Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108862 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 544(@200wpm)___ 435(@250wpm)___ 363(@300wpm)
A flash of green.
I look to the side.
Wyatt stands on his front porch looking back.
Green umbrella opened in front of him pointed down—green with swirly pink flowers all over it. Seriously, it isn’t enough that he works at a flower shop? He’s gotta have a floral umbrella, too?
Why do I find that so fucking adorable?
I don’t say or do a damned thing, but suddenly he walks down his driveway, across the sidewalk, and up to the front of my porch with his cute floral umbrella.
His eyes shine through the rain.
His lips curling into half a smile.
Wearing a plain t-shirt that’ll have his cute floral apron over it when he gets to work.
Hair looking like he fixed it in the house only for the humid, rainy, gusty air to fuck it up the second he stepped outside.
He asks me something.
I have no idea what. I’m mesmerized, staring at him.
He asks again. The same question, I think.
“Huh?” I grunt, snapping out of it.
Third time, his face goes flat and his voice hardens. “Do. You. Want. A. Riiide …?” He really stretches out that last word, cupping his hands around his mouth.
I frown. “Nah, I’ll walk.”
“In this? Don’t be ridiculous.”
“I got legs.”
“Those legs are gonna be underwater.”
“So I’ll swim.”
“Diego.”
I shuffle my feet, annoyed for whatever reason.
Then my gaze snaps to his again.
I remember my helpful little one-sided conversation with the orchid in the kitchen last night.
“Fine,” I grunt, then step off the porch under his umbrella.
He walks me to his car.
Our shoulders keep bumping.
I didn’t realize how close we’d be walking under this thing.
Cuddled up together.
His face next to mine.
Arm around my waist.
Wait. His arm is around my waist? When’d that happen?
Then we’re by his car. He opens the passenger side door. I slip in. The door shuts. Muffled rain tapping the windows and the roof. Then he opens the driver’s side and in he comes, too, shaking off the umbrella as best as he can before pulling shut his door.
Even in the car, it feels like our shoulders are just as close as they were beneath the umbrella.
Is his car tiny? Or am I huge?
“Don’t know what you, um …” He fiddles with the radio. Then leaves it on some country song I don’t know. “This guy’s all I seem to hear them play lately. Do you like Chase Holt?”
“Dunno who he is.”
“Really? He’s kind of a big deal around here. Well, recently. In fact, um …” He clears his throat and shakes his head. “Never mind. If I start talking now, neither of us will get to work.”
I glance over at him as he pulls out of the driveway and starts off down the road.
I don’t think I’d mind not getting to work. Staying right here in this car, listening to him talk my ear off about country music nonsense and whatever the hell he wants. I think I’m minding him less and less. Or maybe just minding him in a different way.
If that even makes sense.
But he doesn’t say anything else. The country music is on so quiet, it’s basically noise underneath the squeaking of windshield wipers, the pattering of rain around us, and the engine humming.
He stops suddenly to let someone cross the road, an older lady with an umbrella that barely covers her, her whole side drenched. She waves at him as she hurries across the street.
At the next intersection, there’s another car, and even though we have the right of way, Wyatt politely gestures at them to go.
I don’t understand it, honestly.
His incessant courteousness.
His consideration for others that never feels fake.
Then suddenly he stops and parks by the curb.
Oh, we’re already here.
“Give me a sec, I’ll come around with the umbrella,” he says.
“You don’t need to—”
He’s out of the car anyway.
Again, with that incessant courteousness.
I let myself out before he’s all the way around, and in a flash, he’s right in front of me, nearly crashing into my face, umbrella over our heads.
My arm even swept around him and gripped his waist to keep him from falling.
And now we look like romantic lovers under an umbrella.
His eyes locked onto mine.
Me, panting, terrified for a reason I can’t quite pin.
“I could’ve walked,” I tell him.
He squints at me. “Is it really that hard to say ‘thank you’ …?”
I squirm my way through a hundred uncomfortable responses before grunting, “Whatever,” and head off.
And when I’m under the cover of the garage, I look back.
And find Wyatt smiling.
Like he won something.
I frown. “What?” I call back at him, like his smile is an attack.
He shrugs, still smiling, looking cute, then heads back to the car and drives off to his flower shop a few blocks down and around the corner. I watch him go from the edge of the garage, frustrated.
Then cracking a smile. That guy, I swear …
It lasts half a second before I put that shit away.