Chapter 15
Screech, rewind.
My heart was full of Dash? No, I wasn’t deluded enough to think I was in love with Dash.
I’d just gotten caught up in the moment, like I always did.
I was the person who cannonballed into pools without judging the depth, who eagerly threw herself headfirst into situations without considering the consequences.
I wasn’t in love—I was just high on the rush of yet another beginning.
When Dash and I met up a few days later to work over lunch, he couldn’t wait to tell me about how he’d spent the past couple of days hanging out at the bookstore with Shy, refining his ideas for the window display.
“I think it might become a seasonal thing,” Dash said as we exited the Chinese restaurant where I’d just inhaled half my weight in dumplings.
It had rained while we were at lunch, and humidity still hung suspended in the air, adding fuzzy halos to the lights of the city and making everything look diffused.
Everything, that was, except for Dash’s enthusiasm.
“I’d call it a gig, but Shy’s not really paying me. ”
“You sound so excited, I’m pretty sure you’d pay them for a chance to decorate their windows.”
Dash gave me a sheepish grin. “I wouldn’t rule that out.
I can’t wait for Valentine’s Day,” he added dreamily, and I froze for a second before realizing that he was talking about decorating.
He launched into a long description about how he wanted to put together a display based on Soraya Salcedo’s pirate romances.
Partly because a pirate theme would be unexpected and would stand out among all the red and pink, but also because of this one detail in her latest book, where the main character steals a ship from her love interest to go searching for a mythical jewel called the Kraken’s Heart, which he wanted to make on a friend’s 3D printer.
I listened to Dash tell me all about how he could make seaweed out of corrugated cardboard, so caught up in his enthusiasm that I almost didn’t flinch when he gave my wrist a questioning graze with one of his fingers before his hand slid over my smaller one.
“This is just so much fun. All my favorite things blended together—art, romance novels, and puns,” he said, and I couldn’t help but hear the slight hitch in his sentence when I moved my hand at the last minute to get a ChapStick.
My backpack was a fuzzy stuffed bear with a zipper so tiny, it kept getting lost in the fur. It took me a few moments to find it as we paused at a crosswalk, and another handful of seconds to locate the small tube rolling around the bear’s soft interior.
“I shudder to think what kind of pun you could come up with for a Valentine’s display about pirates,” I said lightly. “Please don’t tell me you’re thinking of naming it Under the Seamen.”
His snort was followed by a brief pause. I glanced up at him as I finished smoothing the ChapStick on my lower lip, and immediately felt the need to duck and cover—he was looking earnest again.
“I feel like I should thank you again for telling Shy I could do the window. I doubt I would’ve had the courage to say anything.”
A small smile was playing over his lips—not his leading man smile, but something a little more crooked, a little more bashful and uncertain. I wanted to surge up on my tiptoes to kiss it. But buddies who bone didn’t kiss each other’s smiles, and I had to keep reminding myself that was all we were.
“I can’t believe you’re cool with me putting you on the spot like that,” I said instead, tucking the ChapStick away. “Because I know I can be so impulsive and, you know…”
Too much.
“Generous? Creative? Cute?” Dash said teasingly, then shook his head.
“Honestly, maybe I was a little taken aback in the moment. But I like the idea of having another creative outlet outside the Duke of Harding and cosplaying in general. And this kind of design isn’t just what I chose for my major. It’s…”
He spent a second or two grasping for words, his fingertips on my elbow guiding me away from a parking meter I hadn’t noticed.
“It’s its own kind of performance, I guess,” he finally said. “Another way of me making stuff for other people to look at.”
“Which gets your rocks off,” I said.
Dash snorted. “If you want to put it that way. What with the modeling and the cosplaying and all of it, I’d forgotten how much I used to like designing.”
“Until the second Shy mentioned the window, and then you were burning with desire. You can’t deny it,” I teased him, leaning into his grip. “I saw it on your face. You heaved a dreamy sigh and everything.”
The hand on my elbow drifted to my waist. “I’m pretty sure I didn’t do any sighing.
But yeah, I immediately wanted to do it.
But I probably wouldn’t have said anything, hence me thanking you for being the one to say it.
