Chapter 20
Twenty
“Your prince here to whisk you away in your carriage?”
Nikki leaned in the doorway of my bedroom, eyeing me as I sat at my desk, finishing applying my mascara.
I could tell Nikki was trying hard not to sound bitter. While we had “resolved” our argument from a few days ago, we tiptoed around each other and all the splintering cracks around us, like we were on thin ice that could give anywhere at any time.
“Princes are boring.” I offered her a faint grin. “Knights are better. They’re the ones with the swords and armor, and they do the fighting.”
“I guess that makes you a knight too.” Nikki shrugged. “Just don’t get too hung up in trying to save each other from trolls and dragons, or whatever it is that knights fight.”
The hint of comical smarm in her voice was her version of an olive branch.
One time when we were in elementary school, she’d pushed me off the monkey bars because she wanted a turn, and at the time, skinning your elbows on concrete was pretty much the worst feeling in the world.
I was beside myself for what felt like days.
Instead of asking me for forgiveness, she drew me a picture of me with bandages on my arms and wrote (in very illegible five-year-old handwriting), sory you are no good at monke bars. Everything was fine after that.
“So wise.” I rolled my eyes. “Although I don’t think there are any trolls or dragons around here anyway.”
“True. Well, have a nice time.”
Nikki gave me one last smile, faint and fleeting like she was saying goodbye for what felt like more than one night, before leaving me to my own devices.
Despite everything Brooklyn and I had done and had been through already, this was technically our first date, and it was still a little nerve-racking in its own way.
I still felt like I was on the edge, but when I walked outside to see Brooklyn leaning against the door of his Jeep, I realized maybe it was an edge meant to be jumped off of.
A blast of the dipping sun in the oncoming dusk nearly blinded me, and Brooklyn’s bright-orange button-up shirt didn’t help.
I smiled to myself at the wrinkles at the bottom hem of the shirt, as if he’d gone back and forth several times on whether to tuck it in or not.
I knew he cleaned up well, but there was something about this version of him I liked better.
The slight unruliness gave him a more unrefined attractiveness, and it made him more human.
“Are we going to direct traffic?” I joked.
He gave me a coy smile as he opened the passenger door for me. “I’m not giving anything away. You know, maybe I just like the color orange.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” I replied.
He hopped into the driver’s seat, and the engine roared as he sped away down my street. The wind whipped through the car, and I silently thanked past me for a hairstyle that wouldn’t undo in the open air of the topless Jeep.
Brooklyn fiddled with the radio the way he always did, cranking the volume of his Deftones playlist to counteract the sound of the wind. It was moments like this when I wished I could stop time. We really were happy, laughing and holding hands with the sun bathing our world in a golden light.
We hit the parkway, driving farther away from Dahlia Point than I’d been since living here.
After enough speed and enough wind and more distance than I had been prepared to handle, Brooklyn pulled off at an exit and into a small town with one quiet main road, where a few pedestrians seemed to pay no mind to the one car driving down the street.
He slowed to a stop in front of a tiny old brick building.
I could barely make out the dark script imprinted on the front window.
“Villalobos,” Brooklyn told me. “It means Town of Wolves. My dad’s friend from college owns the place. It’s in the middle of nowhere—obviously—but they do killer business, and they have, in my unprofessional opinion, the best tacos on the East Coast.”
“You’re setting awfully high expectations here.” I went to unbuckle my seat belt when Brooklyn stopped me.
“Oh, we’re not eating here, I’m only picking up the food.”
He winked at me before jumping out of the car.
Through the large front window I watched Brooklyn chat with the petite redheaded hostess, her eyes wide and fixated on him as he chatted and laughed with her like they were best friends.
I was never the jealous type, but then again, I had never been around someone like him.
His sweet, easygoing charm was part of this pull that he had, almost like a planet ready to ensnare any wayward comets in his gravity.
At this point I was definitely one of those comets, sucked right in and fated to exist in his atmosphere.
After he returned we drove away and pulled down a small offshoot, a quiet suburban street lined with one-story brick houses and large oak trees with branches that danced in the soft breeze.
