“I’ve actually been downstairs the entire time. I, uh, didn’t know you’d be here.”
He half-smiled, his dimple making my heart pound even harder. He nodded to the empty chair in front of him.
“Do you want to sit? Unless you aren’t alone,” he added, glancing back at his laptop.
I sat and took a deep breath. “No, I’m alone.”
He looked back at me and closed his laptop, not saying anything just yet.
I cleared my throat, wondering if this was how Krista felt when she was building up her apology to me. In this moment, she was braver than me because, instead of sorry, I said, “So you switched shifts?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I needed some time to just, like, reset. I needed more than four hours of sleep and the morning to do boring stuff, like respond to emails and figure out shit for my dad and pay bills,” he said with laugh. “Super interesting stuff, I know.”
I smiled, liking the thought of him doing boring stuff in addition to all the cool, interesting things he seemed to always be doing. I liked the idea that he existed in the same world as me, too.
“My schedule has been all over the place lately,” he said, looking down at one of his rings, twisting it with his other hand. “So maybe that’s why last night was so weird. I shouldn’t be judging your coffee orders. I was being a really shitty barista,” he said with a laugh.
I shook my head. “You aren’t a shitty barista.”
He kind of smiled.
I straightened up in my seat and took another breath. “So, if you switched shifts, does that mean if you, like, hypothetically, had dinner plans with someone tonight, they were canceled?”
He looked at me again, this time with that focused expression he reserved for the moon and stars, for his paintings.
“Hypothetically,” he repeated, glancing at his phone, understanding.
I nodded. “Yeah, like, for example, if I hypothetically had an ex-boyfriend from a year ago who couldn’t take a hint, and my sister invited him over to our apartment for Friday game night because she didn’t think a hypothetical Brad was in my life.”
He raised an eyebrow. “That’s oddly specific for a hypothetical.”
“Yeah, well, science can be weird sometimes. You could talk about that at your next hypothetical dinner date.”
He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I’m sure the gallery manager I’ve been working with cares about science.”
“Gallery manager?”
He nodded, that smirk so attractive, so irresistible, on his face.
“Yeah, her name is Abbi.” He paused and looked at the mug in front of him, rubbing his tatted thumb against the clay. “This girl I know told me I should do more networking, lean into the whole wine-and-dine thing. So through a couple dinners and connections, I got a second gallery show.”
I smiled, a whoosh of relief washing over me, as he looked at me.
“I would have told you about it, you know. I just wanted it to be real first,” he said. “Because I kind of hate hypotheticals.”
I nodded, so completely and overwhelmingly happy. A sort of happiness that short-circuited my rational brain, the opposite of jealousy, making me say without overthinking it, “I kind of hate Rule 2, Dean.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking right at me. “I hate it, too, Skye.”
I looked down at my hands, adrenaline coursing through my veins like I’d just smashed a pumpkin.
“Like, we could make up some amendment to adjust it … but, if you’re interested, I think if we have a quorum, we could just repeal it, right here, right now,” I said quickly, glancing back at him.
He smiled, his rich brown eyes sparkling.
“Done. Vote, yes, yea, whatever I’m supposed to say to end that stupid rule this exact minute,” he said with a laugh, immediately coming over to kiss me, neither of us caring if anyone saw.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“You know, this was supposed to be my night off.”
I gave Dean a deadpan look. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“Yes, you did,” he said with a laugh, picking up a paintbrush, turning it over in his hands, looking at it with a skeptical expression. “When you said you wanted my help, you were asking me to all Friday night plans, right? So, based on the transitive property, you asked me to this just as much as you invited me to the first one four weeks ago.”
I laughed, shaking my head. “That’s not how the transitive property works.”
He grinned. “Yeah, well, I’m here, aren’t I? So you managed to convince me somehow.”
“I can’t help where the research takes us,” I said with a smile, glancing around the BYOB step-by-step painting class, Boozy Brushes.
For people like Krista and Kyle, Friday night meant date night. But for Dean and me, it meant going through my list of bachelorette party ideas to test if they were actually something Krista would enjoy when I finalized the plans for her in September.
Dean had gotten involved when, during a lull at the coffee shop, he’d walked up to my table where I’d been hanging out before my internship, three days after we’d repealed Rule 2.
“What’s this?” he’d asked, picking up the list I’d accidentally dropped to make room for the coffee he sat down for me. “Candle making? Wine tasting? Cooking class? This is a strange to-do list.”
I’d blushed, feeling self-conscious he would think all my ideas were lame. “It’s for Krista’s bachelorette party. I’m brainstorming options. Once I have a solid list, I’m going to try them all out to make sure they’re good.”
“You’re going to do all of these? Who’s doing it with you?”
