Chapter 35
DREAMING OF MY BERRY BAR
LAKE
Always have a strategy.
That’s what my college coach taught me, and it feels especially apropos right now.
Because I’ve had the wrong strategy for the last couple of days and I only just realized it. Hey, maybe the sex last night knocked some sense into my brain. Maybe I need to have more sex to get more sense knocked into my brain.
No shit.
Either way, I should have been getting to know Remy even more these last couple of days instead of pulling back after she said we should cool things off.
But no time like the present. As I drown my pancakes, slathered already in a heaping serving of strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries from the berry bar, I say, “So the list. You’ve got it, right?”
“Of course.” She digs into her purse, sitting next to her on the red vinyl booth at the Candy Cane Diner on Main Street where we’re having breakfast. “What do you take me for? Someone unprepared?”
A stupid grin threatens my mouth. “You’ve probably already entered everything from it into a spreadsheet,” I say, setting down the syrup and taking a bite.
As she grabs some kind of bag from within the bag, her eyes spark with excitement. “That’s a good idea. I am going to add that to my to-do list.”
I roll my eyes. “It wasn’t a suggestion.”
“But it’s a good suggestion,” she says, then sets the pouch thingy on the table. It’s a beige color and there’s a tiny dog illustration on the bag in the same sort of simple line work of most of my tattoos. For a second, I think that’s kismet.
But no. I don’t believe in kismet. A cartoon bubble sits above the dog’s head saying, Your dog is cute.
I nod toward it. “Is that a bag within a bag?”
“Yes. How else would I keep the list safe?” she asks, nonplussed.
“No idea,” I say, then take another bite to hide my grin because that’s so her.
But wait. I’m following a new playbook and with that new strategy in mind, I chew, swallow, then meet her gaze. “That’s so you.”
I say it instead of keeping the thought to myself.
Her smile is like the sun, and it warms me from head to fucking toe. “Thanks.” She sounds so pleased, so happy to be understood.
She opens the list from the unknown bride, setting it far enough away from her plate of tofu scramble to remain pristine. “Number two, take a road trip together.” She mimes checking off the item. “I don’t want to actually cross it off since it’s her letter, you know? It feels sort of wrong.”
“I get that.”
“Like it’s ours to do, but not to change?”
“Makes sense.”
She screws up the corner of her mouth, clearly thinking. “Why do you think it’s on this list of five things to do before you say I do?”
“I’ve been wondering that myself. And honestly, I’ve been wanting to ask you,” I say, and wow, that feels like stretching a muscle that’s been dormant for a long time.
Like a hamstring that you haven’t given enough attention to.
The honesty muscle. The openness muscle.
Hurts like hell but it’s a good kind of pain.
She tilts her head. “You have?”
I stretch it some more. “I have. I want to know what you think.”
I want to know what you think about everything.
There’s honesty, and there’s also too much honesty. So that last thought stays locked up.
She glances toward my plate. “You love berries, right?”
I’m not entirely sure where she’s going but I jump on the train anyway. “So much I’m going to get a berry bar installed at my house.”
She takes a beat. Her tone is thoughtful and wise as she says, “I think that’s the reason for the list.”
“For me to get a berry bar?”
“The road trip. Why it’s on the list. For details like that,” she says, pointing at me.
“For learning things like you love berries. And that you love to tease me. That you’re so confident about how you play hockey that you make ridiculous bets with your teammates, but you’re so loyal that you go through with something like getting a squirrel tattooed on your ass.
” She pauses. “That you wish there’s something more you could do for your father.
That you told your dad nice things about me. ”
I don’t move for a few seconds. It’s like someone just peered into my medicine cabinet and learned that I take ibuprofen sometimes, and that my toothpaste tube’s a mess, but that I like to use body butter on my hands so they’re soft since they’re usually so dry from hockey.
It’s like she knows…me.
Maybe I was wrong when I thought I’d pulled back these last couple of days. Turns out I was still getting to know her all along, and she was getting to know me.
“Because you learn these things about each other on a road trip?” I ask at last.
“And that has to be good for a couple getting married, so that’s why it’d be on her list. But also because road trips bring problems you have to navigate through. Like awkward tension,” she says, looking at me with kind eyes, but ones that say yeah, I know there was tension. “And only one bed.”
My fork frozen midair, I give that some thought. “But we worked through the issues.”
“I suppose we did, in a way.”
I set my fork down, lean a little closer because she is so much fun to play with. “I guess the road trip helped you work through your little issue.”
