Chapter 23
I don’t know how much of that showed in my face. Something must have, because when Dash turned and saw me through the crowd, his lips parted.
And I think we started to drift toward each other, but I wanted him to stay in the center of it all because I’d come to say something and I wanted everyone to hear it.
Because I’d been trying so hard to avoid failing in public, and if I failed at this, too, if I failed at telling Dash I loved him, I wanted the world to know it.
Not to make this premiere all about me or anything.
I reached him when he was only a few steps away from Lady Cerulean. And I guess I should have prepared a speech or something, but this is me we’re talking about. Forever winging it. Though who knows—maybe telling someone you love them is the kind of thing you shouldn’t rehearse or prepare for.
None of that was what came out of my mouth, because of course it didn’t. I stopped in front of him, and I said, “I figured it was about time that I reenacted your favorite trope.”
His expression was unreadable, his brown eyes reflecting only the photographers’ lights. “I’ve never needed a grand gesture.”
“How about a grovel, then?” I took a deep breath. “Dash, I came here to tell you that I want to do the work. For myself mostly, but also for you. Because you’re worth feeling for.”
My very public declaration was becoming even more so as the ball attendees held up their phones and cameras, maybe thinking this was part of the proceedings—a skit or some other performance.
I focused on Dash, letting everything else fade into the background as I took another step that put me a handful of inches closer to him.
“I love how earnest and sweet you are. I love how watching you work is almost literal competence porn. I even love your horrifying coffee addiction. I… I could stand here and list all the things I love about you and they would number more than ten. Because the truth is, Dash, you’ve always been more than a buddy and more than the person I occasionally bone—you’re the one who makes me feel like I can fly. ”
He looked at me, perfectly still.
“And Dash,” I said, swallowing. “Dash, I love you.”
It was subtle, but I noticed it—the slight shift in the set of his shoulders. The way he eased not out of character, but out of the Dash that was forever performing for everyone around him. The way he became the Dash who existed mostly for himself.
And maybe, a little bit for me, too.
My mouth was so dry that I had to swallow again before I was able to ask, lowering my voice so that only he could hear, “You know how you told me you always have trouble asking for what you want? I need to know, Dash. What do you want?”
The smile that always seemed to lurk at the corner of his lips burst across his entire face.
“You,” he said, and his eyes were shining. “Just you.”
This time, I was the one who held out my hand.
When our fingers met, it was like fireworks going off inside me.
Like morning dew glittering in the day’s first rays of sunshine.
Like picnic blankets and fireflies and watching movies under the stars and three-dollar beers and running through Times Square in the dead heat of summer.
He used his grip on my fingers to pull me closer.
And then we were kissing. And it was wild how his touch could still make me feel like I’d been sprinkled in fairy dust, as shimmery and floaty as when we first met and every glancing touch made my body spin into an overreaction.
Underneath all that, though, there was a new sensation.
Or maybe it wasn’t new, maybe I’d just been trying my hardest to avoid noticing it.
Because when Dash and I kissed, it didn’t just feel like flying—it was like I had run so far that I had reached home.
All around us, people were clapping. It was as cinematic a moment as a moment could get. But it was also real, and true.
And scary, because there was still so much more I had to tell Dash.
Just not at that exact moment—a tinkling of lights and a change in the music indicated that the screening of the series premiere was about to start, after which the ball would begin in earnest. As people in black blazers gently began herding the crowd into the next room, Dash glanced around as if remembering where he was.
And who he’d come with.
Raking a hand through his hair, he looked at Lady Cerulean, still standing a few steps away. “Milly,” he said. Milly?! “I should…”
Lady Cerulean laughed at his obvious reluctance. “I’ll be okay, Your Highness,” she said with a subtle glance toward Indira. “You go with your girl.”
Taking one glance at the crowd still waiting outside, Dash and I ducked behind a life-sized cardboard cutout of the show’s main characters and found the door Indira and I had come in through.
And then we were walking out into a surprisingly warm night that felt like the end of summer and the beginning of a new season, our fingers threaded together and our costumes drawing the occasional glance.
“I guess this is where I ask you if you want to stay and figure things out with me. And maybe try to see if we could work as a couple—a real one.” I came to a stop, swiveling to look into Dash’s face.
Or so that he could look into mine, I guess, and see how much I meant what I was saying.
“I know things won’t be perfect, and I know I’m as liable to hurt you as you are to hurt me.
But if I do, I promise I’ll stick around long enough to work it out.
No more running, Dash. Not unless you’re running with me. ”
“That’s probably the most romantic thing you’ve ever said to me,” Dash teased.
“Oh, yeah? Then how’s this?” I came to a stop right there on the sidewalk behind Lincoln Center and said it again. “I’m so in love with you.”
“You finally figured it out, huh?” he said. “Took you long enough.”
The pad of his thumb grazed my jaw, and I drew in a sharp breath at the contact.
And then another when I saw that his composure had slipped.
That he was choosing, as he had before, to show me the parts of him that he kept from everyone else—including the naked longing that made his lashes flutter when he said, “I guess it’s pretty obvious by now that I have feelings for you. ”
“What feelings?” I demanded, reaching for his crisp white shirtfront and holding on, not caring if I wrinkled it because the Dash I loved wasn’t the perfect, polished, charismatic Dash he presented to the camera and everyone else.
The Dash I loved was the one who let all the layers of who he was to everyone else fall away until it was just him, standing in front of me.
He smiled. “All of them.”
It would have been the perfect moment for another kiss. Instead of lowering his face to mine, though, Dash reached into his pocket and pulled something out. “So, the real reason I talked myself out of going to burlesque night is that I had this whole plan to give you this.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I swear to God, Dashwood, if that’s an engagement ring—”
“It’s strings,” he said, with this bashful curl to his lips as he opened his hand and showed me what he was holding. “You said you wanted some, remember?”
My throat felt tight as I picked up the threads he’d carefully wound together into a bracelet. “You unbearable sap,” I said softly.
“A sap, huh? You know what you are?” Dash asked me.
“I have a good idea, but I think I’ll like your version better.”
“You’re like finding the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Only you’re made out of rainbow, too, all color and light and glistening raindrops.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and pulled me even closer, his lips brushing my earlobe when he said, “I love you, too, you know.”
Liquid warmth trickled through me. For the longest time, hope had felt like building a home on quicksand. Watching Dash smile down at me, I felt the ground firming up beneath me.
It was a while before we pulled apart. When we did, Dash linked our fingers together again and began pulling me down the street. “Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“To celebrate you finishing your screenplay—with a real scoop of strawberry ice cream. With syrup and sprinkles and cereal and everything you want loaded on it.”
I grinned at him. “Plus make-up sex?”
“Plus make-up sex.” Dash flipped his hair and paused to give me the kind of foot-popping kiss that would make Mia Thermopolis weak in the knees. “And maybe a happily ever after of our own?”
I stroked Dash’s shoulder blade, right where the words Happy endings, they never bored me were tattooed into his skin.
And I found myself confessing something I’d never told anyone, not even Yaz.
“I want it so badly,” I murmured. “A happily ever after. I feel like I’ve been chasing it for as long as I’ve been alive. ”
“You’re not the only one.” Dash lifted my hand to his lips to brush a kiss over my knuckles. “I was scared that maybe mine had passed me by.”
“The universe isn’t that cruel, Dash. You were always going to get your happy ending.”
And now, maybe, so was I.