Chapter 20 #2
Dan’s younger brother has all the trademarks of a McBride, from the height and the ice-blue eyes to that thick, dark hair.
But while Dan is quiet and wears his height like an uncomfortable sweater, Owen is a walking, talking ray of sunshine, a golden retriever in human form.
He’s got his arm around the waist of Wyatt, Grace’s and my other best friend.
She’s grinning, her purple-tipped curls held back by a pair of hot-pink cat-eye sunglasses, her swirling tattoos peeking out from under a vintage band T-shirt she’s hacked up and sewn back together to fit her body like a glove.
The two of them could not look more mismatched or more in love.
“Hey, girlie-pop, what are you up to?” Wyatt asks, cutting her eyes over to Dan. I don’t know how long ago they spotted us, but if it was any amount of time at all, then Wyatt definitely saw the way Dan was just towering over me, the intensity of our gazes in that moment. Nothing gets by her.
But intense Dan is gone. So is the Dan who leaned casually against a brick wall and talked about his childhood. Now Dan is standing up straight, his shoulders tight, his hands pressed deep into his pockets. He looks like the human embodiment of a door that’s just been slammed.
“Just getting some ice cream,” I say, trying to catch Wyatt’s eyes, but they’re too busy roving over us.
She studies the two of us like we’re a murder board, taking in Dan’s posture, my flirty dress, the way I suddenly can’t figure out what to do with my hands.
If I don’t deflect—and fast—Wyatt and her powers of perception are going to read me for filth. “What about you guys?”
Whatever they’ve been up to must’ve been pretty good, because Wyatt immediately breaks into a wide grin, her suspicions suspended.
“Well, we’ve got some big news,” she says.
I drop my gaze to Wyatt’s left hand, because she and Owen, who danced around each other for months last year, have been attached at the hip ever since they finally admitted their sizable feelings to each other.
They didn’t even have to tell the rest of us, because they’d been walking around with big cartoon heart eyes and everyone else could see it.
I guess some people have to spend a little time being idiots before they can become lovers.
But Wyatt’s left hand is bare.
“Not yet, Grandma!” Wyatt cries, swatting at my arm.
“Ouch!” I cry, rubbing at the spot where her hand landed. Next to me, Dan lets out a low sound that damn near sounds like a growl.
“Someday,” Owen says, giving Wyatt a hot look that has her absolutely melting, but then he turns to us with a wide grin. “But first, we’re moving in together. We bought a house.”
Wyatt gives him a pointed look. “He bought a house, and I’ll be living there with him.”
“I bought a house for us, and I’m putting your name on the title, same as mine. It just passed inspection, and we’re closing in two weeks.”
I squeal, bouncing in my wedge sandals, then drag Wyatt in for a hug. “That’s great, you guys! I’m so happy for you!”
“Thanks, friend,” Wyatt says, but as she leans in close, burying her face in my hair, she whispers, “What the fuck is up with you and Lurch?”
When she pulls back, I give her a stern look that I hope says Cut it out, you meddler, but she just volleys one back that I’m pretty sure says I’m going to blow up your phone later, you absolute minx.
“Congrats,” Dan says. He nods in what I think is an attempt at brotherly love.
“Where is it?” I ask.
“It’s actually only a block from Archer,” Owen says. “It’s an old craftsman that needs some updating. The kitchen and bathrooms were last renovated in the seventies, so it has the finest avocado-and-burnt-orange color palate. The linoleum is old enough to collect social security.”
“And I do not care, so long as it means we won’t be woken up by a toddler screaming at five a.m. or your brother starting a new home renovation project at midnight,” Wyatt says.
Owen currently lives with his twin, Felix, a contractor with a penchant for hyperfixating on projects just long enough to get them started.
And things aren’t better at Wyatt’s house, which she shares with her younger sister, her baby niece, and her formerly estranged mother, recently released from prison.
The four of them have done some serious healing while crammed into the tiny house, but I can see why Wyatt is ready to get the hell out.
“McBride!” a teenager calls from the pickup window, and two heads whip around. Owen jogs toward the window and grabs two big cups, whipped cream and maraschino cherries spilling over the top.
“Wait, how did you get that so fast? You just got here!” I ask Wyatt.
“Brynne’s one of his patients.” She nods at the blond girl working the window. “Whenever Owen shows up, she knows to make an extra-thick chocolate shake, and when I’m with him, she makes two. My sweet man is an excellent tipper.”