I’d shrugged. “I can’t take Krista since I want to surprise her with the best possible option for her actual party. That’s why I have to make sure they’re good enough, you know? I don’t want to leave it up to chance. And Lindy is…” I’d shook my head, unable to explain how my closest friend was somehow barely my friend. “I guess I’ll go alone.”
Dean had nodded, sitting the list back down in front of me.
“Unless,” I’d said with another shrug, “you’d be interested in doing some with me. It’s probably not breaking Rule 3 if it’s for research.”
He’d smiled at me and raised an eyebrow. “Oh really?”
I’d nodded, looking back at the list. “I mean, it does give me a great excuse to have free Friday nights without Krista questioning me for…” I’d quickly counted my list of ideas. “…nine weeks straight.”
“And you’re still working on that list, right? So it could be more.”
I’d smiled. “Yeah, the options are endless.”
He’d laughed, turning as several people walked in the coffee shop.
“I’m down. Especially if it’s for research. I’m always talking about how much I love research,” he’d said with another laugh, walking to the counter as I picked up my coffee, smiling at the little crown he’d drawn on it.
Four weeks later, we were at Boozy Brushes, ready to learn how to paint a vase of sunflowers. Other than us, the room was made up of a troop of suburban moms enjoying a ladies night out and a group of sorority girls I was grateful I didn’t somehow know through Lindy. I was almost used to the stares Dean and I received when we walked in places together, and I doubt he even noticed. If he did, he certainly didn’t care.
I was struggling to translate the instructor’s directions onto my canvas between balancing how distracted I was by Dean. He was wearing an olive green button-up, rolled at the sleeves, his sleeve tattoo seeming even brighter under the fluorescent lights, his collarbone and first chest tattoo only covered by a dozen beaded and feather necklaces, crushed khaki linen pants rolled at the ankles, and blue leather loafers.
“Ultramarine,” Dean said under his breath.
“What?” I asked, his words pulling me out of my checking-him-out trance. I hadn’t listened to the instructor demonstrate how to start the vase for the past 60 seconds.
“She said blue, but
it’s actually ultramarine,” he said, moving one of his rings from his index finger to his middle finger, adjusting the brush in his hand. He squinted at the picture we were supposed to recreate, not noticing how intently I was watching him, curious because I’d never seen him paint.
He did it again when she said yellow. “It’s actually ochre.”
I laughed. “It’s the same thing, right?”
“Yeah, like how 7:30 is the same as 7:37 to you,” he said, winking at me, making me blush for no reason at all.
After the instructions, she told us we had 15 minutes to work on our own vase. I glanced at Dean who was studying the tattoos on his hand, looking slightly bored.
“What are you doing? We’re supposed to be painting,” I said with a laugh, quickly realizing how different we would have been in the same class in school. That was obvious earlier when I’d tried to sit in the front but he pulled me to the back.
He kind of laughed. “Yeah, I didn’t realize those were just instructions so I painted the vase while she was talking.”
I laughed, shaking my head, trying to focus on getting just the right amount of blue-but-actually-ultramarine on my paintbrush to create a vase exactly 7 inches wide like she’d said. I glanced at him again, glad I had 15 minutes for each piece of this painting because my focus was totally off. He looked so attractive, his toned, tattooed arms crossed over his chest, his rich brown eyes like the best chocolate in the world, making me weak.
“Why don’t you go get some wine while you wait?” I suggested, grateful he couldn’t see my canvas even if that meant I couldn’t see his either. “You standing so close to me is making me nervous.”
“But remember, I can’t judge your artwork,” he said with a grin, making me blush again. “What was that amendment again? 1.6 or something? I can’t keep track.”
I stepped away from my painting and lightly pushed him. “Go get some wine. One glass won’t kill you. And stop distracting me.”
He laughed and walked off as the instructor made her way to our spots. She helped me with my vase, saying that I was gripping the paintbrush too hard, that I needed to loosen up. Dean watched from the wine table, smiling at me, making me blush even harder.
By the time we’d moved to sunflowers, Dean was buzzed, having stopped to drink wine every time he had to sit and wait for the rest of us to catch up.
“Oh, shit, Skye, I’m sorry,” he said, laughing as he dropped his paintbrush on the table, making me laugh, too, even though I was sober. “I’m following your rules, that doesn’t count as a distraction.”
“How did you get purple?” I whispered as the instructor told us to fill in our background, encouraging us to “go wild,” paint a table, shadows, or even random patterns if we wanted. Dean rolled his eyes at her instruction, not realizing I was watching him.
“Purple?” he asked, looking down at his tray of colors. He had at least six more colors than I did. “Oh, mauve? I made it.”
“Did you make all those other colors?”
He nodded, winking at me again, and shushed me. “I’m trying to focus,” he said with a grin, standing in front of his canvas.
