Chapter 25
Molly
A Month Later
"Come on Magnolia Grace. We're gonna lose if you gutter this ball!" I yell at my best friend, annoyed that she keeps shaking her ass for my brother instead of bowl for us ladies that are on her team.
Surprisingly, we've taken to bowling one night a week with Lucy and Bryan. They're still together, and it annoys the shit out of Dakota, but I think it's cute as hell.
"I'm trying," Magnolia says, but she's laughing, and she throws a look over her shoulder at Levi that tells me exactly where her focus is and it is not on the lane in front of her.
"Magnolia Grace!" I say her full name, the way her mother used to when she was in trouble, and she snaps back around and actually lines up her shot this time. "Thank you."
"You're so bossy," she mutters.
"I'm competitive," I correct her. "There's a difference."
She rolls the ball and it goes straight and clean down the middle, and takes out nine pins, and I throw my arms up because that is what I needed from her fifteen minutes ago before we fell behind. "See? That's all I wanted."
"I got it," she says, spinning around with a bright smile. "One more."
"One more," I confirm, and I look over at the other lane where my brother and Dakota are standing together watching us, and I catch Dakota's eye and he shakes his head like he's not even a little bit sorry about the state of their scorecard, and I point at him with two fingers and then point at the screen where our scores are sitting, because I want him to look at the numbers and understand what is happening here.
He grins. He doesn't look at the screen.
Lucy is at my elbow. "They're not paying any attention to bowling," she says, with the energy of someone who has assessed the situation and found it amusing.
"I know," I say.
"Bryan keeps looking at me instead of lining up his shot."
"I know that too." I glance down the lane at Bryan, who is indeed watching Lucy in a way that is going to make this young man miss his spare by a significant margin. "How do you feel about it?"
Lucy tilts her head, considering. "Honestly? I don't hate it."
I laugh, and Magnolia comes back from retrieving her ball before taking her second shot and picking up the spare.
I do a small celebration that is probably excessive for a Tuesday night at the Laurel Springs Pine Social, but this is what a month of weekly bowling nights does to a person. You develop traditions.
The guys are down by fourteen when the final frames roll around, and there is a direct causal relationship between that deficit and the fact that Dakota spent the better part of the last two hours watching me line up shots in a pair of jeans that I wore intentionally and without a single ounce of shame.
He knew what I was doing. I know what I’ve been doing.
Magnolia definitely knows, because she suggested the jeans, and my brother made an unfortunate comment about them early in the evening that Dakota shut down with two words and a look that Levi accepted with surprising goodwill given the events of the last month.
Things between Dakota and Levi have found their footing again.
I watched it happen gradually, the way these things do when two people who have been friends long enough to know each other's faults decide that the friendship matters more than being pissed at each other.
They still give each other a hard time about it, which is how I know they're fine, because Levi only lets himself be teased about things he's actually made peace with.
Bryan misses the spare. As predicted.
Lucy pats his arm, which makes him look like he just won something more important than a bowling game, and I have to look away because watching a teenage boy be that transparent about his feelings is equal parts charming and a little embarrassing.
The final scores go up and us girls have won by seventeen pins, which is the largest margin yet.
I turn to Magnolia with the specific look we have developed for winning and she returns it with the same energy, and the two of us do a brief celebration that involves more movement than the setting probably calls for, but neither one of us care.
"You cheated," Dakota says, coming up behind me.
"We bowled better because we were actually paying attention to the lane," I tell him sweetly. "That's not cheating, that's just being better at the game."
"You wore those jeans on purpose."
"I wear these jeans all the time."
He looks at me like I have just said something that requires no further comment, and the look itself is the comment. I don't argue with it because he's right and we both know it.
Levi is putting on his jacket and Magnolia is tucking herself under his arm like she loves to do.
Bryan is gathering the bowling shoes with the dedicated helpfulness of a young man trying to make a good impression on everyone in the room simultaneously, and Lucy is watching all of it with the expression of someone who is very satisfied with how the evening has turned out.
We turn in our shoes and say our goodbyes to the woman at the front desk who has learned all of our names over the last four weeks, which is a very Laurel Springs thing to happen, and then we're all out in the parking lot together in the cool evening air that has finally started to feel like spring is actually coming.
Magnolia pulls me into a hug before she and Levi head to her SUV. "Good game," she says into my shoulder.
"Great game," I correct her.
She laughs, squeezing me once before she lets go, and Levi gives me a look over her head that is just his regular face but with slightly more softness in it than he used to let me see.
Since Dad got hurt, we’re much nicer to each other.
Then they're heading across the parking lot and it's just the four of us.
Dakota takes my hand.
With him, this is easy. We’ve done it enough times that it's a habit now. He does it without looking, fingers closing around mine while he's still talking to Bryan about something I wasn't tracking, and I look down at our hands for just a second before I look back up.
We start walking toward the truck, and Lucy and Bryan are a few steps behind us, and I can hear Lucy saying something to him that involves a lot of description and gesturing, which means she's telling a story, and I don't know which one but I know it's a good one because Bryan is already laughing before she gets to the end of it.
"Molly!" Lucy calls out from behind us.
I turn, and she's got both arms out to her sides and she's grinning with the full confidence of a girl who has been right about something for a long time and is finally getting to say so.
"I told you," she says, nodding at our joined hands with the expression of someone collecting on a debt. "I told you one day it'd be the two of you."
Dakota makes a sound that is somewhere between exasperation and the fondness he can't turn off when it comes to his sister.
I look at Lucy, this girl who has known before either of us was willing to say it, who called it in the parking lot of this exact building months ago and has been patient enough not to make it unbearable while she waited to be proven right.
"You told me," I agree.
She looks extremely pleased with herself, and she takes Bryan's arm and steers him toward the truck.
Dakota opens the passenger door for me, and I climb in, but he doesn't shut it right away. He just stands there in the space of the open door and looks at me in the way he has, the one that I spent months trying not to catalog too carefully because I knew what it would mean if I let myself.
"You happy?" he asks.
It's a simple question, and it deserves a simple answer. But nothing about us has ever been simple. I think about the last several months and everything they've held, the good and the hard.
"Happier than I've ever been," I tell him.
He holds my gaze for a beat, and the corner of his mouth quirks up all sexy and shit before he leans in and kisses me. The kiss is comfortable without any heat, but I still love it. Then he shuts the door and comes around to his side and gets in.
The parking lot of the Pine Social moves past us as he pulls out, and Laurel Springs is comfortable at this hour. All quiet and lit up in the peaceful way of a small town that knows exactly who it is.
“Love you,” I whisper to Dakota.
“Love you too,” he says back.
I lean back in the seat and watch Laurel Springs in the window as we drive. This little town is where we were born, where we grew up, where we fell in love.
It is just what it is.
And to us? It’s everything.