Chapter 13
TALLY
Iusher Flip into my apartment and close the door so I can release Parsnip, who is clawing my arms in an attempt to escape them. He does a backflip off my chest and promptly rubs himself on Flip’s legs. Show-off.
“Do you want to come in? Can I get you anything?”
“I’m good. Why don’t you just grab what you need.” Flip tucks one hand in his pocket, a smile kicking up the corner of his perfectly luscious mouth as Parsnip continues to rub himself on his shins.
“I’ll grab my purse.” And fix my face.
“Okay.”
I walk backwards a couple of steps. “I’ll be right back.”
“I’ll be right here with my new best friend.”
“His name is Parsnip, and he loves pets.”
“We have that in common, then.”
I almost trip over one of Parsnip’s many toy mice. “I won’t be long.”
I rush down the hall and throw myself into my bedroom, making sure Parsnip hasn’t followed me before I gently close the door. I grab my Flip body pillow from my bed, run to the bathroom, shut that door too, and scream into the soft fabric. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God.”
I hold Flip’s two-dimensional face at arm’s length. “We are going out for dinner!”
He smirks back at me.
“Is this a date? Should I call it a date? I don’t even know.”
What if I’m having some kind of episode? What if I’m hallucinating?
I open the bathroom door and shove my Flip pillow into the closet, in case this isn’t a fabrication of my mine, tucking it behind my clothes. I take a deep centering breath, then quietly open my bedroom door, and peek into the hall. Parsnip slips through the crack.
Flip’s back is to me, and he’s perusing my bookshelf.
Flip is in my apartment, and we are going out for dinner.
Just the two of us.
This is like…a dream come true. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted, and it’s happening right now.
I close the door again and slide down my wall, my legs suddenly too unsteady to hold me up. I’m instantly sweaty. Parsnip climbs in my lap. “Holy shit, ’Snip.” I cuddle him. “I don’t even know what this means.”
I do some deep breathing and finally peel myself off the floor and force my unsteady legs to carry me to the bathroom. I cringe at my reflection and set Parsnip on the vanity. “I need to manage these eyes.” They’re puffy from crying.
Parsnip meows and taps the faucet, unconcerned with my face. I turn the water on, and he sticks his head under the thin stream, letting it run down his forehead like a weirdo as he drinks from the sink.
I fire off a message to my group chat with Fee, Cammie and Enid, because I can’t keep this to myself.
Tally
I have to tell you something, but it must stay under the cone, which means Chase can’t know.
Cammie
My lips are sealed.
Fee
Same.
Enid
Me three.
Tally
Flip just asked me out for dinner.
Fee
OMFGGGGGGGG
Cammie
FUCK YES! I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS!
Enid
This is the Christmas miracle we’ve all been hoping for! Or New Year’s miracle.
Fee
When? How? We need details!
Cammie
^^^This.
Enid
Tell us all the things!
Tally
Just now. He’s in my apartment.
HE’S STANDING IN MY APARTMENT!
I have to get ready. I’ll fill you in when I get home, though.
Fee
This is so epic!
Enid
You’re my hero!
Cammie
Get ’em, girl! Channel your inner Arwen!
Tally
I love you girls! Wish me luck!
Cammie
You don’t need luck when you’re a smoke show.
Fee
^^^This, but also ALL THE LUCK.
Enid
*confetti GIF*
I set my phone aside and do some quick makeup surgery to help with the redness.
The puffiness is a problem that will have to resolve itself.
I change my sweater from something dad dinner-appropriate to something Flip dinner-appropriate.
This one has a V-neck that highlights my modest cleavage.
Face and wardrobe managed, I return to the living room.
Flip is leafing through one of my textbooks on the dining room table.
“Ready!” My voice shakes with excitement and anxiety.
He closes the textbook, and his eyes lift. “You look beautiful.”
My stomach feels like a blender on full speed. “Thanks. So do you.” I cringe. “I mean hot. Or handsome.”
He grins, and I blush.
I drop my purse on the table. “I’ll just feed Parsnip, and then we can go.”
“Sure.” He looks too delicious for words.
I quickly spoon some stinky wet food into Parsnip’s dish while he meows loudly and weaves between my legs. I barely set the plate down, before he starts chewing noisily.
“You have no manners,” I chastise.
“But he’s cute.”
“Yeah, he is.” I grab Flip’s wrist and nearly pass out from the contact. “We only have a few seconds before Parsnip realizes we’re leaving. Then he’ll engage lightning mode and try to make a run for the hall.”
“Like a jailbreak?” Flip slips his feet into his shoes while I tuck mine into a pair of heeled boots.
