Chapter 22 #3
“I’m not pandering to you. Who’s the best boy in the whole world?” I tell him in a baby voice.
Gunner gives me a long, low look, then licks a slobbery tongue up my face.
I laugh, wiping off his slobber. “I guess I asked for that.”
“Oh, you absolutely did,” he says.
He eyes the pie in my hand.
“You can’t have apple pie, Gunner,” I say. “Apple pie is not for dogs.”
“I’m not a dog,” he says. “I’m your familiar. I could absolutely have a little bit of apple pie.”
He does that thing where his eyes get huge and sad, and I swear to God I can see little sparkly stars in them as he does the most magical sad version of puppy-dog eyes known to man.
“Fine,” I say.
I break off a tiny piece of piping hot apple pie for him, and then I take a big bite myself, chewing as I continue scanning through my sisters’ text messages.
There aren’t that many left, though, so I text them just to let them know we’re not at the lighthouse and we’re out running errands in town. I tell them we’re getting a few things on my list tonight.
Nobody texts me back right away, which I hope doesn’t mean anything ominous has happened or anything adjacent to raccoon chaos, although with Posey and Hazel there’s no telling.
Before I know it, the driver’s side door is opening again and Caleb climbs in, holding not just one bag stamped with the boutique’s logo but a garment bag and a second bag that looks to be filled with shoes and other small things that are not clothes.
“Caleb, what the hell is this?” I say.
“Well, I figured you could put on a fashion show for me later once you get bored out at Watchmere,” he says nonchalantly.
“Caleb, please tell me you didn’t buy me all this stuff.”
“I didn’t buy all this stuff,” he says, pausing and staring at me. “I stole it?”
“You are the worst.”
“Fine, you caught me, I bought the stuff.” He grins at me, sets the bags in the back, and pops out a hanger from the garment bag and hangs that up.
“Caleb, I cannot keep all this. I do not need clothes.”
“I thought you would look nice in them. I missed your last, like, ten years’ worth of birthdays and Christmases, so consider this me making up for lost time.
And guess what? I think you look pretty in all of it, but I also think you look pretty in nothing, but you said the town wouldn’t like you like that, so here we are. ”
“Now you can either take it back, or I will—”
“Did you eat the whole apple pie?” he interrupts.
Unable to process anything other than the fact that he’s bought me three bags’ worth of clothes on a whim, I hand him the apple pie because it’s the least I can do.
I pick up my root beer float to have something to do with my hands and drink it because I don’t trust myself to speak.
No one’s ever bought me so much as underwear, let alone three bags’ worth of whatever the heck it is that the sales associates in that cute little boutique talked Caleb into.
“If you don’t like it, I can return it,” he says quickly. “Don’t get freaked out,” he adds.
“I’m not freaked out. Why would I be freaked out about my new boyfriend who is my ex-boyfriend calling me wifey and then going and buying out the whole store for me?
And you know the whole kraken in the shore thing and having to call the corners and do some kind of dangerous magic that was so scary—”
“Ivy. Stop right there.”
Caleb steals the root beer float from me and then takes a long drink of it.
I just stare at him.
He grins at me, leans over the center console, and kisses me full on the mouth.
If I was startled before, now I’m completely without any thoughts. No thoughts, no words, just vibes. Brain overloaded, 404 error.
He finally pulls away, my heart beating twice as hard, heat rising up and unfurling into my chest that has nothing to do with hot apple pies and everything to do with the man sitting next to me who just gave me one of the best kisses of my life.
“Quite a scientific find. If I’d known it was that easy to get you to stop arguing with me, I would’ve tried it a long time ago,” he says, happier than a duck in a puddle.
He puts the car in reverse, slowly backing out of the spot before driving back onto the main road.
“Where are we going now?” I ask.
“It’s not too far,” he says. “And don’t worry. The clothes was really the big surprise. You’re not mad at me?”
I stare at him. “You’d care if I was mad about the clothes?”
“Of course I care. I’m not taking them back until you look at them, but I don’t want you actually upset with me.”
“I’m not… upset. That was the nicest thing anyone has done for me in a really long time,” I say. “I guess… it feels like too much.”
