Chapter 17 #2
“I take it back!” he yelled through a chuckle, throwing up his hands to avert a second piece of donut and almost smacking Shy, who was using their rudimentary carpentry skills to make a letter R out of plywood.
The letter, which was almost as tall as Dash, was going to be twined with the flowers and the paper vines and the long strings of clementines, and it was going to hold a few short ledges where Shy’s selection of summer romances could be propped up on unobtrusive acrylic stands.
That was, if Shy and Dash managed to figure out how to begin tackling the general construction of the build.
“That’s going well. I’m not even a little scared of being hit on the head with a flying hammer,” I remarked brightly as I went back to my spot next to Chase, earning myself a snort from Shy.
Unfazed by my commentary, if not by the task at hand, they got back to work.
“So sorry for the interruption,” I told Chase, who was cracking up. “You know how it is when you have hungry mouths to feed. The patriarchy makes monsters of us all.”
“No, I get it. Throwing food at your significant other is an underrated avenue of communication.”
“It’s definitely my love language.”
I let the word love settle around me, waiting for it to fill the air, expanding until I felt smothered by it.
I guess I was a little surprised when it didn’t.
Not that I had time to dwell on it. Aria had decided that Shy’d had enough to eat and she plunked down at the table, the yowling orange beast in her arms, to ask Chase about his trip.
I tried to focus on what he was saying, but it was kind of hard to pay attention to anything other than the sensation inside my chest. It was as if my heart had kind of lifted a little.
It wasn’t like soaring over the East River, exactly—it was steadier than that.
And it wasn’t just Dash, either. It was…
all of this. The humid warmth of the evening, the strings of light gleaming against the background of brick and tree leaves.
The Lady Cerulean song issuing faintly from Shy’s phone, underlaid by the murmur of conversation all around me and punctuated by the occasional burst of hammering.
Being in the city with friends and something to do and finally, finally feeling like I was on my way to belonging there.
And—I held on to the thought before it could skitter away—feeling like I belonged with Dash, too.
He had set down the hammer and was scraping his hair off his sweaty forehead.
It immediately flopped back into place, prompting me to reach into my pocket for the headband I’d stashed there in anticipation of when the humidity got the best of my curls.
I brushed the worst of the sawdust off his dark strands and eased the headband on. “Florals look good on you, Dashwood.”
He couldn’t hair-flip me with it pulled back, but the sparkle in his eyes and the slow, sweet smile that spread over his lips like Nutella on warm toast was practically lethal. In the sense that I could feel it killing off my ever-present urge to run away screaming.
His kiss connected with the spot just below my ear. “Know what else looks good on me?”
Tingles like champagne bubbles were gathering low in my abdomen, and I squirmed as he nuzzled the side of my neck. “Save it for when we’re not in public. And covered in sawdust.”
“What was that? Did you just say you wanted to be covered in sawdust?” Dash’s arms came around me and he rubbed his body all over mine, making me howl and Chase and Aria burst into hoots and hollers.
“You’re dead to me!” I yelped, trying not to laugh as I pushed him away.
“Only happy to oblige my lady’s request,” Dash said, grinning.
I rolled my eyes, then leaned in close to him again and gave him a kiss. “Just for that, I’m making you do my laundry next time we hit the laundromat.”
He caught me by the waist, holding me long enough to whisper in my ear, “If you wanted me to handle your panties, all you had to do was say so.”
I cracked up. “Dashwood, I’m shocked. What the hell’s gotten into you tonight?” Before he could say anything, I jammed my hand against his mouth. “Forget I asked.”
Retreating a few paces so that I wouldn’t get any more wood dust on me as Dash picked up a piece of sandpaper, I tried to keep the hearts out of my eyes as I watched him smooth down one of the curves in the giant R. “You’re in a good mood tonight.”
“I like this,” Dash said simply. His beautiful mouth turned up at the corners, and somehow the twinkles in his eyes were brighter than the lights strung all around the garden. “And I like you, too.”
I was trying to be strong, I really was. But could anyone even blame me for weakening under the full strength of that earnest warmth?
Maybe opening up to Dash didn’t have to be such a bad thing. I mean, at this point, I could reasonably trust Dash not to ghost me, right? Maybe—
“Anyone seen a huge roll of duct tape?” Shy called.