Owen’s the beloved town pediatrician, so I’m not surprised that ice cream appears as if by magic when he arrives.
“We’re heading back home to celebrate,” Owen says with a grin.
“He means sex, and a lot of it.” Wyatt winks, and Owen blushes adorably. If I didn’t love them so much, I’d find this exchange absolutely disgusting. But I’m happy for them, truly. And not jealous. At all. Not a bit.
I glance up at Dan, whose face is still a closed book.
“See you later.” I wave and give Wyatt a stern look when she mouths We’ll talk with a pointed look at Dan.
It’s another ten minutes before we make it to the front of the line, and Dan maintains his frosty demeanor for every last one of them.
His discomfort is practically a living thing, its breath blowing my hair back.
I want to lead him back to the moment before his brother arrived, when he was just…
talking. When he didn’t look like he was measuring every word, carefully uttering as few as possible.
I ache to hear his voice again, to feel him open up like a safe, letting me see what treasures he’s got hidden inside.
“What can I get you, Miss Webber?” Brynne asks. I was her little sister’s kindergarten teacher last year, so now I’ll be Miss Webber to her until the day I die.
“I’ll have a strawberry shortcake cone,” I say, then turn to Dan, who shakes his head. “What?”
“Nothing for me,” he says to Brynne with a tight smile. Even when he’s reticent, he’s still always polite.
But I don’t want nothing for him, or from him. I want more.
“You can’t get nothing,” I say.
“I don’t really do sweets.”
Okay, a full sentence. A terrible full sentence, but a full sentence nonetheless.
“That’s…no. That’s unacceptable,” I say.
He shrugs. “I’m more of a savory guy.”
I roll my eyes. “That’s bullshit,” I say without thinking.
Brynne gasps behind the counter, and Dan’s eyes go wide.
Oh, so I guess I’ve hit the moment in the summer when my cursing ban fully falters.
But I can’t even be bothered to care, because suddenly I know exactly how I’m going to draw him back out.
“You know what’s not a good date? Making me eat ice cream by myself.
You picked this place, Dan. You’re getting ice cream. ”
Dan’s eyes narrow, suspicious, and I can tell he’s on the edge of shutting down. But then he says, “Okay, then pick something for me.”
I give him a long look, a smile unfurling across my face. Then I turn to Brynne and order a triple brownie delight.
“What the hell is that?” he asks as we walk away from the window and around the side of the candy-colored building to wait for my name to be called.
“You’ll see.”
It doesn’t take long for the sullen teenager at the window to holler my name. He hands me my cone—strawberry soft serve dipped in pink and white cake pieces with a white chocolate drizzle—then slides a bowl the size of a baseball cap across the counter.
“That’s yours,” I say to Dan, nodding at the mountain of ice cream topped with Oreos, brownies, hot fudge, whipped cream, and sprinkles. Three maraschino cherries perch perilously on top, glistening red in the sinking sun.
Dan stares at it for a long moment like it’s a bomb that requires defusing. Then he glances back at me over his shoulder, but I just give him a saucy little smile.
“Scared?” I ask, cocking a hip.
I half expect him to walk away, maybe even exit the parking lot, stomping silently down the road until he gets all the way back to his house.
But then his lips twitch, and I don’t know if it’s a trick of the light or if he’s getting feisty, but I swear I see a sparkle in his eye.
He reaches for the bowl, his biceps flexing as he lifts it, then turns and follows me to an open picnic table behind the Dairy Barn.
I settle in across from him and take a long, lascivious lick of my rapidly melting ice cream.
But Dan just stares at his bowl. “What the hell did you order for me?”
“Triple brownie delight,” I say around a mouthful of ice cream. Because this isn’t a real date, so who cares if I talk with my mouth full?
“What’s the delight? A sugar coma?”
“If you finish the whole thing, you get a free T-shirt,” I say. I nod at the back window of the Dairy Barn, which sports an array of faded, dusty T-shirts in the colors of the building.
“Lucky me,” Dan says.
“I would like to see you in the pink one,” I say.
Dan plucks a cherry off the top of his sundae and places it between his teeth. He snags my gaze with his, his lips quirking into a smile before he gives the stem a tug. “If you want to see me in the T-shirt, I’ll just buy the T-shirt,” he says.
My entire body goes molten, and I’m surprised my ice cream doesn’t melt into rivulets dripping down my wrist.
“Now, this is a good date,” I say, watching him scoop a heap of ice cream and baked goods onto his spoon.
“That’s what I like to hear.”