Chapter 10 #2
She thought back to the earnestness on Gabe’s face when he’d first arrived at the park.
He’d brought Bird Girl flowers, and that was about the sweetest damn thing she could think of.
And as long as she was being honest with herself, she could admit there had been instances in the past few weeks where she’d seen unexpected sides of Gabe that had brought out unexpected responses in her.
Like how the feel of his body against hers when he carried her off the field sent her blood looping in all sorts of ways.
And how pleasantly surprised she’d been to enjoy sharing breakfast with him.
And how utterly self less she’d found his volunteering to help his cousin in the face of certain seasickness.
And then there was the truth she’d never admit to anyone—not even her best friend—about how his annoyingly perfect hair and
gorgeous smile and goddamned sculpted arms had always, from day one, put a flutter in her belly and a flame in her blood.
She scoffed aloud, disliking the whole perplexing situation. “You realize what you’re saying, right?” she said to Beth. “You
want me to give Gabe Olson a chance.”
Beth shrugged her shoulders up to her ears. “Sure, why not?”
“ Why not? ” Emmy sputtered. “I can list about ten thousand reasons why not . First—” She held up her fingers to start counting, but Beth cut her off and gently pushed her hands down.
“Before you do that, how about we think of all the reasons this is a good idea instead?”
Emmy narrowed her eyes. “Name me one.”
“Well, aside from the fact he could still go to the wedding with you and solve your date problem, I can say with the utmost
certainty in the decade of our friendship, I have never seen you this into someone before. Seems like a pretty good reason
to me.”
“I’m not into him,” she said on reflex.
Beth snorted a laugh. “Em, yes you are. At least you were until about an hour ago when you found out who he really is. But that shouldn’t change anything,
in my opinion. You were ready to fly to Mexico with Axe Murderer; why should Gabe Olson be any different?”
Emmy felt like she had been smacked with a heavy dose of reality, and she didn’t like it. Beth made good points. Emmy had
been gung-ho about meeting Axe Murderer and taking him to the wedding. She’d been willing basically sight-unseen. Granted,
when she saw the sight, she ran away screaming. But maybe Gabe was just the packaging around the real person she’d gotten
to know. Maybe Beth was right. Maybe she should give it a chance.
She honestly couldn’t believe she was even considering it.
She picked at a thread on the throw pillow. “Well, there’s a very good chance he never wants to talk to me again, so that
might make things difficult.”
“I doubt that’s the case,” Beth said astutely. “Who knows, maybe he’s getting a pep talk from his BFF right now, too.”
Emmy rolled her eyes with a blush. She swatted the pillow in angst. “How can I ever come back from this though? What’s the
conversation starter after a cataclysmic revelation like that? Hey, I know you actually hate me now that you know it’s me, but still wanna be my date to the wedding? ”
Beth took the pillow from her so she didn’t pull it to pieces. “He doesn’t hate you. And you said Axe Murderer is the easiest
person to talk to you’ve ever met, so just talk to him like that! Pretend you’re texting!”
Emmy sighed and gazed back at Princess Leia on the bookshelf. If she was going to convince Gabe to be her date, she had one
day to do it before she left for the wedding. It was either that or hire someone off Craigslist. Neither option was appealing,
but she got the sense her sister would be less likely to murder her if she brought the hot first mate to her wedding than
if she brought a total stranger who might himself possess homicidal tendencies.
“Fine. I’ll talk to him at work tomorrow. But, Beth, no one hears about this, okay? We are the only people who know Axe Murderer and Gabe Olson are the same person, and I want to keep
it that way—especially from my sister. If I do anything to take the focus off her big day, she’ll lose it.”
Beth gave her a knowing grimace. “My lips are sealed.”
“Thank you. I should go. I have to start packing.”
Beth rose with her off the couch to walk her to the door. “Open mind, Em,” she said with an encouraging pat on the shoulder.
Emmy grumbled and headed into the hall. When she made it out side to walk the few blocks back to her place, the urge to text Axe Murderer hit her hard.
Not because she now knew who he was—actually, the fact she did know was what stopped her—but because he had been her source of comfort for the past few weeks. He’d been who she turned to
when she needed a laugh, a distraction, a bird-band pun. And right now, she could have used all three of those things.
