Chapter Twenty-Three
Melanie
I didn’t know my heart could do that at the same time, skip and stumble until Drew said, “Show me around your city.”
Not a tease. Not a dare. An invitation.
It shocked me more than seeing him in my lobby, more than the fact that he’d driven hours with a box of mangled gingerbread pancakes and scones labeled us For Brave Idiots.
He hated crowds. He hated rules that didn’t make sense.
He hated elevators that smelled like a wet umbrella and mystery soup.
And still, he asked to see where I live—really see it.
The way I love it. The way it loves me back.
So I did the only thing that made sense. I took his hand, tugged him toward the street, and said, “Come on then. First stop’s obvious.”
“Lead the way, city girl,” he said, and I fell a little harder.
We cut down toward Pike Street, the air damp and clean in that Seattle way that always smells faintly like a just-washed sidewalk and the ocean dreaming nearby.
The rain had dialed itself to mist, and the neon ahead started to bleed into the evening like watercolors.
When the red clock and the PUBLIC MARKET CENTER sign came into view, I watched his face instead of the landmark. The way the red lit his jawline and settled in his eyes like fire. The way he slowed without realizing he’d slowed.
“That’s a sign,” he said softly.
“That’s the sign,” I corrected. “Everyone takes a picture under it. It’s a rule.”
“I thought you hated rules that don’t make sense.”
“This one makes sense,” I said, already grinning. “Smile, Benedict.”
He rolled his eyes but stepped beside me, and I did the awkward tourist dance—backing up two steps into the street, craning to get the neon and the clock and our faces and at least one stray seagull, then darting forward when a car wanted its turn.
Click. Proof. Him in my city. Me in my city with him.
“You’re terrifying with a camera,” he murmured, but he took the phone from my hands and checked the shot, his grin going soft around the edges. “Send me that.”
“Already did,” I said, and it was true; muscle memory had texted it before my brain caught up. His phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced at me like I’d just fed him.
The market was humming—holiday-busy but not unbearable.
Wreaths hung over the arcade, thick as forests, and someone had wrapped the old green pillars with red ribbon like candy canes.
People moved like schools of fish, stop, swirl, drift, pause, drawn by dried flowers, teas, and fish, and the kind of warm food that only exists in places with old floors and ghosts in the walls.
“Ready?” I asked, very proud that I managed not to clap like the teacher that I was.
He squeezed my hand. “You tell me.”
We crossed under the sign into the arcade, and it hit him the way it always hits people—the kaleidoscope.
The fish guys chanted at the next stall, flinging salmon through the air to applause. Steam from chowder joints and coffee places and somewhere, blessedly, mini-donuts sugaring themselves alive.
“Okay,” he said, stopping dead as a salmon flew, yelling and laughing and landing in a gloved pair of hands like a well-practiced magic trick.
“Welcome to the show,” I said, delighted. “Don’t stand too close. Tourists get splashed. Ask me how I know.”
“First time here?” a fishmonger boomed at Drew, clocking him with a pro’s eyes.
“Yes. First time being emotionally assaulted by seafood,” Drew shot back.
The guy cackled. “You want to catch one? Show your girl you’ve got muscles?”
Drew looked at me, and I saw it—pure, uncut boyish challenge.
“Say the word,” he murmured.
“Do it,” I said, already lifting my phone.
“Don’t you dare,” he warned, but he stepped forward anyway, a grin splitting his face.
The fishmonger lobbed a smaller guy—silver, slick—and for a split half-second Drew fumbled, then got hands under it like he’d been born behind a bar catching bottles and bad ideas.
Everyone cheered. I did, too. It is not my fault if pride scalded all the way up my throat.
Drew decided to buy the fish and handed over his card.
“Not bad for a landlocked bartender,” I teased.
“River-locked,” Drew corrected, wiping his hands on a towel he didn’t technically have. “And I wash up better than you think.” He took his card back, and I tugged him onward.
“Come on. Shop.”
In December, the flower vendors were heavy with evergreens and berries. He reached out, touched a sprig of cedar like it was an animal you had to greet gently.
“It smells like your town,” he said.
“It smells like a thousand wreaths,” I said. “Pick one.”
“For what?”
“For my apartment. Besides, these ones don’t come with deranged squirrels.”
“Promises. Promises.” He did, and because it’s Drew and his hands know how to choose, he picked a bunch that was exactly right—green on green, pinecones, just enough red.
He paid before I could argue, then looped the twine around his wrist like he’d wear it before he’d drop it. I pretended not to melt and failed.
“Hungry?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know the answer to that question for a man who can make three pancakes look like a religion. “We can do Beecher’s for cheese or Piroshky for carb pillows or the chowder place with the line that wraps like a python.”
He tilted his head, listening. “What would you do if you were alone?”
“Don’t make me choose between children.”
“Top two.”
“Mini-donuts,” I said, because honesty is brave, “and squeaky cheese.”
He laughed. “Lead on.”
We did both. At the donut stand, the guy behind the counter shook fresh sugar over a paper bag and slid it toward me with a wink I didn’t deserve but took anyway. Drew bit into one still hot enough to threaten lawsuits and actually closed his eyes.
“I’m suing,” he said, powdered sugar dusting his bottom lip. “I can’t live like this and then go back to not living like this.”
“Let’s see if the cheese fixes you,” I said, because chaos was winning and carbs were its hors d’oeuvres.
At Beecher’s, we watched the cheesemakers stirring curds in giant open vats like benevolent witches. The sample guy gave Drew a cube and said, “Squeak means it’s fresh.” Drew bit down, eyes widening at the tiny protest of the curd.