“Fine, I’ll bite. What’s my little issue?”
“The way you want my dick.”
She tosses her napkin at me. “Shut up.”
I catch it easily. “Oh, my bad. I meant the way you want my dick all the time.”
“You’re the worst.”
“The way you want it more than you’ve ever wanted anything in your life? Is that better?”
“You’re in trouble.”
“Fine, fine. I guess you don’t want it. I don’t have to give it to you again then.”
She crosses her arms. “Good. I don’t want it anymore.”
I blow out a long sigh. “Such a shame. I had so much planned for you with it.”
She smirks, then takes a breath, like she’s gearing up to say something hard. “Because I want your tongue.”
My brain stalls. It just stops working for a white-hot second or fifty. As I absorb everything she’s saying, then devise a brand-new game plan—one that consists of two words.
“Check, please!”
But she shakes her head. “Tonight. I need to get some work done before my meeting.”
“Like I can wait.”
“Good things come to those who do,” she says, and holy fuck. Who knew she was so flirty, so dirty?
“I’m going to be so fucking good at waiting today,” I say, then before it gets too heated here in the diner, I gesture to the bag within the bag. “What do you want to do next? On the list?”
I’m avoiding number five. It scares the hell out of me. Maybe she is too. Because she says, “Three or four.”
I study the list, peering closely at those two again, even though I’ve memorized the list already.
3. Camp under the stars
4. Make breakfast together and clean it up
“I think we could easily do number four back in the city after this road game. The one about making breakfast together in the morning.”
Her shoulders tense. “Okay.”
Not sure why that stresses her out, but I’ve got a feeling, seeing as how I woke up this morning to her dressed and ready to go. “You don’t like waking up next to someone.”
She shrugs. “It’s okay. I just like to brush my teeth and, you know, freshen up.”
I could tell her she doesn’t need to worry about that with me, that I find her sexy with dragon breath, but that’s not what she needs to hear. “Then we’ll make sure you get to do that.”
Her smile is one of relief, then she moves on. “But I don’t know how the hell we’re going to do number three. Camping under the stars?”
“There are campgrounds everywhere.”
She shudders, then leans closer, cupping the side of her mouth like she’s confessing. “I don’t know how to break it to you, but I don’t camp.”
I laugh. “Right. Snakes.”
“Exactly.”
I stare at the ceiling for a beat. “How about glamping?”
“Maybe,” she says, but it’s a hopeful maybe.
That twinkle in her brown eyes makes my pulse spike. It’s a little ludicrous, this effect she has on me. Making her happy just does it for me. Too bad I only have a few days of this kind of happiness left.
But I try not to linger on that. She doesn’t want to see that side of Lake Onion.
I zero in on practical matters. “I’ll look into glamping.
And we can fit the breakfast easily around the wedding shower and the spa day.
Did your sister ever pick a date for that kind of torture? I mean, that kind of relaxation?”
She gives me a sharp stare. “I saw you get a massage in the training room.”
“That was for sore muscles.”
“Yes, they work on sore muscles at spas too,” she says, then clicks on a link on her phone—a spreadsheet no doubt—and gives me a date.
I swear I’m not grinning when I say, “I have a game that night.”
She sighs mournfully. “I was really looking forward to seeing you with cucumbers on your eyes. I was even going to take a picture.”
“Dream on, beautiful,” I say.
“Oh, I will, Lake. I will.”
After I pay for breakfast, we head back to the hotel, and walk by the front desk where Cedric’s working. He gives us a wave, then a knowing sort of smile. “Hey there. Looks like everything worked out okay?”
Right. I have to keep making sure it’s clear that I didn’t fuck up yesterday when I first said we were friends. I tug Remy closer. “Sure.”
“Glad to hear that, and go beat the Sea Dogs tonight.”
“I see we have a hockey fan in our midst,” Remy puts in.
Cedric swings his gaze to her, studying her for a second or two, then adding, “Absolutely. And…I think I saw you on the broadcast too.”
She cringes, but he shakes his head quickly, then gestures to Remy. “Nice to see you happy.”
“Thanks,” she says, her smile fading as we walk away.
His remark is similar to what the woman at that dress shop said. “When people recognize you from the Jumbotron video,” I say as we head up the steps, “does that bug you?”
She draws in a breath, like she needs to steady herself. “At first, it did a little. But I try to look on the bright side. It’s nice to have so many people rooting for you to move on.”
My gut twists with the reminder that she’s still very much in the moving on phase. And I’d do well to remember that.