“Well, I guess we’ll just have to get used to it,” he says. “Because I plan to keep spoiling you as long as you let me.”
“You can’t go and buy me clothes every time you want.”
“Sure I can,” he says. “Makes me happy.”
I start and stop about ten different reasons why he shouldn’t buy me things whenever he wants, and then decide it’s not worth it, which, to be honest, is what I call growth.
“Here we are,” he says.
He pulls into a lot of a place I’ve driven by a few times but never stopped at — an old general store, one of the few that hasn’t been bought out and taken over by a larger nationwide chain.
I look through the windshield, crouching down so I can peer outside.
“What do we need from here?” I ask.
“Well, I could maybe see if they have some coveralls and socks or something for the rest of the cleanup and for when you’re working out in the lighthouse’s yard. Besides, I think this place might have some of the things on your secret list.” He waggles his eyebrows.
I laugh at that. “Coveralls are really Posey’s area of fashion expertise.”
“Well, I’m not worried about Posey’s wardrobe. I’m worried about getting things you need to come be with me for the next five days. Socks, sensible shoes. Food… who knows what we’ll find!” He pretends to toss confetti in the air and I grin at him.
“Five days?” I repeat.
“You think I’m just going to let you go back to your house when I can have you at my place?”
I sputter.
“So I thought,” he says, and leans over and kisses me again.
Whatever I was going to say to argue with him dies on my lips the minute his touch lands
“Ha,” he says as he pulls away. “That’s a good trick. Gonna have to remember that.”
I roll my eyes, still grinning, and open up my door.
“Gunner,” I say, “let’s go see if they’ve got some dog treats in here for you. Looks like our sugar daddy’s going to be buying.”
“Don’t call me that,” Caleb says with a snort.
“You don’t want me to call you sugar daddy?” I tell him, delighted that I’ve finally landed on something that’s annoying him as much as he’s annoying me.
Not that I’m really annoyed.
Not that he’s really annoyed.
He holds out his hand, and I take it, Gunner walking on the other side of me.
The general store is well lit and friendly. A worker greets us as we walk in through the sliding doors.
No one stops to tell me Gunner should be on a leash, which is a relief because I forgot it at my house this afternoon.
The first aisle we walk through is full of exactly the kind of fancy stuff any bougie dog would want, so I grab a cart from the front of the store and loop back to fill it up with Gunner’s favorite treats and a new leash, just in case.
Not that I’m really thinking about staying there for five days, but if I do, I might as well.
“That’s the food Gunner likes, right?”
Gunner barks in affirmation, and Caleb grins as he loads the cart up with it along with a couple of dog bowls.
“You’re making me feel like I’m moving in with you,” I tell him jokingly.
“Well then, I guess so.”
“Would you have to ask?”
“I’d be happy to have you move in with me. Very romantic,” he says. “I didn’t plan to ask you in the dog food aisle at the general store in the next town over, but suppose your tastes aren’t romantic. You don’t need the kind of grand gestures I had in mind.”
“Wait,” I say, protesting with a laugh. “I love a grand gesture. Give me a grand gesture.”
Before I know it, he gets down on one knee and pulls something out of his pocket.
My eyes get huge, and then I smack his hand as I realize he’s holding out a piece of lint.
“It’s been bothering me all day,” he says with a laugh.
“You are out of control,” I tell him, scandalized and relieved and overwhelmed in the best way. We’re loud enough that a couple of workers peer around the aisle and grin at us. I have a feeling they’ll be talking about that moment on the security camera for the rest of the week.
“All right, what else do we need? We could pick up food here. Not much, but if you want to get anything, we could get it. Stock up.”
“I figured we’d go down the tool aisle and see if we can grab any things on your list.” He raises his eyebrow in a meaningful way, and I immediately know the list he’s talking about.
The list for the big spell.
Some of the humor goes out of me, deflating like a balloon.
“Right,” I say seriously. “The list.”
I pull it out of my pocket and straighten it as best I can, Hazel’s teeny tiny handwriting marches across the lines like small ants.
“Beeswax candles,” I say. “Lavender oil. Copper nails.” I say the last in a questioning voice, pausing and looking up at Caleb with confusion. “Copper nails?”
