Dating by the Book

by Mary Ann Marlowe

All Sunday afternoon, I climbed up and down a ladder, hanging flags along my side of the street, waving at Letitia on the other side as we exchanged the occasional passing comment.

  Monday was another busy day, and there was a frenetic energy in the air as we anticipated the momentary escape from the ordinary. Orion was small, but we made a big deal out of celebrations.

  I didn’t close my shop on Tuesday because I didn’t want to waste the commercial opportunities afforded by the holiday. The parade and excitement would attract anyone in the vicinity who didn’t live a bit closer to a bigger town. I’d get more foot traffic to the coffee shop than on most days.

  However, at exactly noon, I chased everyone out and flipped over the Be Back Soon sign so we could stand on the street and observe the first of the holiday floats rolling down the short street, followed by a half dozen girls from a Brownie troop, a procession of the high school band, their majorettes and drum line, and a demonstration from the kids from the karate school. The 4-H club handed out candy as they passed, and vets in crazy miniature cars driving loop-de-loops made everyone laugh. POWs on motorcycles formed two columns and were met with applause. In between groups, random kids rode their decorated bikes or marched in patriotic garb, waving at the sparse crowd lining the sidewalks. Parents walked out into the middle of the street to shoot photos of their kids. The local newspaper crew did the same. I waved at little kids who came to my reading corner and older kids whose bikes I’d helped decorate.

  Yet another July Fourth parade in Orion finished up in a record forty-two minutes.

  As the last of the parade passed, the street filled with the bystanders, now returning to their point of origin. A small hubbub at the corner turned out to be Dylan, trying to make his way down the sidewalk, surrounded by folks who must have recognized him. He’d take a step, then pause, answer a question, flash a smile for a picture, then try to move forward again. No wonder he hardly set foot outside his family’s farm. That would get exhausting fast.

  I knew he was more than a celebrity caught in the wild, but I found myself rooted in place, mesmerized by the star that he’d become. When he made it as far as my bookstore, I was inclined to say, “Shoo! Shoo!” like the crowd he trailed was an invasion of unwanted pests. I wanted to grab the broom just inside the door and sweep them away.

  Instead, I held the door open, secretly hoping he might draw all of these potential customers inside. I couldn’t help but feel special when he said, “Hey, Maddie,” in front of a gaggle of gaping girls.

  When had I started valuing myself by the jealousy of teenagers?

  I wasn’t sure if he’d come to talk to me or if he was just passing, so I made safe small talk. “Are you going to the fireworks tonight?”

  He smoldered. “I bring the fireworks, Maddie.”

  It should have made me laugh, but I let my gaze fall on his deceptively soft lips. If I asked him to, he’d let me kiss him today. Right now. I swallowed. The words slipped out. “Will you take me there?”

  “I’ll take you there. Or here. Anywhere you want.” He grinned, and I smirked at his innuendo. “Pick you up before sunset?”

  With the parade over, Gentry barked at us to pick up the streamers and other trash left behind on the now empty street. I had no practical reason to keep the shop open, but there was no reason to close up early. The big event of the evening would be the fireworks over the little lake after sunset.

  It was a long wait until sunset.

  Bored, I sat on the stool behind the cash register and read Little Women for probably the fourth or fifth time, but after a couple of chapters, I started wondering about Silver Fox and what he was doing. I clicked on his Twitter feed and noticed he’d posted a review of Jane Eyre, which made me smile considering he and I had discussed it.

  Max came by to deliver an obligatory apple pie and promised it would keep until the next day. He coaxed me into trying a piece along with a cinnamon coulis he squeezed from a condiment bottle. Damn, was it good.

  He said, “It’s my treat for the holiday.”

  I knew he was trying to wear me down, and the thing was, it was working.

  As he was about to go, he asked, “Will you be at the fireworks?”

  For some reason, I thought of the day in eleventh grade when he’d asked me to homecoming. He’d said, “I figured we could go as friends. Like old times.” It had surprised me since he’d only talked to me about how best to prepare for the PSAT for weeks prior. I had to tell him I’d already agreed to go with poetic, brooding, artistic Dylan. He took it well, though, saying, “No biggie.”