“Squeak,” he repeated, delighted. I was a goner.
We wandered Post Alley so I could traumatize him with the gum wall, which is exactly as disgusting as you imagined.
He stared for a long, horrified moment. “That’s not very holidayish,” he said gravely.
“No,” I agreed. “That’s Seattle’s collective DNA.”
“We’re never coming here again.”
“Agreed.”
“Do you always do this?” Drew asked suddenly, soft enough that it didn’t cut through the music. “Walk and point and love it?”
“If I’m in a good mood,” I said. “If I’m lonely. If I forget why I picked a place and need to remember. This is the reminder.”
He considered that. “And does it… remind you right now?”
I felt the answer anywhere a pulse happens.
“Yes. And not just about the city.”
He looked at me like I’d given him something he didn’t know how to ask for. Then he tucked the wreath more securely around his wrist and bumped my shoulder with his.
“Good.”
We bought a ridiculous chocolate-dipped marshmallow shaped like a snowman and split it, both of us making faces we would deny in court. And he found a compass ornament that made me wonder what it all meant.
At some point, without making a thing of it, his hand found mine.
Our steps synced. My mouth forgot its job and smiled for thirty straight minutes.
“Okay,” he said eventually, tipping his chin toward the neon fish sign and the tangle of people near the produce. “What’s next, Tour Director?”
“Rooftop,” I said, tugging him toward the market steps. “Best view.”
We climbed past the brass pig photo op and the Santa hat on the bronze sculpture. At the top, the wind nosed our coats open, but the payoff was worth frostbite.
Drew went quiet in the way that meant everything was working.
He moved closer to the railing and leaned his forearms on it, the wreath dangling absurdly from his wrist. His flannel darkened where mist kissed it.
He looked… right there. Not out of place.
Just different than my usual view and better for it.
“You okay?” I asked, because sometimes when I’m overwhelmed, I narrate like a sports announcer.
He didn’t answer right away. “Yeah.” He glanced sideways at me. “You?”
“Yeah.”
We stood like that, shoulder to shoulder, while the city breathed around us. It wasn’t quiet, but it was peace anyway. The kind that comes when the noise matches your heartbeat.
“I know you don’t love this,” I said finally, because I had to trip over the obvious. “The crowds. The… everything.”
He considered it.
“I don’t love the crowds,” he said. “But I love your face when you show me things.”
“Don’t say stuff like that.”
“But it’s true.”
There didn’t feel like a good response that wasn’t running or kissing him, and both would have consequences I wasn’t prepared for. So I did what I do best and pivoted with precision.
“You hungry again?” I asked. “Because we didn’t do the mac and cheese. Or the piroshky. Or—”
“Mel.”
I looked at him. The scruff shadowed his cheek, and his green eyes met mine. He lifted our still-laced hands without making a ceremony of it and rested them on the railing.
“I came because I wanted to see your life,” he said. “I’m staying the night because I’d like to try being in it without a countdown clock.”
The words slid into me like a key that had been made quietly, carefully, while I wasn’t looking. I could feel the panic beast open one eye, probability, risk, schedule, future…but underneath it, louder rang the relief.
“Okay,” I said, because it turned out I could be brave in one-syllable sentences.
He nodded once, like that was enough for now, and looked back at the water. A ferry blew its horn; a gull screamed at no one in particular; someone laughed behind us.
I pressed my shoulder to his. He pressed back.
We did the rest of the loop more slowly, our pace matching the evening.
By the time we walked back under the sign, the clock hands were snuggled near seven.
His phone buzzed; mine did too. The world tugged at us like it always does, with obligations tapping politely at our elbows.
But when we stepped into the crosswalk, he squeezed my hand and said, “I love being here with you.”
“Thank you for surprising me.”
We stepped into my building, and Tad looked up, pretending not to watch us come in. Drew held up the wreath like a passport.
“Good evening, Tad,” Drew said with a wide grin.
Tad’s mouth twitched. “Evening.”
In the elevator, our reflections rode up with us again as two people I recognized and two I was just starting to meet. When the doors opened, I felt the city sigh behind us and the apartment breathe ahead of us.
The lights around my window glowed, and the little tree waited like a well-behaved secret.
He stepped inside and took off his boots, and I suddenly, irrationally wanted to cry because it was some abstract sign of belonging. I took the salmon from him and secretly wished that this could be my norm.
“Should I hang this on the door?” he asked, holding up the wreath.
“Yes, and hopefully nobody will take it.”
His brows lifted. “They do that here?”
“We need Tad for a reason.”
“Good to know.” He laughed and shook his head as he opened the front door again.
“I’ll make cocoa,” I said, because I needed a task or I was going to make a mistake. “With marshmallows.”
“Careful,” he said, smiling in that way that makes a career woman rethink her entire strategy. “This place is rubbing off on me.”
I turned on the kettle and pulled down the Santa mug and the boring one, and I let myself look at him.
I was stunned and shocked and wildly elated, yes.
Also terrified.
Also hopeful.
Also aware that tomorrow exists and so does the week after that, and our little pilot program would come to an end.
But tonight, he’d asked me to show him my city and then let it move through him. Tonight, the market stacked its noise on top of our silence and called it music. Tonight, we found a way to be both of our people at once.
I handed him a mug. Our fingers touched. The compass ornament on the counter caught the light and threw it across the ceiling like stars we didn’t have to wish on.
“Ready?” I asked, meaning nothing and everything.
He lifted his cocoa. “Show me the rest,” he said.
So I did…my bedroom, my bathroom, my ridiculous little tree, and somehow, it felt like more than enough.