Chapter 20
CARSON
Dan settles into the driver’s seat, the engine purring as we pull away from the curb.
He’s wearing aviator sunglasses, his wrist draped casually over the top of the steering wheel.
If this were a real date, the sight of him would have me climbing over the center console to straddle him right now.
He looks like how I used to fantasize my Ken dolls would look in the driver’s seat of my Barbie convertible if they were human.
It’s too much, and I squeeze my thighs together to alleviate the ache between them.
It only takes about five minutes to get to the Dairy Barn, a walk-up ice cream stand on the outskirts of town that’s open in the summer.
It’s an old wooden structure that’s been here for decades, built to look like a barn, but each wall is painted a different pastel color.
There’s a copse of trees on one side and a cornfield on the other.
It’s Friday night, so there’s a decent line of families and teenagers on dates.
At the counter, haggard-looking teens scoop ice cream.
I remember longing to be one of them in middle school, fantasizing about meeting the love of my life while scooping mint chocolate chip in the heat, but my mother always made me help out at the church during the summers.
I throw the passenger door open, but I’ve barely started to climb out before Dan appears, towering over me, a hand out. My thumb brushes over the back of his warm, strong hand as I take it.
Fake date. Fake date. Not real. For research purposes.
“We used to come here every Sunday after church when I was kid,” I say, because Dan is doing his silent thing again, so of course I’ve come down with a major case the nervous chatters.
“It was the only time my parents would let me have dessert. They were sort of granola heads, though my mom cared less about health and more about toxic diet culture. Classic almond mom shit. I always wanted to order the biggest, chocolatiest thing on the menu, but she would tell me that was too much sugar. A plain vanilla cone was it for me. When Grace and I started coming here by ourselves in high school, I embarked on a mission to try everything on the menu. Spoiler alert: my favorite thing wasn’t a plain vanilla cone. ”
I finally pause my monologue of embarrassing childhood memories, taking a breath before I also tell him about the time I wet my pants riding the Scrambler at the county fair when I was in fifth grade.
Dan and I join the line behind a family of five, three wild little kids running in circles around their haggard parents. They’re loud, and Dan has to step out of the way before the littlest one crashes into his knees.
“So sorry,” the mom says with a wry grin. She grabs her son by back of his collar. “We should definitely be putting more sugar in him, huh? That’ll make things much better.”
Dan gives her a tight-lipped smile and a nod, but he doesn’t say anything.
He stuffs his hands in his pockets, his shoulders bunched.
The obvious explanation is that the kid annoyed him, but as I watch him, I realize that’s not it at all.
It was the mom, the interaction with a stranger.
The line of people in this small town, all gossiping and looking at each other.
I take a step forward, angling my body so I cocoon him in a little circle that’s just us.
“Did you come here a lot as a kid?” I ask, then immediately second-guess myself. “Sorry, you don’t have to tell me. I mean, we can just be quiet.”
Dan’s eyes flick up, and I see him realize that despite my small stature, I’m blocking him from the rest of the line. I watch his shoulders relax as he breathes out; in this moment, despite the crowd, it’s just him and me.
And then he speaks.
“My brothers and I used to ride our bikes out here every Friday night when we were kids.”
I remember that, of course. I loved escaping my quiet, watchful home to spend time at the fun and chaotic McBride house.
Grace’s brothers were always loud, always banging around.
Sometimes I’d convince my mom to let me spend the night there, and Grace and I would watch the four McBride boys ride off into the night, leaving us behind with Mr. McBride, who usually fell asleep on the couch watching baseball.
Mrs. McBride died when Grace was born and Dan was just eight years old.
The McBride boys had to grow up quickly, and Mr. McBride was left to care for an infant and four rowdy boys on all his own.
They definitely got to do things my watchful, worried parents never would have allowed.
To say nothing of the superior snacks full of artificial colors and flavors that lived in their pantry. Were it not for the McBrides, I’d never have been introduced to the wonders of Pop-Tarts and Fruit Roll-Ups and Cookie Crisp.
“I remember watching you guys ride off with flashlights in your back pockets, hoping that cars would see you,” I say.
“Probably not the safest,” he admits. “I can’t believe we never got in an accident.”