  He’d shown up to that dance with Emma Harkness, a pretty girl nowhere near good enough for him.

  “Yeah.” I tilted my head. “I’ll see you there.”

  He didn’t push it and left me to my empty store where I opened my laptop and used the quiet to revise. Fortunately, or unfortunately, Layla had finished reading my novel and had given me insightful notes. I was starting to understand what Silver Fox had found lacking in my characters, but I hadn’t cracked the code to infuse them with palpable desire.

  Just before sunset, the rumble of a distant engine announced the arrival of my knight. Dylan’s motorcycle turned the corner, and he pulled up to the curb beside me.

  He took off his helmet. “Need a lift?”

  “My prince has come,” I said.

  “Not yet.” He laughed and tossed me a spare helmet.

  “Brat.”

  I put on the helmet and straddled the seat behind him, knees pressed into his thighs, arms wrapped around his torso. His T-shirt couldn’t hide his broad back. I rested my cheek between his shoulder blades. Memories crashed like waves, and that motor purring between my legs didn’t exactly help keep my thoughts pure.

  The sun hung low on the horizon, and when Dylan turned west on the county road, we were blinded. If anyone else were driving, I might have gripped him for dear life, but I trusted Dylan completely. On the bike anyway. I’d logged hours riding with him, and he’d never given me the slightest cause for concern. We didn’t have far to go in any case.

  When we reached the lake, the last of the golden light sparkled across the purple water.

  We said “lake” despite the fact you couldn’t take a boat out on this little body of water. By normal standards, our lake was a glorified pond. I could wave at people on the other side. I could have swum across it easily. And I had. Naked.

  Dylan parked his bike and waited until I dismounted before taking off his helmet and swinging his leg over. He set his helmet on the seat and hooked his foot against the kickstand, then put both his hands on my waist. “Was it good for you?”

  I tilted my face toward him. It would have been easier than anything to close my eyes, drop my head back, and let him kiss me.

  I needed kissing, and I needed it badly.

  Dylan loosed his grip, slipping his hand easily into mine. “Come on, M. Let’s see who’s here.”

  Frustrated that he’d let pass a chance to good and properly seduce me, I trotted along beside him, looking for people I wanted to talk to among the clusters of folks chatting or setting up blankets.

  Our fireworks display would be more suggestion than spectacle. We couldn’t afford to put on the kind of elaborate display they’d have in other towns, but we had our traditions, and it gave us an excuse to gather and mingle.

  Dylan nodded a greeting to the people staring at him. Most everyone had known him since before he’d made a name for himself, but a couple of teen girls gawked at him, whispering behind their hands. He winked and they broke into giggles. When one raised her phone to snap a picture, Dylan let loose with a megawatt smile. I waited for him to stop vamping and walk with me.

  I waved to Mr. Anderson and his oldest son Connor before I noticed they were chatting with Gentry. Gentry cast a glance at my hand in Dylan’s and pointed a snooty grimace my way as if I cared about his opinion. Then it occurred to me he’d been the only person in town who’d truly welcomed Peter at our events.
He’d lost the closest thing he’d had to a friend when Peter left. That cheered me up immeasurably somehow.

  Dylan dropped my hand to wander over and slap backs with some of the guys who worked on his dad’s farm, slipping easily into Spanish. I glanced around, smiling at anyone who looked my way. I spotted Layla and made a beeline for her.

  She’d brought one of my blankets and spread it out next to a cooler. An opened beer bottle poked between the circle of her crossed legs, like a glass phallus. She waved her phone around, trying to find a signal.

  I stepped behind her. “Your fly’s open.”

  She tilted her head. “Huh?”

  I pointed at her bottle. “Your hard-on’s showing.”

  She scooted over and made room for me, still concentrating on the phone. “I can’t get reception out here, and there’s a fan war brewing.”

