23. Emma
Emma
I point to the jug containing all the money and thank everyone who contributed. Holding the microphone to my lips, I look at the massive crowd gathered to support the library, but mostly they’re here to watch someone kiss a farm animal.
“This is the closest year we’ve had yet.
I might need to ask some of these folks back next year, because they were so popular they practically funded the entire summer reading program on top of everything else we had on our wish list. Let’s give it up for our competitors!
Sadie Stevenson from Keller’s Bakehouse.
” I wait for the applause to die before continuing.
“James Carver from Carver Maple Farm. Don’t forget to check out their booths this week and get your fill of scrumptious treats. ”
Again, massive applause. There’s even a catcall somewhere.
“Finally, our resident dentist, Carson Price, from Price Dental. You can visit him after spending every day at the other two booths.”
There’s healthy laughter and applause. “Now, our winner is…drumroll, someone?” Hands clap against thighs in the audience, which continues to grow. I make a show of pulling out the card and reading the name I wrote down earlier after counting and double-checking the final tally. “Carson Price!”
Penny’s scream might be the loudest at this point. The crowd is ribbing him, and one of the FFA kids wearing long, rubber gloves approaches with a mid-sized piglet in his arms. The cute little pink guy is certainly bigger than last year.
Someone calls for Carson to pucker up, and he does, like a good sport.
His eyes dart to me briefly, the deep green driving into my skin so quickly I would have missed it if I wasn’t watching.
He presses his lips to the piglet’s snout, which looks gross from where I’m standing.
Then it’s over. All that money for one second and a lot of cheering.
I’m so grateful our community pulls together for kids’ literacy like this.
I’m also grateful for the people willing to put their dignity on the line.
“Once again, a big thank you to the Friends of the Autumn Ridge Library for being our showrunners and making this possible, and thank you to each person who donated. Every cent goes toward the youth events in the library and supports literacy for all kids in Autumn Ridge from zero to eighteen.”
The clapping is decent at this point but quickly dies off as people begin to chat, their attention shifting away from me and the jugs of money. Carson approaches, so I move to meet him when he takes my hand and pulls me to the sidewalk. “The money!” I say.
He stops long enough to look over his shoulder. “The gray-haired librarian has it.”
“Dale?”
“I guess.”
“Where are we going?” I ask, but he keeps pulling my hand.
“I need to wipe the swine from my mouth. You have anything for that?”
“Wet wipes?” I offer.
“That’ll do.”
“Pig…” I finish for him.
Carson barks out a laugh. “No Babe quotes, please. Too soon.”
“Fine. I have some in my car.”
“Lead the way.”
Kind of hard to do with the way he’s dragging me down the sidewalk, then toward the alley between Keller’s Bakehouse and the hardware store. We’re cut off from the views and sounds of the Fall Festival as the crowd disperses and falls into conversations.
“What about Penny?” I ask.
“My mom has her. We drove separately.”
I nod slowly, still trying to comprehend the turn of events. I was supposed to talk with Heather from the Friends group and hand off the money so she could deposit it in the bank, but I guess Dale will take care of that. I’d text him, but Carson is still gripping my hand like a vise.
“Where did you park?” he asks.
“Employee lot behind the library.”
We move in silence, while the full darkness of an early autumn evening envelops us. There are less streetlights on this side of the alley, but Carson knows exactly where to go. He spots my car and makes a beeline for it.
“I thought for sure that pig would turn into a princess or something.”
Carson barks a laugh. “I’m no Prince Charming, that’s for sure. Although I was voted most charming in my senior superlatives.”
“I know. I was a junior then, remember?”
He shoots me a quizzical look.
“We were office assistants together my sophomore year.”
Carson stops walking and faces me fully. “What?”
“Yeah. We’d run people notes to pull them from class, or sit at the desk when Mrs. Albany needed a bathroom break.”
His eyes bore into me so hard I’m wondering if they might produce lasers. “My junior year.”
