Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
He'd been ready for forty minutes before he left the house.
He put on the good flannel — the dark green one Boyd had once described as the one that means you're trying — and his clean boots and told himself he was leaving at seven and left at six fifty-two because standing in his apartment being ready was worse than just going.
He stopped at the greenhouse on the way to the truck.
The florist in town did good work. He'd driven past it that morning, considered it, and then kept driving.
Ivy Lopez had a better eye than anyone he'd met, and there was something that felt wrong about showing up with something store-bought when he had a greenhouse full of things he'd grown himself.
He selected a vine of Cherokee Purples at perfect ripeness — deep, heavy, the color of a good bruise — and a trailing stem of Sun Golds still on the branch, and a handful of the small Green Zebras she'd correctly identified by flavor alone on her visit.
He wrapped the stems in the brown paper he used for the market and tied them with twine.
She was waiting on the steps outside her apartment when he pulled up.
Finn had seen Ivy Lopez in cotton shirts that did nothing to hide her curves and jeans faded at both knees from the hard work she did in the kitchen and in her food truck.
He'd seen her flour-dusted in the farm kitchen and windblown at the market and half-asleep over a legal pad at The Vine.
He had, he realized, constructed a complete and detailed picture of what Ivy Lopez looked like, and it had not prepared him for this.
The dress was the color of warm honey, something between gold and amber, with small white flowers scattered across it that he would not have been able to describe to anyone who asked, but that he was going to remember for a long time.
It moved when she moved. It had short sleeves and a neckline that was not dramatic and didn't need to be.
It landed just below her knee in a way that made the most of every inch between there and the ground.
Against her skin — warm brown, the gold of someone who'd been spending time in late summer sun — the color was something a painter would have chosen on purpose.
Her dark hair was down, which he didn't think he'd seen before, falling past her shoulders in a way that made him aware he'd been missing information.
She was a stunner.
That was the only word that arrived, and it arrived complete. He sat with it for a moment in the cab of his truck with the engine still running and his foot still on the brake and the gearshift still in drive.
And then she looked up at him, and the world tilted when her lips spread into a grin.
Finn hopped out of the truck to get to her.
When the truck rolled forward, he shook himself and put the vehicle in park.
Turned off the engine. Got out on legs that were steadier than he deserved, given the previous thirty seconds.
Held out the vine as she came towards him. Perhaps he'd done it to slow her down. He still needed another moment to gather himself before she got too near.
She looked at it. The Sun Golds caught the evening light and glowed. She looked up at him.
"They're at peak," he said. "They won't keep."
She took the vine with both hands and lifted it. "It's perfect."
He opened the passenger door. She gathered the vine in one arm and took his offered hand with her other and stepped up, and he closed the door and stood on the sidewalk for a moment looking at nothing in particular while he got himself in order.
He was taking Ivy Lopez out on the town.
He hadn't been this straightforwardly happy about something in longer than he could immediately calculate, and the calculation could wait, because he was already rounding the front of the truck and the evening was warm and she was in his passenger seat with a vine of his best tomatoes and he was grinning like an idiot and there was nobody on this side of the truck to see it.
She reached over and took his hand when he climbed in. Her fingers slid between his and settled. Finn looked down at their joined hands on the center console and felt something in his chest do something he chose not to name at sixty miles an hour.
He needed that hand to shift gears. He did not take it back.
"What restaurant are we going to?" she said.
"We're not going to a restaurant."
She looked at him. "We're not?"
"We'd spend the whole night critiquing the food." He checked the mirror, pulled out from the curb. "I want your attention on me for once."
"All I do is think about you."
She said it as if it was a simple fact. Like she was reporting the weather. Like she was reading from a recipe.
Finn looked at her hand in his. Looked at her. Looked back at the road.
He noticed, then, the purse. Small. Barely more than a strap and a clasp. It was the kind of bag that held a set of keys and nothing else. No phone-shaped bulk. No glow from a screen.
Ivy caught him looking. "There's no one else I want to talk to tonight. The people who matter know I'm with you. And I know nothing's going to happen to me while I'm with you."
Finn's heart did something that had no business happening at an intersection.
The horn hit them like a thunderclap. He slammed on the brakes.
The truck lurched to a stop, half into the intersection, the cross traffic sliding past with a second outraged horn for good measure.
They sat frozen. Ivy's hand gripped his, both of them staring straight ahead at the red light they had absolutely just run halfway through.
Ivy made a sound. He looked at her. She had her free hand pressed over her mouth, and her shoulders were shaking.
He started laughing first. Or she did. It was impossible to establish afterward who was responsible because it happened at the same moment — both of them, completely, the kind of laugh that had nowhere to go but out.
She laughed until she was leaning forward over the tomato vine, and he laughed until his eyes watered, and the light turned green, and neither of them moved for a full second after it did.
He took his hand back. Put both of them on the wheel, where they belonged.
"Both hands," she said, still catching her breath.
"Both hands," he agreed.
She settled back into her seat, the Sun Golds in her lap, the evening still warm and entirely intact. After a moment, she reached over and rested her hand on the console between them. Not taking his. Just there; close, available.