  Oh, the horror. Fearing she might decide to go home and deal with imaginary drama, I said, “Don’t you have other people who can handle it for you?”

  “Sure. I have moderators, but I’m missing the fun.”

  “This will be fun, too. Look at all the people here.” I scanned the huddled masses and noticed Charlie edging around the far side of the lake.

  Charlie was attractive, funny, and kind, exactly the kind of guy I might have written for myself, though he lacked Dylan’s sensuality. The differences between the two men couldn’t have been starker. But of course Charlie hadn’t shown me the least sign he might be interested in my pathetic attempts to draw him out. So there I was with Dylan. What did that say about me? Did I fall into the worst cliché of women who needed to be with a man, any man, no matter the risks? I knew hanging out with Dylan was like playing with fireworks. He’d burn bright and light up my night, but he’d likely leave me alone in the afterglow.

  Layla said, “Man, people will come out for any stupid thing.”

  Dylan found us and sat behind me. Layla offered him a beer, and he rubbed my shoulder with his free hand.

  Layla kept talking. “Do you remember when we had that Pumpkin Festival last year?”

  Of course I did. As with all things Orion, that dinky festival was only a success because our town would turn out for any excuse for a gathering. Like tonight.

  “I had to drag Peter to that.”

  The only reason he’d shown up to it was because I’d organized it. He’d griped about attending, but he put on a brave face and pretended to enjoy chatting with Midge and Shawna and Letitia. It shouldn’t have surprised me when he decided to bail on Thanksgiving.

  Dylan’s hand clenched and pinched my neck. “Yeah, he told me.”

  Layla said, “That’s right! I forgot you were here that weekend.”

  “Thanks a lot,” he said.

  I shifted so I could face him, but by now, his features were obscured in dusk. “What did Peter tell you?”

  His hand had slid off my shoulder when I turned, and now it rested on my knee. “We were making small talk. I wasn’t sure what to talk to him about. I didn’t even know what kind of work he did.”

  “Finance,” I offered. He was a CFO now, but it wasn’t important. “Go on.”

  “He made some disparaging remark about how little there was to do here, how we had to make up these nonevent events to pretend to have any kind of culture. I wasn’t sure if I should agree out of politeness or defend my home, defend your participation. I ended up saying something like, ‘Well, Maddie loves it here.’”

  This wasn’t exactly a revelation.

  “He knew that.” I looked over the lake at silhouette shadows.

  “He seemed to take my response as tacit agreement the town was lacking and said something like, ‘Just between you and me, once we’re married, we won’t be living here.’”

  “What?” My head jerked back to face him. “That wasn’t our plan at all. You must have misunderstood.”

  “No, that’s why I remember the conversation at all. He said he had his eye on a house on Meridian he planned to buy once you’d tied the knot.”

  Meridian Street ran straight through the center of Indianapolis.

  “And you said . . .”

  “I told him that was something he should discuss with you before the wedding, that it would be unfair to spring it on you once you were legally married.”

  My eyes were bugging out of my head. “Why didn’t you tell me that?”

  It didn’t shock me that Peter wanted to leave, but the idea that he’d premeditated such a deception was outlandish. I didn’t even know if I could believe what I was hearing. But I squeezed my fists and waited for an explanation.

  Dylan said, “I figured you’d think I was jealous, and I didn’t think you’d believe me.”

  I tried to look at Layla, but she was nothing more than a shape in the dark. “Can you believe this?”

  Layla’s head bobbed. “You had to know he wasn’t happy here. It was obvious to everyone else.”

  That was a fair observation, but it was like the rain recognizing the ground was wet. They hadn’t exactly made him feel at home.

  One of the men setting up the fireworks yelled over, “We’re about to start.” The lake was small enough we could hear him.

  The crowd let out a pitiful cheer.

  “We’re not done with this conversation.” I turned toward the water, short-circuiting the fireworks between us just as a star burst overhead.

  Was I a hypocrite for being pissed Dylan had kept his opinion to himself? I’d been annoyed with Max for six months for speaking his mind too freely.

