Chapter 8
THE DUKE OF HARDING (wickedly)
I’ve already kissed you, my darling. What other liberties will you allow me? Might I trace the edge of your neckline with my fingertips?
D: The Duke’s getting sassy!
M: Girls don’t want flowers. They want dukes to touch their necklines.
D: I’ll keep that in mind.
M: Oh yeah? Anyone out there whose neckline you want to touch?
D: Maybe yours. You know, for research.
M: I’m telling HR.
D: What? How badly you want me to touch your jshasldh
M: Say neckline one more time and I’m coming over just to flick you on the forehead.
D: Maybe you should.
M: Come over? Or flick you in tender places?
D: Stop trying to seduce me, Mariel.
M: Then get back to work, Dashwood.
That Friday night found me hunkered in bed with my laptop and an open bag of chips.
Dash and I had quickly fallen into a routine of opening Google Docs at the same time and working together on our scripts, though sometimes our productivity devolved into conversations that were half role-play—though not the sexy variety—and half fan fiction of our own creation.
There was some very mild flirting, too, but honestly I don’t think anyone would count writing each other notes on Google Docs as anything other than friendly banter.
So anyway, I was sprawled in bed with a couple of paperbacks shoved under my laptop to prevent my thighs from burning, putting together the finishing touches on the script for the next video, when the cursor blinked and new text appeared on the blank bottom of the page.
Script number five is ready to go. Safe to say we have earned ourselves a break, Dash wrote.
Agreed. I hesitated for like two seconds before adding, Wanna go out for a drink?
I regretted it as soon as I saw the words, black against the whiteness of the screen. It was Friday night—Dash probably had plans, and that was probably what he meant by taking a break. And anyway, I had plenty of ice cream in the fridge and no money to spend on overpriced—
His reply came a second later. Hell yes. Meet me in 15?
Manhattan closets not being exactly spacious, I kept most of my clothes in a highly curated heap on the corner of my mattress.
It took me a few minutes to sort through the pile, but I finally emerged with a sleek lavender crop top and a pair of vintage shorts with a fluttery hem that hugged my hips and made my butt look even more round than usual.
It was too hot for more than a slick of gloss and a quick swipe of mascara.
And even though I couldn’t resist adding a little electric-blue eyeliner to make my eyes pop, my makeup was done in record time.
I slung a cross-body over my shoulder, a tiny thing shaped like a strawberry that was only big enough to hold the gloss and my keys, and ran down to meet up with Dash.
He was already coming my way, and yeah, my heart skipped when I saw the slow smile that slid over his face as he spotted me, almost halfway down the block.
He opened his arms as he walked toward me, as if he was that eager to see me even though we’d just spent the past several hours working together.
I walked right into his hug, my cheek pressed against his button-down shirt as he clasped me loosely, just long enough for me to catch a whiff of laundry detergent and citrus aftershave.
It was still enough for butterflies to invade my midsection and my knees to go a little bit weak.
I was in serious trouble.
Not that I showed it, though. I kept up a steady stream of chatter as we took off toward one of the bars on Ninth Ave. It wasn’t all that busy yet, but the music was so loud that Dash had to shout our order at the bartender.
Snatching my shot from the bar practically before the bartender set it down, I knocked it back and slammed the glass back down, gasping, “It’s Leo season, baby!”
Dash downed his own shot. “That hasn’t technically started yet, I think.”
“Spoken like a true Virgo,” I scoffed.
“… I’m not a Virgo.”
“And I have no idea what I’m talking about.”
I threw him a grin as I hopped up onto a stool.
My knee grazed his jeans, and I’d be lying if I said that electricity didn’t travel all the way up my leg and into the seam of my panties.
I almost fell off, but Dash reacted quickly, stabilizing me by gripping my thighs, just below the hem of my shorts.
And get this—he apologized for grabbing me. Considering that I wanted to rub my leg all over his, he truly had nothing to worry about.
So there I sat, perched on a barstool while he stood next to me reaching for the beers the bartender had placed next to our shots, my thighs tingling.
And I swear, my brain must have stopped working for a few minutes, because the next thing I knew, Dash was telling me about why he’d decided to move to Hell’s Kitchen.
