Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
On impulse, I cross the moat to buy a bouquet of zinnias in all the shades of the season, surrounded by wispy green shoots.
Bea’s text made it sound like she might need flowers. An “interesting” meeting is rarely a good meeting, and friends buy friends flowers all the time.
Sure, they do, buddy, a voice mutters in my head, Sure they do.
But the inner voice isn’t as cutting as usual. Even it seems to be coming around to the truth that there’s no going back. I’m in love with Bea, and I likely always will be, even if she decides it’s best for us to be just friends and co-parents from here on out.
I duck under the limbs of a live oak past the florist, and the front of the restaurant comes into view. I spot Bea waiting by the curb, and my feet forget how to function.
My lungs forget how to draw breath.
I freeze in the middle of the sidewalk, dumbstruck.
I keep thinking I’m prepared for how beautiful she is right now, but…fuck.
Tonight, she’s in a long orange dress I haven’t seen before, one that clings, showcasing every deadly curve. She’s paired it with a crocheted vest thing that does nothing to conceal the deep V at the front of the dress, where her cleavage is on full display. Her hair is down for the first time in days, hanging in glossy waves nearly to her ass, reflecting the string lights above the restaurant.
She looks like a 1970s movie star ready for her close-up.
Like a fairy cosplaying as a human for the night.
Like the only woman I ever want to take to dinner.
“Hey! There you are.” She smiles as she spots me, but it fades as I close the distance between us. “You okay? You look upset or something. Was practice shitty?”
“No, it wasn’t,” I say, my voice rough. “It was good, I’m just…” I trail off with a shake of my head. “You’re just too much sometimes, Bea. It’s like…staring straight into the sun.”
A flush creeps up her neck. A beat later, she leans in, pressing a kiss to my left pec with a “mwuah,” sound.
I exhale a soft laugh. “What was that for?”
“Because I’m too short to reach your cheek,” she says, with a shrug. “And because I really needed to hear that someone thinks I’m pretty today.” She holds my gaze for a chest-tightening moment before her focus drops to the bouquet I’d nearly forgotten I was holding. “Are those for me?”
“Of course,” I say. “Friends buy friends flowers, right?”
“The best friends do.” She takes them gently, cradling them like they’re something far more precious than zinnias. “Thank you, Blue. Seriously. Today was such a shit show, and I just… I really appreciate you.”
“Why was it a shit show?” I ask. “Checkers wasn’t on board with the changes you want to make to the sound?”
She rolls her eyes. “Oh, no. Way worse than that. Way, way worse. We didn’t even get to that part before it all went off the rails.” She shakes her head, laughing as she turns toward the restaurant. “But whatever, I’ll tell you all about it while we eat. Let’s grab a table. I’m starving, and Bean’s been craving Pad Thai since ten a.m. She was not happy about the itty-bitty cheese scone we had for a snack.”
She loops her arm through mine, leading me inside to the hostess stand.
I try not to read anything into it, nothing more than a friend grateful for support after a shitty day. But it’s hard when it feels so right to slide into a booth across from her.
And when I can’t remember what I wanted before I wanted her.
Chapter Seventeen
BEATRICE
He meant it.
Every word.
He wasn’t being cheesy or forcing a compliment or anything like that.
That’s the part that has me spiraling long after the server delivers our water and menus. Not the words themselves, really, but the look on his face when he said them.
Said that I was too much sometimes.
That looking at me was like staring straight into the sun…
Staring into the sun is a bad idea, obviously, but he didn’t say it like it was a bad idea. He said it like there’s nothing he’d love more than to go blind looking at me. And if that isn’t the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to anyone, I don’t know what is.
It’s certainly the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me, especially a guy who has been busting his ass to give me space. To keep things low-pressure between us. To be a friend and nothing but a friend.
Friends get friends flowers…
But we’re not just friends, and maybe we never have been.
Maybe this has always been love. Maybe it’s always been a question of “when,” not “if.” Maybe Blue and I were destined for the deep end, no matter how hard either of us tried to keep things in the kiddie pool.