CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Emery
It turns into one of those days.
The kind you don’t plan. The kind you don’t schedule or squeeze into a color-coded calendar. The kind that just . . . happens.
Somehow, we end up at a swap meet on the edge of town after afternoon coffee that turns into breakfast tacos that Lucas sweet-talked the restaurant’s owner into making because they were his favorite.
She was a fan of his. We got the breakfast tacos.
The swap meet is large with aisle after aisle of booths full of treasures and crap. We wander through them with Lucas stopping every ten feet or so because apparently everything deserves commentary.
“That’s hideous,” he says, holding up a ceramic rooster with one cracked eye.
“It could be vintage.”
“Or haunted. Maybe even cursed,” he says but buys it anyway.
I laugh so hard my stomach hurts, and it surprises me—how easy it comes. How unguarded I am with him. I can’t remember the last time I laughed like this. Not politely. Not carefully. But the kind that makes you bend over and steals your breath.
“Look at this!” he shouts and motions for me to come over. He’s holding up a pinata in the shape of a cactus. The cactus happens to be wearing sunglasses with every inch of it covered in brightly placed tissue paper.
“What are you going to do with a pinata?” I laugh.
“I don’t know but like you had to have those pillows in the home goods store earlier, I have to have this. More like you have to have this.”
“No, I don’t. You are not buying that for me.”
“I am.”
“You’re serious,” I state when he reaches for his wallet.
He nods and grins. “So damn serious.”
He begins to barter with the vendor. Of course, he’s absurdly charming about it—smiling, shrugging, feigning heartbreak when the price doesn’t budge all the while telling them how incredible their wares are. And then pumping his fist when he gets a paper flower thrown in.
“Here,” he says, tucking the flower behind my ear, his fingertips skimming the shell of it, sending unexpected chills down my spine.
“You enjoy this,” I say, needing a distraction from those bright blue eyes of his.
“I enjoy winning.”
“Technically you’re losing because she didn’t bring down the price.”
“Strategically.” He quirks a brow and thanks the vendor as she hands him the cactus pinata that he now holds up like a trophy. “But still winning.” He holds it out to me. “For you.”
“No. I’m good.” I laugh the words out.
“Proof you left your apartment and allowed yourself to be Emery Porter and not Doc Porter today.”
I take it and my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. “You’re ridiculous.”
“Yet, here you are.”
We keep moving through stalls and out of the swap meet to the streets and into pockets of the city that feel alive in a way the office and the apartment don’t. When the crowd grows thick in some places, his hand drifts to the small of my back. Not possessive. Just deliberate.
Just . . . there. And it makes my skin hum in a way I haven’t felt in quite a while too. Nor did I realize I missed.
In our wandering, a few people recognize him. It’s subtle double takes, whispers and phones hovering but not raised. A teenager asks for a picture, and Lucas agrees easily, arm slung around the kid’s shoulders, polite and gracious.
Others notice but deliberately look away and respect his personal time.
I wonder briefly if I should worry about being seen like this. A team doctor out with a player.
But we aren’t doing anything wrong. We’re just walking. Just laughing. Simply existing as two new people in a new town.
Right or wrong, that makes this feel more okay than not.
“That has you written all over it.” Lucas points to whatever he’s talking about, but all I can seem to focus on is the warmth of his breath tickling my ear.
“The lamp?” I bark out a laugh at the ceramic burst of . . . color? I guess that’s what you can call the swirls of iridescent colors and the bright yellow lamp shade.
“Buy it.”
“I don’t need another lamp.”
“Need and want are two different things, Em. And you want that lamp.”
“You’re a terrible influence.”
“I’m an excellent influence,” he corrects. “And I got you out of your apartment.”
Touché.
“You did. You’re right. And I guess I do need that lamp.”
“Yes.” He pumps his fist before raising both hands in victory.
Within minutes, we have yet another package—a lamp with an unapologetically yellow shade—that we add to the growing pile in his truck’s back seat before we head back and continue walking through the art district.
The setting sun adds a reprieve to the heat, but not by much. Lucas glances at me sideways. “So?”
“So?” I draw the word out.
“How am I doing?”
“On negotiating for home décor? I say solid A minus.”
“How about on rehabbing my shoulder?”
I stop walking. “No work talk.”
He laughs and holds his hands up. “Fair.”
We walk another few steps. “Your throws look good,” I say.
He barks out a laugh and tugs on my hand to get me to stop. “Didn’t you just say no work talk?”
“I’m speaking as a football fan and not as your doctor.”
“Oh.” He crosses his arms over his chest and lifts his eyebrows. “I’m intrigued. Go on.”
“Your spirals are tight, precision is spot-on, and there’s no hesitation when you throw.” I shrug. “You’re compensating less than you think.”
I wonder if that’s pride or relief I see in his expression. Maybe both.
“I’ll take that. And because it was so positive, I’ll ignore the fact the last comment was partially work talk.”
“It was. You’re right. What’s the punishment?” I ask it playfully but the quirk of his eyebrows and the slow crawl of his lips says his mind just ventured where mine did.
“Emery?” A voice cuts through the noise.
I freeze. I don’t know anyone here, but when I turn, the woman standing there looks familiar, and it takes only a second for recognition to slam into me.
She smiles cautiously as if she’s worried I don’t recognize her. “Emery Collins, right?”
My two worlds collide in a way I don’t want them to. My smile is hesitant and my tongue feels thick. “Marci?”
“Oh my God. Yes. From the cancer research fundraiser. You and—”
“It’s Emery Porter now,” I say and watch the I just stuck my foot in my mouth realization flicker over her features. In my periphery, Lucas’s head jostles but he doesn’t say a word.
And neither does Marci. Instead, she drags her gaze up and down Lucas, as if comparing him to the man she thought Jared to be.
There’s no comparison.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll leave you be—clearly you’re busy—but good seeing you again.”
“It definitely was,” I say with a fake smile and an equally performative wave.
Not that she was to blame in any way, shape, or form for my divorce, but it’s always weird to come face-to-face with someone who was Jared’s acquaintance.
A part of me wants to scream from the rooftop what an asshole he is so that people know, but I don’t really think that’s appropriate.
I do however take satisfaction in knowing I was smart enough when we married to keep my degree and my reputation in my maiden name.
Maybe in the back of my mind I already knew somehow.
Why does a small part of me want her to recognize Lucas, be surprised I could land someone like him, and rush back to tell Jared—even if it is nowhere near the truth?
I can feel Lucas’s gaze on me and wait for him to ask the million questions his eyes say he wants to ask.
“So, that was awkward,” he says, breaking the ice. “Pretty sure that warrants some chips and salsa and a margarita for you.”
I chuckle, grateful for the levity. “Sounds perfect.”