  What if it had been Dylan instead of Max who had spoken to me in the weeks leading up to the wedding?

  Honestly, I wouldn’t have listened.

  I was dead set on following through on the wedding I’d planned. I had a dress, a cake, and my mom’s approval. Apart from our emerging differences, which were exacerbated by the people I called my friends, our relationship had been everything I told Silver Fox I wanted. Peter was easy to talk to, easy to look at, easy to kiss. Sex, companionship, and stability. Wasn’t that enough?

  Of course, I hadn’t been enough for Peter, and the fact that he’d so easily walked away left me wondering if I was inherently unlovable.

  The pyrotechnicians made the display last longer than it should have by spacing out the fireworks. Kids ran around handing out sparklers, and we all wrote our names in swirling, fizzling light. Then another lackluster star would burst overhead, and we’d all say “ooh” or “aah” even at the duds that made up about 20 percent of the total.

  Dylan was a perfect gentleman during the fireworks for the most part. He sat behind me and tugged my shoulders to make me lean against him, and it felt too nice to resist. He wrapped his left arm across my chest and drank his beer with his other hand.

  Overall the whole thing lasted about twenty minutes, and we knew it was at the end because they managed to shoot off two fireworks at once and then called across the water, “That’s it, guys!”

  We mingled a bit more with everyone while drinking a few more beers and swatting mosquitoes. Dylan moved with me as I wound through different groups to try to catch up with people I rarely saw unless they came into my bookstore. Some of the kids I’d known in high school spent all their time out on family farms and almost never came into town.

  Using our phones as flashlights, we worked our way around the chattering groups, but Dylan managed to steer us around Charlie, deep in conversation with Letitia’s new boyfriend. I started to swing over to meet Rico and ended up locking eyes with Charlie. I took a step toward him, but as if he hadn’t recognized me, he turned away without a nod or a wave.

  I found myself at Layla’s blanket where Max now shared a corner, both of them trying to get their phones to work.

  “You ready to leave yet?” I asked Layla.

  Dylan laid his forehead above my ear. “Hey,” he whispered. “I thought you were with me.”

  His breath tickled, and I shivered. It took every ounce of my strength to resist the tempt
ation of a passionate night burning up his bed, but I managed to break our physical connection. “Thanks for the ride over, Dylan. I need to go home.”

  “I can take you.” He twined his fingers into mine, in his old way of claiming without making any overt declarations. He was so familiar and comfortable, it would be easy to let old patterns repeat.

  But I was in control of myself and peeled my hand free. “Thanks, Dylan. Not tonight.”

  Besides, I couldn’t go home with Dylan even if I’d wanted to. I only had three more days to finish revising before my book was due to my publisher.

  When I got home, I opened my laptop to take another stab at the sex scene that had resisted me over the weekend, but when I settled in, I found Silver Fox had just messaged me.

  Evening, Claire. Scarlett? Curious to find out how things are going.

  So much for writing. His timing was impeccable because I needed someone to bounce thoughts off, and normally I might have talked to Charlie, but since he was one of the people I needed to talk about, he was no longer my best confidant.

  Hey there, Foxy. Or Darcy. Things are a bit weird, to be honest.

  How so?

  How could I explain? My two potential suitors are polar opposites of each other.

  Right. St. John v. Rhett. So who’s winning?

  More like who’s losing? St. John is a great guy with so much possibility. We have a solid friendship, but there’s no spark. Rhett, on the other hand, is a powder keg of combustible heat, but I suspect he doesn’t want anything more than a hookup. If I could combine these two guys into one....

  That made me think about Peter again. Peter had been right in between Charlie and Dylan in so many respects. On paper, he was an amazing catch, and we did have a physical connection. Maybe not as white-hot as with Dylan, but at least Peter wanted me for more than a night. Well, not anymore, but when we’d been together, he’d take me places and tell me he loved me.

  My phone buzzed. Sounds like they both need to up their game.

  Enough about me. How goes it with your Lizzie?

  Not good. I think maybe I should give up.

  Why haven’t you? What makes her so special to you?