Maybe Beth was right. Maybe there was something there. Maybe it was worth exploring, and maybe a few days in Mexico with Gabe Olson would give her a chance to.
That was, if he ever spoke to her again, let alone agreed to go with her.
When Emmy headed into work the next day, she assumed it would be a painful day of thousand-yard stares and avoidance. Gabe
might have even called in sick just to dodge her. She already had a list of a million things to do before she left for five
days, and finding time to squeeze in a desperate, humiliating-in-more-ways-than-one chat with Gabe made it all the more complicated.
She braced herself for the onslaught when she walked into their office, but to her brief relief, she found it empty. She set
down her bag and headed to the kitchen to load up on caffeine before fully starting her day.
It was there her relief evaporated, because there was Gabe standing at the counter in one of his cool shirts—minty green—stirring
oat milk into a mug of coffee.
Emmy froze in her tracks. She’d worried about what she would feel upon seeing him again after the big reveal—a suffocating
wave of embarrassment that would surely drown her on dry land—but instead, she felt... something else. A curious warmth
pooled out low in her belly, in her chest, into her face.
Goddamn it.
“I thought you took your coffee black,” she said to distract herself from the confusing yet pleasant way her body was reacting to seeing him.
He turned at the sound of her voice and dropped his stirring spoon in surprise. It splashed into his mug and caused him to
need to lick his finger. “Emmy!” he blurted when he pulled it out of his mouth. “I-I mean, Jameson . Good morning.”
His genuine fluster made her feel more flustered. And the flush in his cheeks only amplified the one burning hers. She glared
at him out of reflex and self-preservation and headed to the coffee station to make her own drink. “Good morning,” she said
with her customary terseness.
And then she remembered with a sigh she needed a favor from him and needed to rein in her reflexes—all of them.
As her K-Cup gurgled and squirted into her mug, she felt his eyes on her back. She was in her standard office garb: jeans,
blouse, lanyard looped around her neck. A hot pang zipped through her when she remembered the way he’d looked at her in her
dress last night, how his eyes had lingered on her bare legs when her skirt tumbled open around her knees.
Her coffee finished brewing, and she turned to see him still standing by the fridge with the oat milk on the counter. She
had no choice but to venture into his orbit to use it.
“I thought you hated milk not from cows,” she said as she reached for the carton.
He casually sipped his coffee, apparently having recovered from his earlier fluster, and shrugged. “I figured I’d see what
all the oat milk fuss was about.”
Emmy sipped her own coffee and eyed him over her mug. “And?”
His mouth twisted into a wobbly line that made her acutely aware of how soft and lush his lips looked.
She immediately took another gulp for distraction.
“I guess it’s not terrible,” he said.
A silence ballooned between them. Strained and awkward and so huge, Emmy knew popping it would startle them both.
But she did it anyway.
“So, last night was...”
“Fun?” he offered when she couldn’t find the right words to finish her sentence.
For a brief moment, her reflexes made her worry he was mocking her with a call back to the text that started it all. But then
she saw a gentle smile curve his lips and realized he was simply as uncomfortable as she was. As nervous that this new territory
was going to blow up in their faces and leave everything irreparable.
She quietly laughed, feeling the tension loosen. And then he laughed too, and it fell away altogether.
“Listen,” Emmy said, and leaned on the counter beside him. “I’m wondering if—and you have every right to say no because I
know this is all kind of absurd and ridiculous—but I’m wondering if... you’d still be willing to go to the wedding with
me.” She bit her lip and nervously watched his reaction.
A look bloomed over his face, tangling on itself somewhere between surprise she was asking and sincere contemplation like
he might say yes. “Really?”
She desperately leapt on the opportunity. “Yes! I will buy your plane ticket and everything. Please. ”
He softly chuckled. “You don’t have to do that.” He set his coffee down and stroked his jaw. “I guess I just thought, you
know, you were never going to talk to me again after last night, so I’m a little surprised.”
Emmy blinked at him in relief. “I thought you were never going to talk to me again, so I’m surprised you’re even considering this.” She leaned back and looked at him with a narrowed gaze as if to check
he wasn’t pulling a trick. “You are considering it, right?”
He smirked at her, and a flash of the Gabe Olson she knew well peeked through. The one who relished any opportunity to lord something over her. But a softer version chased him away. “Yes, I’m considering it.”