“I think it’s inside,” I said, and went to get it. Not like fast or anything. Or like I was trying to escape. Nothing to see here. Just being helpful.
Sure enough, the tape was where I’d seen it, perched haphazardly atop a towering pile of Harlequin Historicals.
I stuck my arm through the heavy roll like a bracelet and was about to turn back when I noticed that one end of the craft paper covering the store’s windows had become unstuck from the glass and was hanging down like half-buttoned overalls.
Tearing off a piece of tape, I went to stick it back up to keep anyone from peeking at our masterpiece-in-progress, which at the moment was nothing more than a stepladder and a couple cans of paint placed in the center of the denuded window.
I was reaching for the fallen corner when I became aware that there was someone standing outside, probably reading the poster advertising burlesque night, which Shy had stuck to the outside of the window.
The sidewalk was mostly dark, but enough light spilled through the craft paper that the person standing in front of Second Chance was fully illuminated and, once my brain had caught up to my skipping heart, impossible to keep from recognizing.
It was Milo, standing there like a bad omen, or a message from the universe. Or worse—a reminder that however good things appeared to be going, you never knew when you were going to be lied to and ghosted.
“Who was that?” Aria asked.
She had followed me inside, Kitty Marlowe screaming bloody murder in her arms, probably in protest at being forcibly removed from the chaos she’d been causing outside.
“Who?” I asked, smoothing my thumb so aggressively over the newly applied tape it was a wonder the window didn’t crack under my gentle touch.
She raised her eyebrow at me, clearly unimpressed by my lackluster attempt at nonchalance. “Whoever got you all rattled.”
I glanced back at the covered window, as if I’d just realized there had been someone on the other side. “Oh, just a ghost.”
“Wanna talk about it?”
I looked into her eyes, made an even more intense blue by the lime green and indigo of her bodysuit, and I hesitated for a beat. Then the door to the garden swung open, and Kitty Marlowe, sensing an opportunity for escape, wriggled out of Aria’s arms and streaked outside.
“No time,” I told Aria with forced breeziness, pointing at Dash as he came in carrying a carefully balanced tray full of individual LED lights dangling from transparent fishing thread. “We still have to hang all the fireflies.”
And look, I’m not proud of it, but I handed her the tape and asked her to take it to Shy so that I could help Dash with the fireflies.
I could feel her gaze on me for the rest of the evening, joined at times by Dash, who was perceptive enough to know that something had rattled me, if not exactly what.
The thing was, I couldn’t figure out why Milo was continuing to haunt me, not when I no longer had unresolved issues with him.
That day at the coffee shop, I’d told him everything I’d been burning to say ever since I’d caught him in his lie.
I’d moved on. I was happy with Dash, and with my new friends, and with this life I was building for myself.
And I swear, the only reason I had tears in my eyes was because I had accidentally walked into the Duke of Harding’s recommendations table and banged my hip on a sharp corner.
The collision was hard enough that a few of the attractively arranged books came crashing to the floor, along with the vintage flowered teapot holding a spray of silk flowers that Dash and Shy had added for, like, ambiance or something.
It was hard not to take it as another bad sign, but I grabbed the broom and a hard seltzer and made a joke out of it and it was fine.
I was fine.
It must have been close to eleven by the time we finished setting up the window and cleaning up the garden.
We were all dripping with perspiration and halfway to drunk on canned cocktails that had warmed as the ice in the tub melted under the brightness of the spotlights, and we were the kind of tired that makes you giddy and prone to giggling.
We all piled out on the sidewalk in a sweaty mass to admire the lit window.
It was a snapshot moment if there ever was one—the warm glow of the fireflies, swaying lightly, the dark, warm night pressing in around us, our reflections in the glass. Invisible threads connecting us to each other, and to the city, and to our dreams.
Dash’s fingers fluttered against mine, and I could tell he wanted to catch my gaze, and hold it, and smile one of his softer, intimate smiles and maybe even lean in to whisper something about snapshot moments, as if the memory of his upturned face, dappled with sunlight and leaf-shaped shadows, as he told me about his childhood game wasn’t still making my chest tight with emotion that I didn’t want to feel.
I angled my face away and took a sip from the White Claw I’d brought outside with me.