” Jessica says.
“Speaking from experience?”
“Speaking from watching Scott run from his feelings for an entire book’s worth of plot.” She smiles. “He figured it out eventually. You will too.”
Jo raises her glass. “To figuring it out. Eventually. Preferably before the wedding, because I need my florist emotionally stable.”
“Thanks for the support.”
“Always.”
We drink. We eat Amber’s pie, which is excellent. We talk about things that aren’t Levi—Jo’s venue drama, Michelle’s new espresso machine, Amber’s ongoing war with a food critic who called her shrimp “adequate.”
By the time they leave, I’m full of wine and pie and something that feels dangerously like belonging.
Ruffy walks me to the back door, where I stand looking at the fence. Dean’s roof is visible over the tree line. Somewhere over there, Levi is probably writing.
Maybe about me.
Maybe not.
“We’ll see what happens tomorrow,” I tell Ruffy.
He thumps his tail once, which I choose to interpret as agreement.
I fall asleep on the couch with my dog at my feet and something terrifying blooming in my chest.
I try not to think about it too hard.