“I bet Felix was a mess out there,” I say.
“His head was always on a swivel, distracted by every little thing.”
“He’s still like that,” I add.
“If we hadn’t been there to keep an eye on him, he probably would’ve followed a butterfly and wound up in Illinois.”
“What did you used to get here?” I ask.
He thinks for a moment, like he can’t remember. “Root beer float,” he finally says.
“Seriously? Were you born sixty-five years old?”
He makes a mock-wounded face. “Hey, don’t yuck my yum.”
“I’m just saying, you had the entire Dairy Barn menu at your disposal and no parental supervision, and you ordered root beer floats?”
Dan shrugs. “I like what I like,” he says, and then I swear his eyes sweep the length of my body in such a way that I feel his gaze in my bone marrow. Goose bumps spring up all over my skin, and I have to swallow hard to keep my cool.
“Grace and I were always so jealous that you guys got to run off,” I say, thankful that I manage to get the sentence out despite the pounding of my heart. “We tried to follow you around like little ducklings.”
“Yeah, we were assholes for ditching her all the time. We just always thought of her as so fragile, and none of us wanted to be responsible for her.”
The McBride family is a huge part of my childhood memories, but hearing Dan talk about the past feels precious. Like holding a firefly in your cupped hands, waiting for it to illuminate again. I want to hear more. I want to see all those memories through his eyes.
“Luckily she had you,” he says.
“You remember me from back then?” I ask, because it’s the first time he’s ever referred to the fact that he’s known me since I was a kid.
That I was there too, not as loud as Grace about wanting to be included but yearning for it nonetheless.
I figured he’d barely noticed me, and in his defense, it wasn’t like I had my eye on him back then, either.
Or I did, but I had my eye on…well, everyone.
I was a stereotypically boy-crazy little girl who looked at each of the McBride brothers and imagined what it would be like to be on his arm.
Together, they were just this nebulous blob of hot guy that was always around but never available to me.
Dan laughs. “I remember you. Always there to back up Grace when she wanted to play video games with us, even though I’m pretty sure you had no interest in Assassin’s Creed.”
I roll my eyes. “Less than no interest. Frankly, those graphics make me motion sick. But I’ve always been a loudmouth where my best friends are concerned. And I am definitely still salty that you never took us with you on your bike excursions.”
He shrugs. “They weren’t very exciting.”
“Excuse me, you just told me you got to eat ice cream without parental supervision every Friday. Sounds pretty good to me.”
“I’m sorry your mom made you feel like you shouldn’t eat dessert,” he says.
I suck in a breath. I wasn’t prepared for that.
“She was just looking out for me,” I tell him. I didn’t mean to barf out all that minor childhood trauma. I certainly don’t want the pity. Not from him.
But Dan’s face isn’t filled with pity. It’s serious—more serious than I’ve ever seen it, which is really saying something.
“Anyone who ever made you feel like you were less than perfect was seriously misguided,” he says, his voice a rumble that I feel under my skin.
“I know you’ve had a bunch of shitty dates lately, so maybe you haven’t heard it in a while.
But please hear me now when I say that you’re gorgeous, Carson. An absolute knockout.”
Dan looks at me with an intensity that makes all the sights and sounds around me fade away.
Suddenly it’s just him and me and this one hot look.
I stand so still I can feel my blood rushing through my veins.
Everything in my body is telling me to reach up and feel his five o’clock shadow against my palm, to stroke a thumb over his mouth, to rise up high on my tiptoes and press my lips to his.
I swallow hard, that little voice inside my head reminding me that this isn’t real. It’s just a fantasy that a man would take me out, buy me ice cream, and tell me I’m beautiful without showing me pictures of fish he’s hooked or telling me about treasury bonds.
My breath feels ragged, and I squeeze my fists at my side. My nails bite into my palms, the pain a reminder not to get carried away.
I finally manage to summon a smile. “You’re putting on a hell of a master class in how to be a good date,” I say, forcing out a little laugh, like I’m in on the bit.
Dan blinks, the fire in his eyes flickering. “Hey, that isn’t—”
“Hey, you guys!”
I don’t get to find out what it is or isn’t, because Owen and Wyatt are here.