“Yeah. One day we even did the coffee run for the office staff—”
“And made a detour for energy drinks at the market.” Carson nods. “I remember.”
“I was trying to play it cool because I’d never had one before and you got me a Red Bull, but I thought it was disgusting.”
His face breaks now, a laugh slipping out. “That was you?”
“I know how un-memorable I was, and the frizzy red hair and braces didn’t help anything. But you were always nice to me. I might have even had a little crush on you.” I pinch my thumb and finger together to demonstrate how little that crush was.
It’s absolutely grown into something enormous, but he doesn’t need to know that. Besides, he’s stunned, trying to merge the two people I’ve been in his life into one.
“I’ve changed a lot—”
“No, I don’t think you have.” He rubs the back of his hand over his mouth, probably trying to wipe away the residual feeling of pig slime.
I start toward my car.
“Wait, Emma, I mean it.” He follows me. “You might have tamed your hair and straightened your teeth, but you don’t look that different. You definitely act the same.”
Unlocking my car, I reach in for the wet wipes in my center console and straighten with a snap. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“First off, I thought your name was Harper.”
“That’s my last name.”
“I know that now, and I can see the confusion. But I called you Harper, didn’t I?”
Yeah, he totally did. “I thought it was a football bro thing.”
He cracks a smile, taking the wipes from my hand and opening them up. “Second off, you were just as self-sacrificing then. You haven’t changed at all. How long has your bathroom been unusable?”
No one needs to know the answer to that.
Carson pulls out a wipe and scrubs his lips.
I can’t help staring as he does it. He folds the wipe and scrubs again until they’re shiny and red.
“My point exactly,” he says smugly. “You should be tiling your bathroom and laying out the floor, but instead, you’re painting bedrooms pink and reupholstering chairs and baking bread and making an entire meal for your family to celebrate your mom and braiding the neighbor kid’s hair because she likes it and running every event for the library even though I’m guessing that Friends group is supposed to be doing it. ”
“They’re really busy,” I say weakly.
“Who isn’t? Did you hear everything I listed?” He drops the wipes on the hood of my car. “That’s a lot, Emma, and everything I mentioned is only in the last, like…what? Three weeks?”
The affirmation I woke up to this morning doesn’t totally fit, but it pops in my head anyway. I am allowed to want more.
Looking at this man, I can’t help but think that my app, Affirmly, doesn’t know what it’s talking about. I can’t want him.
Stepping back, I nod along. “It’s always been hard for me to take time for myself. My sister’s the same way, and I’m pretty sure we both get it from our mom. I think it runs in the family.”
“Don’t brush it off, Emma.”
“I’m not. But I do need to get back to the event and make sure the money made it into the right hands. It’s a lot of cash.”
He watches me through narrowed eyes like he can sense my deflection.
I pick up the wipes and toss them onto my front seat, then close the door and lock it.
When I turn around, Carson is standing closer.
I lean back against the car, looking up at him and trying not to hold my breath so I don’t faint.
“You’re important, too, Emma. When’s the last time you let someone do something for you?”
I swallow thickly and shake my head. “I don’t know.”
“Thought so,” he murmurs, his hand coming up to rest on the top of my driver’s door, right beside my shoulder. “What are we going to do about it?”
“Some deep introspection?” I ask airily.
“Try again.” He steps closer, putting his other hand on the car and completely boxing me in. His green eyes are dark from the evening and the lack of good lighting, deep and serious. He licks his lips and I follow the movement, forgetting everything else.
“The last time I wanted something for myself and psyched myself up enough to make a move,” I tell him, “I asked a guy out and he literally laughed in my face. It’s not like I’m passively waiting for life to happen to me, but I don’t think I can face that kind of humiliation again.”
Carson leans so close I can feel his body nearly pressing against mine. His eyebrows draw together. “What an idiot.”
“He had a girlfriend.”