“Some people use them for shingles or roofs. They might have them on the hardware aisle.”
“I had no idea.”
“Well, that’s why you’ve got to keep me around,” Caleb says. “Full of information you had no idea about.” He winks at me. “Come on, wifey. They’re over here.”
“Stop calling me that,” I say.
One of the women clad in the general store’s branded apron nods at me as we walk by. “Well, if you don’t want him, I’ll take him off your hands.”
Caleb starts laughing. “Oh, don’t get her started, you have no idea how jealous she can be.” Then he loops an arm around my waist and plants a huge kiss on my cheek, making me blush. “Besides, I’m happy being under her spell.”
I remember Caleb being smooth when we were growing up. But I certainly don’t remember him being this smooth.
I don’t really quite know what to do with myself, so I grip the cart with both hands and push it through the aisle as Caleb loads more and more things in.
Gunner keeps looking back and forth between us like he’s at the most interesting tennis match in the world.
“I’ve never been to a general store like this,” I say. Then I tilt my head and think about it.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been to an actual general store.”
“It’s pretty fancy,” he says. “Stopped in here sometimes when my uncle was alive and grabbed a few things to make nicer dinners with. He was always amused to see what I’d come up with, said he liked it better than his frozen TV dinner Salisbury steak.”
“High praise,” I say.
“These are really good,” he says, tossing a package of refrigerated ravioli in the cart from a special fridge.
I’m content to just follow him around and watch what he grabs, amused enough to think that we can get some of the ingredients on the list Hazel wrote up for me right here in the general store just a town away.
Lavender essential oil, check.
Beeswax candles. Caleb tries to put a hundred in the cart, which is way too many, but he says he likes the way they smell. We end up with twenty stacked in there. Excessive, since we only need one, but Caleb insists on more for “power outages” except I caught him sniffing them.
Copper nails. We do manage to find some.
The only thing we can’t find is red twine, and the worker tells us they normally only stock that at Christmas with the gift wrap. We’ll have to try a bigger box store for something like that.
Still, it’s a pretty solid haul, and we’ve made a good dent in the list. Besides the red twine we still need salt from low tide, sea glass, eucalyptus, and a few other odds and ends.
By the time we walk up to the counter, the cart’s loaded with groceries, dog food, dog treats, sweatpants and a T-shirt Caleb insists I keep at his place, some thick wool socks, a pair of work boots for me, and a way overpriced faux fur blanket that I ran my hand over then couldn’t stop Caleb from throwing in the cart too.
“Was that everything?” the woman asks us as she checks us out.
“Well, I think it’s everything,” I tell her, sounding a little shaken from the experience, like we did Supermarket Sweep in an upscale general store with a dude who lost his mind.
And the dude who lost his mind keeps calling me wifey.
Caleb just laughs and hands over his card.
I do my very best not to look at the total on the screen.
I can’t help myself.
As Caleb loads up the back of the cab, not letting me lift a finger, Gunner hops in and curls up tight.
“How much does coastal conservation work pay?” I ask, slightly horrified at how much he’s packing into the truck.
“I do all right,” Caleb says. “But my uncle left me a pretty big inheritance too, so don’t worry yourself about it, okay, Ivy? If it really bothers you, you can loan me some cash, but I can’t guarantee I’ll keep it for very long or that I won’t just turn around and spend it on you anyway.”
“Caleb, you don’t have to spend anything on me.”
“If it really makes you uncomfortable, Ivy,” he says, looking deep in my eyes, “no problem. No strings. But it makes me happy. And if it makes you happy too, I don’t see any problem with it.
Besides, you were firmly opposed to my idea of you being naked for the next week, so here we are.
” He holds up both hands in mock surrender.
I shake my head, too tired to think of any more arguments.
I’m not sure I have any at this point, anyway. “Come on, let’s just go home.” I’m exasperated and tired and slightly off-balance from all the feelings I’m having.
Okay, extremely off-balance.
A slow smile spreads across his face as he opens up my door for me and helps me climb inside the truck. He leans over me as I buckle in, one arm overhead.
“I like that you just called where I live home,” he says.
And with that, he slams the door shut.