Chapter 24
There was kissing. There was lots of kissing, if you want to get into it. (We are not going to get into it.)
And, for a while, we sat together on the chesterfield, talking in little snippets, laughing, content with being together, holding and being held.
“I can’t believe you found the ring,” Bobby said at one point, and he followed this with a groan.
“I’m actually disappointed in myself for not finding it earlier. Where did you hide it?”
“The attic,” Bobby said.
“Okay, that makes sense.” The attic was spider-slash-ghost territory, and Keme and I had agreed it was best to go up there only in daylight, and only in pairs.
The look on Bobby’s face suggested he knew what I was thinking, and he was feeling incredibly smug about it.
“I’m sorry I ruined your proposal,” I said.
“You didn’t ruin it. I’m still going to propose.” His smile turned wry. “I do have to come up with a new plan, though.”
“You can always take me to a fancy dinner,” I said. “I’ll never object. I’ll even pretend to be surprised. God, you could take me to a fancy dinner right now.”
Bobby kissed the side of my head and said, “Okay.”
And that was how we ended up in the kitchen, where Bobby proceeded to dish up the takeout from Mizzenmast: shrimp in some sort of sweet chili glaze, and a cold crab salad, and lobster mac and cheese (mac and cheese is basically one of the four food groups, and when you add lobster, it becomes a superfood like, um, blueberries?). We ate at the counter, standing.
It was—and I’m not kidding—the best meal I’d ever eaten.
Part of that, I’m sure, was the hunger. And part was the emotional release of everything that had passed between us.
And part was the simple fact that Mizzenmast was, hands down, the best restaurant on the Pacific Coast, and I would fight anyone who said otherwise.
(Except Bobby, who fights dirty—lots of tickling. And Keme; see above about how freakishly strong he is.)
“I didn’t have a speech,” I said between bites of lobster mac and cheese. (Bobby let me have all of it, which is a sign of real love.)
“What?”
“A proposal speech.”
“I didn’t realize there was a speech involved.”
“Well, there is.” I ate some more mac and cheese. “I’ll work on it and get back to you.”
For some reason, he laughed a long time about that.
Then I said a word that Keme says sometimes when he’s losing at Fortnite. “Your ring.”
“What about it?”
“You don’t have one.”
“Dash, it’s okay. I don’t need a ring.”
“We’ll get you one tomorrow.”
“Okay. But it’s fine.”
“It could be a decoder ring.”
“How long have you been awake?”
“How long have you been awake?”
“Twenty hours and change,” Bobby said.
“Oh my God, Bobby. And you have to work tomorrow. Time for bed. Right now, mister. And don’t even think about, uh, hanky-panky.”
He did something with his eyebrows, and ladies and gentlemen: I blushed.
Fortunately, Bobby’s amorous advances met significant opposition from his spic-and-span advances, which meant we cleaned up the kitchen before heading upstairs.
I bustled Bobby into the bathroom so he could start getting ready for bed, but a moment later, he poked his head out, toothbrush busily brushing away, and asked something like one of the parents from a Charlie Brown special.
“Huh?” I asked.
Toothbrush out, he asked, “How’s the conference?”
“Uh, aside from the murders? Fine, I guess. I don’t know.”
He popped his head out again, still busily cleaning those toofers, and made an inquiring sound.
“Well, remember our friend Spenser? He caught up with me and offered a lot of ‘help.’ I’m drawing air quotes so you know he wasn’t helpful and that I’m being sarcastic.”
A noise of affirmation came between the sounds of Bobby spitting into the sink.
“He has lots of ideas about how the next Will Gower book should go. How the whole series should go, I’m guessing.
And I don’t have the heart to tell him that I haven’t made any progress on book two, like, at all, so he’s probably getting his hopes up.
In a weirdly rude fashion, as it turns out.
I think he’s going to take it personally if I don’t deliver exactly the book he’s dreaming of. ”
“He’s excited,” Bobby said from the bathroom. “Isn’t that a good thing when readers get excited about your books and want more of them? That’s what you want.”
“What I want is extreme sales velocity and rave reviews in the New York Times and for zero actual people to ever, you know, talk to me about my books in person.”
When Bobby poked his head out the next time, he was flossing, but let me tell you: he gave me an extremely disapproving look. Then he stopped flossing long enough to say, “Are you going to shower?”
I groaned. I stretched. I wiggled.
A shower sounded heavenly, but I was literally in bed.
“Shower,” Bobby said with a laugh.
Somehow, I dragged myself out of bed. I started the shower. Pipes clanked and banged and moaned. As the water warmed up, I stripped out of my clothes. Bobby got an eyeful as I padded to the tub, and I don’t know what was happening that night, but I blushed again.
The water did feel heavenly, especially since the last chance I’d had to clean up had been at the hospital.
As the water ran over my shoulders and down my back, I lathered up with some body wash.
(Did you know in October, you could find it in pumpkin spice scent?
Keme didn’t. He said that was reason number three thousand why someone should have beaten me up more when I was a kid.)
“It’s—” I said, picking up the thread of the conversation again. “It’s sad, I guess.”
“Spenser? He likes your books, Dash.”
“No. Although, I can’t believe I haven’t mentioned this yet, but there might be the slimmest possibility that he’s the one who broke into our house and tried to kill me.”
Bobby pulled back the shower curtain. “What?”
“He’s probably not, but, you know, maybe.
” Before Bobby could change gears to detective mode, I said, “I meant it’s sad, the people I’ve been talking to.
Everybody who’s a writer starts writing because they love stories.
They want to tell stories. They have something to say—about themselves, about the world, maybe about this cool adventure they dreamed up.
But at some point, for a lot of people, it stops being about the writing.
It’s about getting an agent. It’s about getting a book deal.
It’s about getting the right marketing, and a solid book launch, and then the next book deal, and a bestseller list.”
“It must be hard,” Bobby said, “not to want that stuff. All that external validation of something you care about.”
“I guess. But I look at these people, and they’ve got it all, and they seem miserable.
And it’s because they were so desperate to get what they wanted that they didn’t care what it cost—and now that they have it, it’s like they don’t want it anymore, or it doesn’t bring them happiness, or they need more, or, I don’t know.
” The look on Thatcher’s face when he made his decision. “It’s discouraging, I guess.”
The curtain rustled as Bobby slid it back, and he got into the shower.
Listen, I’m a gentleman. But I would be doing the world a disservice if I didn’t say this: there are muscles, and then there are muscles.
(Also, some of Bobby’s hair was falling across his forehead again, and I honestly cannot explain why, but every time it makes me weak.)
“Hello,” I said.
He put his hands on my hips and drew me toward him. The spray shifted along my back, and then I bumped into Bobby: solid, warm, slick where my wet skin met his.
“Oh no,” I said. “You’re going straight to bed.”
His hands moved up, his touch so light that he was barely touching me: my waist, my chest, my back, my shoulders. Like he was tracing me. He hesitated at my neck, and his thumbs brushed the line where the cord had bit into my flesh.
“I love you,” he said, the words so low that the sound of the shower almost swallowed them.
I started to tell him that I loved him too, but he kissed me.