“No, don’t try to defend him. There’s no excuse to laugh in a girl’s face. What a tool.”
“It was a long time ago.”
“That makes it even worse. I don’t know how anyone who knows you can resist wanting to be near you all the time.
” He slides his arms around me, pulling me close, his face pressing into the soft skin where my neck meets my shoulder.
My scarf is loose enough that he’s somehow managed to press his lips to my neck, breathing.
I am allowed to want more.
My arms circle his waist, running up the strong muscle of his back while my brain flashes to that shirtless moment in his mom’s kitchen when I saw up close how strong he is. My nose presses into his chest, smelling his cologne mixed with the clean dental office.
“I guess I have a thing for unavailable men.”
“Seth is dating someone else?” he quips.
Guilt streams through me at the thought of Seth. Yes, our next date is the football game, where I specifically said we’d go as friends. But I know where his head is at. He’s been really upfront about the whole thing.
“If I just made you think about Seth, I heartily regret what I said.” His lips graze my skin, driving chills over my flesh.
He presses a soft kiss under my ear, pulling me closer and holding me tighter.
His longing is obvious, but the warning bell in the back of my head keeps reminding me that he’s been really clear about how he feels, too.
Oh. My. Gosh. The thought strikes me like lightning.
I am the Seth to his Emma.
Carson has been insanely clear about being friends. All the while, I keep letting myself fall harder and harder for him, pretending I don’t care that the relationship will never progress. He’s not leading me on. I’m fooling myself into thinking things could work out somehow.
This is stupid. I’m being stupid.
Carson cups the back of my head and looks into my eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“All of this. It’s not smart…I need to go.”
“Do you have to?” he asks, his fingers sliding into my hair. Last time they did that, we made out against the brick wall of the bar. My heart is racing. I’m Pavlov’s dog and he’s ringing that bell. “I’ve been dying to kiss you for years.”
“You mean weeks?” I ask, correcting him.
“Feels like years.”
My lips curve into a smile. “But it’s not smart. I’m not into the non-committal stuff, Carson.”
“I’m terrified to commit to anything.”
His vulnerability slashes the last dregs of self-control I possess. He’s coming off an almost ten-year marriage that dissolved, and I want him to jump into commitment right away? That’s not fair to anyone.
“It’s been over a year,” he says. “And way longer since the marriage was over. I’m ready to move on, but I don’t know if I can trust another person not to break my heart.”
“Do we have to decide forever right now?”
Carson blinks. “No, but I have to think of Penny. I can’t introduce another woman to her, only for us to lose her as well. It’s not fair to my child, and I can’t handle adding more abandonment to her life.”
“Then we tell no one.” The voice is so soft, I’m not sure it came from my lips.
But it’s my idea, and I know it sprang from the affirmation that’s been running through my head all day.
I am allowed to want more. I don’t have to sit back and let Carson bury himself in a theoretical box underground and throw away the key.
Maybe we need each other right now, and it won’t last forever.
Or maybe Carson needs someone to choose him, and continue to choose him no matter what.
“Not my mom,” he says. “Or Penny…or the Ednas.”
“Definitely not the Ednas. Or the librarians.”
“No one,” he repeats, and the words have power, sizzling and sparking in the air between us. We’ve heated the pan and everything he says, every tiny movement his hands make, is like dropping something in hot oil.
“No one,” I agree.
The words are a magic key, unlocking every last reserve we’ve been holding onto. Carson’s mouth crashes to mine, heat exploding behind my eyes and driving through every vein in my body. His lips slant with need and familiarity, hot and cozy and vibrating with urgency.
I can’t be close enough to this man. Every move he makes, I’m with him. When he deepens the kiss and tilts his head, I nearly sink to the ground, but he’s pressing me against the car and holding me so tightly my jelly legs could go limp and he’d hold me up.
Never have I been so grateful for Wet Wipes before. Specifically for bringing us to this deserted corner of the world. A corner where kissing Carson is the only thing that matters.