11. Chapter 11 #2
“Thanks, but you have too much going on,” I say. Emma works at the library directly across Main Street from the inn and does all the fundraising for it, even though it’s not her job. You’d think that would mean I see her all the time, but somehow we’re both always too busy.
“Dom has way more time on his hands,” I say.
“Actually, I don’t, Rosaline,” he says, and I stick my tongue out at him.
“Don’t call her that,” Emma chastises. She knows why I don’t like the name.
She turns back to me. “But you’re running the festival too.”
I wave her words away. “It’s going just fine.”
It’s basically a lie, but one I tell my sister easily. If I tell Emma that I’m basically drowning and the only thing keeping me afloat is a handsome man staying at my inn, she’d be over at the inn running herself ragged, trying to do all the things.
We’re a lot alike in that way.
Dominic falls into step beside me as we head toward the sidewalk, while Emma and my dad continue toward the parking lot. “Thanks to Dom, huh,” he mutters. “You know Emma will figure it out.”
“And then she’ll be worried about me. Neither of us wants that to happen, so keep your piehole shut.”
Since our mom died, Emma has taken on a lot of responsibilities that aren’t hers.
Dominic huffs out a breath. “That’s true.”
At the corner, I side-hug him goodbye and start down Main Street toward the inn. Behind me, I can hear car doors shutting as my family heads home.
For one strange second, I want to turn around and admit it all in one of my Rosie rambles: I’m drowning in debt, my inn isn’t close to finished, and there’s a leak in the Cinderella room.
I’ve barely done anything for the festival and have a list a mile long.
Oh, and I shared a bed with a hot man last night, and I liked it a lot.
Byeeeeeeee! Then I could just keep walking before any of them had time to respond.
But I won’t. Because I know exactly what will happen if I do. The Harpers would descend on the inn and make my struggles their problem. It’s what they do.
It’s hard to keep it all from them. But I have to. Someday I’ll admit it all, when it’s over and everything has turned out just fine.
Because it will. It has to.
“This was not terrible,” Dean says, eating the last bite of his pot pie as he sits next to me at the island.
“See? I told you.”
We were working so hard on the Rapunzel room that when dinnertime rolled around, Dean didn’t want to stop. So I suggested we heat something up for dinner. His idea was to order out from the Maple Bar and Grill, but I convinced him to let me make dinner this time.
So that meant frozen pot pies.
I’d like it to be noted that he’s eaten two of them. Whether it was out of sheer hunger or the fact that he liked them more than he’s willing to admit, I’ll probably never know. This is Dean we’re talking about here. He did say they weren’t “terrible,” so I’m calling it a win.
“My mom used to make these from scratch. This is the sad version,” I say, picking up my empty pie tin and dropping it on my plate.
“What was she like?”
“She was amazing,” I say. I’m always happy to talk about my mom, to keep her memory alive.
“She took care of everybody. Not in a big, obvious way. She just noticed things. She’d know somebody was having a hard week before they said a word about it, and then there’d be a casserole on their porch.
She’d bake cookies and send the three of us out with plates for the neighbors.
I didn’t always want to do it, but I remember feeling amazing after I did. ”
Dean watches me for a minute.
“She sounds like she was a great mom,” he finally says.
“The best,” I say.
“How did she pass?”
“A stroke,” I tell him. “It was during my senior year. She held on until the next October, but she never really recovered.”
“That must have been hard,” he says.
“It was.”
He stares at me for a beat before leaning back against the stool and stretching, arching his back as he lifts his arms overhead.
“I’m exhausted,” he says.
“Sleep bad last night?” I ask him, giving him a smirk.
“Yes,” he says. “Someone was wrapped around me like an octopus.”
I gape. I didn’t think we’d ever bring that up. I figured the non-conversation earlier would be the end of it.
“Excuse me,” I say. “I’m pretty sure it was the opposite.”
“How so?” He’s half smiling again.
“You were holding on to me like I was the last life raft on a sinking ship. And for the record—when I tried to get up, you pulled me right back in and mumbled something in my ear.”
“You didn’t seem to mind,” he says, his voice dropping low and quiet, the teasing replaced by something else that’s making my heart forget that its job is to keep me alive.
We stare at each other, and the whole room goes tight and electric, and my body wakes up to something I haven’t felt in two years—something I’d honestly started to assume was broken.
For one reckless second, I think about closing the gap. Just leaning in. Being the kind of woman who leans in.
But . . . I’m not that kind of woman.
Then Dean’s lips pull upward again, breaking the spell. The tease is back.
I’m not sure if I’m relieved or disappointed. I’m relievappointed.
I point to his mouth. “Do you ever smile?”
His brows pull down, the straight line of disapproval back.
“What do you mean? I smile all the time.”
I shake my head. “No. Like, fully smile.”
“I do.”
“No, you don’t.”
He holds out a hand. “I literally just smiled at you.”
“That half smile you do with no teeth?”
“Half smile?”
“Yes,” I say. “That’s your smile?”
He tilts his head. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“A full smile means showing teeth,” I say, and then demonstrate for him. It’s exaggerated and nothing like my real smile—more like the smile-on-demand one I used for school pictures.
“Like this,” I say through the forced grin.
Dean pulls his lips back and attempts to copy me. It’s . . . unsettling.
“Oh no,” I say, already laughing. “You may stop that immediately.”
He tries again. Somehow, it’s worse.
“No. Oh, gosh.” I laugh harder. “Please put that away. You look like a serial killer trying to seem approachable.”
That does it. He laughs. Not one of his quiet little chuckles, but a deep, unguarded laugh that finally gives me the full smile—teeth, crinkled eyes, and all.
There’s no dimple. But somehow that makes it even better. Because it’s not the smile I invented for him. It’s the real one.
“There!” I say, pointing at his face. “Now, that’s a smile. Why don’t you do that more often?”
He shrugs, still chuckling. “I guess you’d have to be funnier.”
“I’m funny. All the time. It’s your lack of humor that’s the problem.”
“I’ll work on that.”
He gives me the half smile again, but it isn’t the smug one from ten seconds ago. It’s the other one. The one from before, when he told me I didn’t seem to mind.
My stomach flips, and my face goes hot. Now that I have all the facts, I think this one is my favorite.
We say good night, and Dean goes back to the Sleeping Beauty room. The room he’s been staying in every night except for one. Which I need to stop thinking about.
I get in my own bed, and it isn’t until I’m lying there in the dark that I realize I never changed my sheets today. I stripped the Hendersons’ bed and remade it and never once thought about mine.
I roll toward the center, not hating this mattress as much as I usually do. Just hating that I’m in the middle of it by myself. No legs tangled. No arms wrapped tight around me.
It still smells like him.