” He spread his hands and said, with his voice lowered like he was confessing to something embarrassing, “I have a hard time asking for what I want, sometimes. It can be nice when someone does the asking for me.”
I’m not gonna lie—it was a relief to hear that. “Hey, if nothing else, you can always count on me to open my big fat mouth. I’m just happy it worked out for once.”
“Yeah, Shy thinks all of this could really make a difference—the window, but also your ideas for a treasure hunt. They’re already talking about driving upstate this weekend for an estate sale that’ll supposedly have a lot of vintage romances for sale.
” Dash steered me around a fallen ice cream cone that had melted into a puddle, turning it a cool shade of orange.
“And Aria’s just happy that she won’t have to badger Shy into paying attention to the windows. ”
We headed up to his apartment to keep working.
I claimed a corner of his couch and tucked the skirt of my maxi dress around my thighs, then beckoned to Dash to come sit with me.
So we could look at my screen together, not for cuddles, but try telling him that.
He took a running start and bounded onto the couch next to me, wriggling until his head was on my lap, butting up against my hand like a golden retriever in desperate need of scritches.
We were nothing if not professional.
“I got you something. Here,” he said, using his long arms to reach for a pink gift bag on the floor without moving from my lap. “A scoop of strawberry.”
It wasn’t ice cream. I pushed aside the tissue paper and found myself staring at a fuzzy pink beret.
It took me a second to remember the crack I’d made about looking like a big scoop of vanilla ice cream that day we went thrifting.
It had been such an offhand thing, a tiny moment… and it was so like Dash to remember it.
Gifts weren’t a part of our arrangement. But I admit it—I melted a little. Dash was so wholesome and sweet and I always appreciated a good accessory. It didn’t have to be any deeper than that.
“Still looking for a matching cape,” Dash said, shrugging as if to look casual, but completely unable to hide the pleased flush on his cheeks.
I put the hat on, heroically refraining from making a joke about him licking me up.
And then I leaned down to kiss his flushed cheek, my attention suddenly consumed by the devastating curl the kiss had given to his lips.
My fingers sank into his thick hair. I grabbed a fistful and tugged until he lifted his head far enough to kiss me.
His lips slid against mine, tasting faintly of coffee and sugar, and I wanted so badly to let myself be devastated, quietly and thoroughly, by the tenderness in it.
For a couple of minutes. Then I got down to business.
“I emailed Chase the first couple of scripts, and barring a couple of notes, he thinks they’re perfect. He says he’s ready to start shooting content once he gets back next week. I can make the final adjustments and have it ready by burlesque night so we can go over it before his performance.”
Dash nodded.
“Actually, maybe not. Yaz will be there, so it probably won’t be the best time to talk business.”
I gave a little wiggle, which had the unintended consequence of jostling Dash around. Not that he seemed to mind—he seemed pretty comfortable with his head pillowed on my thighs.
I was still a little apprehensive—read, utterly and completely freaked out—by the way Yaz seemed to have checked out for the past week. But she hadn’t canceled her trip, so that was something.
“I can’t wait for Yaz to meet you,” I blurted out.
There it was again, that weird little blip I had noticed the last time I’d said something about the two of them meeting.
Sitting up, he busied himself putting away the gift bag. “She knows about the spicy videos, right?”
“Yeah, she knows.”
“And she’s okay with it?”
I studied his face. “What’s going on?”
“I just… I know how close you two are and how much her approval means to you.”
I didn’t miss the flicker in his eyes. Or the breath that he drew in, slightly deeper than normal.
And I pushed away a thought about how he hadn’t said anything about me meeting his family, even his grandmothers.
And how he left the room whenever he called them.
Which was fine, because we were keeping things casual.
So casual that I hadn’t even told Yaz about us.
“You have nothing to worry about. If Yaz will disapprove of anyone, it’ll be me. For, well, being me.”
I was sure I’d hit on the right combination of breezy and self-deprecating, but all my remark did was make Dash frown.
“That’s not great either,” he said, scraping a hand through his hair, his radiant mood from earlier dimmed and irritation taking over.
“What do you mean?”
“The way you talk about your family. It sounds like they don’t appreciate you. Or that they make you think that there’s nothing about you to appreciate. Because Mariel, you’re so creative and fun and—”