The street abruptly ended in a thicket of bushes and tall marram grass, but over the tops of them I could see the sky, clear and starting to turn an ombre of orange with the setting sun.
Brooklyn parked the car at the dead end and ran around the front of it to open my door. It was something so small and insignificant, but I’d never get tired of it. He grabbed a backpack from the back seat and led me to the bushes.
“Now would be a great time to tell me what’s going on,” I prodded.
He shook his head. “Follow me. You trust me, don’t you?”
Whether the gravity to his words was unintentional or not, it gave me pause. Against the odds, against the past, against my sister’s apprehension, I really did trust him.
I took his hand as he led me through the brush, thankful I had picked a good thick pair of jeans to wear.
When we made it through to a clearing, it felt like someone had pumped so much air into my chest that it threatened to burst. In front of us was a strip of beach with white sand, probably no bigger than my living room, surrounded by the same brush and beach grass that we had walked through.
A small dock stretched into the ocean, which was so calm it looked like glass as the sun began to dip below its surface.
“Wow” was all I could manage to breathe out.
“Is this a good spot for our tacos?” Brooklyn beckoned me to follow him along the dock. He pulled a tribal-printed blanket from his backpack and laid it at the edge, sitting down so that his feet dangled over the water. I sat down beside him, letting the warmth of the dusky sun wash over me.
“Brooklyn.” I sighed wistfully. “This is amazing.”
He stayed quiet, his eyes trained on the ocean. But he put his hand over mine, brushing his thumb over my knuckles and filling me with warmth.
We ate in a comfortable silence, watching the sun slowly set and turn the ocean into a messy watercolor painting of blues and purples and oranges.
Every time I glanced over at him, he was already looking at me, his blue eyes deep and veiled with something I didn’t recognize, but whatever it was, it brewed a storm inside of me.
I looked down at my feet dangling over the ocean, but my skin prickled as I felt Brooklyn’s eyes still on me.
“What?” I asked.
He gave me a faint smile but stayed silent.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” I continued. “Like—”
“Like I adore you?” Brooklyn’s smile widened, and his eyes gleamed like they had stolen the stars right out of the sky. “Because I do. I fucking adore you.”
I swore I heard a pop in my chest, like my heart had just exploded. “Brooklyn.”
“Seriously. You’re like the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
I was a mess of thoughts and emotions, and any words I wanted to say knotted up in my throat. I knew the feeling that was starting to bubble up inside of me, and it scared the hell out of me.
“Me too,” I finally said, leaning my head on his shoulder. “I mean it.”
The rest of our dockside dinner passed by in a blur, but I danced on clouds the entire time.
We talked about nothing at all, like the weather and our favorite sneakers and bad music, but somehow Brooklyn made it seem like something.
I hinged on every word he said and felt my cheeks aching from smiling so much.
When Brooklyn dropped me off at my house, I took my time gathering myself, silently pleading for our night to not end. Brooklyn fiddled with the radio like he always did, and I could tell he was stalling too.
“So . . .” He clicked his tongue.
“So . . .” I echoed. The fuzzy static of the radio filled our silence.
“Do you have plans for Sunday?” he asked, cracking a small smile.
“Well.” I tapped my finger on my chin. “I have a very important date scheduled with my copy of The Road.”
Brooklyn chuckled, still smiling that same smile that made my stomach feel like I was on a rollercoaster. “Would you be willing to forgo your date with the nameless character Viggo Mortensen plays in the movie adaptation to have dinner at my house?”
“You mean like, order takeout and get a movie?”
“Not exactly.” Brooklyn grimaced. “More like a family thing. My dad will be home this weekend, and . . . it would be nice to have you there.”
He fiddled with the radio again. I tried to read the expression on his face, strained somewhere between unease and uncertainty. I delicately pulled his hand away from the knobs on the radio and laced my fingers between his.
“I’d love to,” I told him. “Remember what you told me the other day?”
Relief washed over him. “I meant everything I said before. I do mean everything I say to you, always. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d have nobody to yap with about obscure indie movies from 1992, obviously.”
“Obviously.” Brooklyn smiled at me again, and leaned over to kiss me the way he had so many times already, and the way I hoped he’d continue to do for a long time.