“I thought about staying in Brooklyn after ending things with my ex,” he said. “But I wanted to put as much distance as possible between me and… maybe not the relationship, but the person I was in it.”
I nodded my understanding. “Reinvention by relocation.”
“Right. I stayed in that relationship much longer than I should have. And when I finally saw that I needed to break away, I wanted as clean a break from her as possible.”
“Did it work? The reinvention?”
“Wouldn’t be here if it hadn’t.”
He gave me a disarming little smile, and come on. There was no way he didn’t know the effect he had on people. Or, like, on me specifically.
To distract myself, I started telling Dash about the time I’d gone down to Brooklyn for an errand and gotten lost. Within the span of like half an hour, I had walked through the hypermodern high rises of downtown Brooklyn and into the movie-set brownstones of Park Slope, and ended up in industrial-looking Gowanus.
“It’s one of the things that bowls me over about this city, how it feels like it holds a bunch of cities—or even countries,” I added, thinking of Little Italy and Chinatown.
Reddish-pink light fell on his cinematic profile, molding to his lips as he said, “It’s true what they say about this city having a little bit of all you could ever want.”
“No palm trees—that I know of—but I feel like it’s just a matter of time before they take one of the satellite islands, like Governors or Roosevelt, and turn it into a mini Miami. Then New York City will truly have everything.”
“Speaking of Roosevelt, have you been?”
I shook my head. “I went to Governors last month and tried to have a picnic, but it started raining and I ended up leaving like ten minutes after I got there.”
Dash checked the time on his phone. “It’s only ten—we can make it there and back before the last tram if we hurry.”
I swallowed the last of my beer and slammed down the glass. “Let’s go.”
Dash gestured to the bartender, telling him that we wanted to close out our tab, which he had put on his credit card. Then he turned to me and said, “Maybe next time we’ll plan ahead.”
Next time.
I’m not gonna lie. The tingles of excitement summoned up by those two little words followed me all the way to the closest subway station.
We made it to the tramway at 60th and Second, humidity blasting over us as soon as we left the air-conditioned subway car.
And then we were getting into the tram and it was swinging out over the East River, which was sparkling in the moonlight.
On the track next to us, another little red tram with the words Roosevelt Island printed on it in white was making its way back to the station.
I watched it go by, Dash’s and my reflections superimposed on the glass of our tram, and I felt oddly weightless, as if we weren’t suspended in a complicated network of steel cables, but floating in the air.
Like the ground had been pulled out from under me, but in a good way.
Once we reached the island, we strolled along Main Street, which looked disappointingly like every other street in the city. Then Dash motioned me around a grassy area. “Through here.”
The thing about New York is that as beautiful as it can be during the daytime, night is when it really shines.
There it was, the New York City skyline, almost more beautiful in person than it was on the screen.
The buildings looked like they were made up of millions of tiny squares of light, each one of them reflected on the gently lapping water of the East River.
I picked out the buildings I recognized—the Empire State bathed in violet light, the Chrysler glittering and sharp as it thrust into the darkened sky.
I folded my arms against the railing, letting the sight wash over me. “Does it ever get old?”
“Not for me,” Dash said, leaning next to me. A few faint whiffs of his aftershave wafted into the air, discernible even over the miscellaneous scents of the city and the river, and so delicious that I felt my entire body tilting toward him.
“I hope it never does. That no matter how long either of us live here, we never get so used to the sights that we stop noticing them, or appreciating them, or feeling this… this…”
“Wonder,” Dash supplied, his voice not quiet so much as reverent.
I glanced up at him only to realize that he was looking down at me. And it was one of those moments when everything goes still and quiet and the world fades around you and you hardly dare breathe for fear of falling back into reality.
I could have let it carry me away. Maybe, in the movie version of my life, I would have. Dash’s gaze was soft, and he was so close, and there was a little smile hiding in the corner of his lips that was just begging to be kissed.
My heart was racing in complete contradiction to my pulse, which was fizzing inside my veins. I felt like I was made up of lights—not the steady ones beaming down from the buildings, but the shimmery reflections they cast on the rippling water.
And maybe I was kidding myself, but I would have bet anything that Dash felt the same way.
Only he was probably sensible enough not to act on it.