“Exactly.” I grab my jacket and put my hand on the knob. “We have to be quick, or we’ll spend the next twenty minutes corralling him.”
“I have pretty good reflexes.” Flip looks highly amused.
“So does ’Snip.” I drop my voice to a whisper. “Ready?”
He gives me a thumbs-up. He has no idea.
I turn the knob, yank the door open, and shove Flip into the hall.
Parsnip meows and bolts around the corner, rushing toward us at warp speed.
“Shit. He’s coming in hot!” I grab him around the middle and toss him back inside, pulling the door closed.
Parsnip wails mournfully on the other side of the door, nails dragging obnoxiously down the steel. He continues to yowl like he’s dying.
“Wow,” Flip says.
“Yeah. He needed a home and a lot of love and I couldn’t leave him in the shelter for the rest of his adorable, demonic life.”
“How long had he been in the shelter?”
Every time I glance at Flip, he smiles at me. “Too long. He can’t really be around other animals. He was one more bite away from being put down, so he became mine.”
We walk down the hall together, my nerves on overdrive now that I’m not trying to keep my wily cat from escaping. My stomach is behaving like I’m on a tilt-a-whirl. This is literally a dream come true. I’m overwhelmed and I have so many questions.
The elevator comes right away, but it’s far from empty.
I would suggest waiting for the next one, except it’s dinnertime, so it’ll be busy like this for the next hour.
Flip’s fingers press gently against the dip in my spine as we step inside the already mostly full box.
This is a student apartment complex, and everyone who lives here attends Tilton.
“Holy shit,” some guy mutters.
“What?” his friend asks.
The guy tips his head in our direction.
His friend’s eyes widen when they land on Flip and shift to me.
Flip pulls me into his side, and dips down until his lips are at my ear. “We probably should have taken the stairs, eh?”
I giggle and force my knees to lock, since they’ve turned to Jell-O.
“Flip Madden.” The guy’s voice is laced with awe.
“Hey.” Flip nods his acknowledgement.
Two girls wear confused looks. Another is suddenly very interested. I turn to Flip, and his grip on my waist tightens. Protectively. Possessively, even. He’s wearing the same look he was when Quinn slung me over his shoulder at the lodge.
Thankfully we reach the lobby, and he ushers me out of the elevator, arm still around me as he guides me to the front entrance.
We make it outside without causing a scene. I zip my jacket, the heat dissipating quickly in the frigid January evening.
“Dinner rush is probably not the best time for someone like you to take the elevators,” I muse. Tilton’s hockey team is like royalty here.
Flip shrugs. “I’m used to it. Do you have a place you’d like to go for dinner?” We walk briskly to the public parking lot.
“Wherever is fine with me. We probably want to put a little distance between us and the campus, though.”
“Good call. It wouldn’t be much fun if we get mobbed.” He opens the passenger door for me.
I duck inside and wait until he’s behind the wheel before I throw out options. “What about the Pancake House, or the Watering Hole?”
“I like both of those but more when we’re going out with friends.” He stretches his arm across the back of my seat. “And tonight, I just want to spend time with you.”
I’m about to melt into the seat.
“But wherever we end up tonight, this isn’t our first date, Tally.”
“Oh. Okay. Just friends having dinner,” I mutter.
“Friends don’t almost kiss friends in closets, kitten.” He tucks a finger under my chin and urges me to look at him. “What I mean, is that when I take you on a first date, it will be one to remember, and not because of unlimited salad and bread.”
Flip doesn’t take me to East Side’s. Instead, we end up at an Italian restaurant that looks like a hole in the wall from the outside, but soft lighting and private booths make the interior intimate and cozy.
“This is still not our first date,” Flip tells me as he spreads his napkin over his lap.
“It’s a pretty nice not-first-date.”
“Well, I feel like I have some making up to do, so we can call it apology step one dinner out.” He stretches his arm across the back of my chair. “Have you ever had a limoncello spritz?”
I shake my head. God, I’m overwhelmed.
“Do you want to try one?”
His fingers slide under my hair and his thumb strokes absently up and down. It’s instantly soothing. “Yes, please.”
“God, you’re fucking beautiful.” He kisses the edge of my jaw.
I could literally die happy now.
Before I can return the compliment, the server appears. Flip tucks me tighter into his side. “I’ll take a Peroni and she’ll have the limoncello spritz.”
The server glances nervously between us. “Um, I’ll need to check your ID.”
I’m used to being carded, so I immediately reach for my purse.
“She’s twenty-one, she’ll be twenty-two on August eleventh,” Flip says with a practiced smile.
I thrill a little that he knows my birthday so easily. I pat his thigh under the table. “It’s okay. It’s his job to check.” I pass over my license.