He was the only one in class who painted standing, yet another thing that made him different. But as we all stumbled to even hold our brushes correctly, he looked so in his element. He made careful, measured strokes on the canvas, holding the paintbrush delicately but so confidently, looking focused and serene at the same time as he studied what he was doing. I was absolutely mesmerized, my heart beating hard and fast in my chest.
The instructor walked around the class again, taking in our final products. She looked at Dean’s four times longer than anyone else’s. He glanced at me, and I raised my eyebrows, worried it was possible he’d painted terribly because he’d had so much wine.
“You don’t like to follow directions, do you?” she said with a good-natured laugh.
He laughed. “Yeah, I’m not known for paying attention to rules.”
I stood, my curiosity too strong, and walked over to his canvas.
“I don’t really paint flowers, so this was the best I could do in this amount of time,” he said, pushing back his hair. “I’ll fix it later with my own supplies.”
He squinted at it as I gasped. He’d painted a vase with flowers, but that was as close as he’d gotten to doing what we were told.
The vase was a rich blue, not the same color we’d been given, and I didn’t know enough to know if it was ultramarine or not. Inside it was a bouquet of realistic, vibrant flowers that took up most of the canvas: sunflowers, pink roses and peonies, orange lilies, lilacs, lavender, green Athos poms, and assorted greenery accenting the artful arrangement.
“This is incredible,” I said, laughing. “How did you do this?”
“Let me see yours,” he said, ignoring my compliment and stepping toward my spot.
“No, it’s terrible,” I said, laughing as I tried to pull him back. “I didn’t realize we could just paint whatever we wanted. Not that it would have helped, but still. Mine is stupid. I did exactly what I was supposed to. It’s not interesting.”
He put his arm around me and looked at it. It wasn’t the worst, but it just looked like the picture we were supposed to recreate.
“I love it,” he said, kissing my cheek. “It’s almost as beautiful as you are, princess.”
I blushed, leaning my head against his shoulder.
“So what did you really think? Not about my painting. But about the activity itself?” I asked as I drove us back to his place. “Do you think it would make a good bachelorette party?”
He thought about this as he fiddled with his rings, moving them from finger to finger, until I reached out and took his hand, interlocking my fingers with his.
“Well, it was more fun than that weird guided hike we did two weeks ago. But the cooking class was fun, if you aren’t vegan,” he said with a laugh. “We should probably do more research, just in case, though.”
I laughed, agreeing, as he picked up my phone and pulled up the wedding playlist we’d worked on together over the coffee shop speakers.
“Classics or dance?” he asked, already turning up the volume.
I laughed, reminding him it was his turn to choose since I chose last week when he drove.
Buzzed Dean was pretty much the same as regular Dean in the car, carefree and funny, singing along with me to love ballads, both of us laughing at the cheesy lyrics. He sometimes stopped to share stories about interesting places we passed that I’d never noticed or I told him memories about places I’d been going to my whole life.
After I turned off my car, we were all over each other.
“You were so distracting in there,” Dean said lowly as he kissed my neck, pushing me against the car, sending chills down my spine.
“Really, because your painting definitely didn’t seem to suffer,” I said with a laugh, already working the rest of his shirt buttons, pulling him closer, wrapping my legs around his waist as he picked me up. “You’re so talented, Dean.”
He responded by kissing me on the mouth harder than he’d been kissing my neck, making me moan under the moonlight. I pulled away to kiss his collarbone, knowing that drove him crazy.
“Let’s go inside,” he said, already stepping backward to his place.
“Wait,” I said, opening my car’s back door.
“Oh, okay,” he said, stepping forward, his hands back on me. “You know I’m down for that, too.”
I laughed and lightly pushed him away. “No, I’m getting the paintings. I can’t keep them in my car. Krista might see.”
I paused to look at his again, still stunned by how good it was. He pulled on my hand, taking both paintings, and nodded toward his stairs. Once inside, he leaned them against the couch, almost dropping them as I slipped off my dress, pulling him to bed. For some, Friday night was date night. But for Dean and me, it was mind-blowing.
Afterward, as he came back to lie next to me, he paused to flick off all
the lights and to light the candles we’d made during our first bachelorette party research outing that had somehow found their way next to his bed.
“Sorry, I guess I should have done all that beforehand,” he said with a laugh, resting his head on the pillow next to me. “But then I guess you would have told me I was breaking Rule 4.”
I laughed, liking how cozy only candlelight seemed. “I had a great time tonight. Here and painting,” I said, smiling at him.
“Yeah, me too. You’re a lot of fun, Skye,” he said, turning to face me, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear, his hand lingering for just two seconds. “Plus, it was cool to just paint without any pressure.”
I glanced at his perfect painting against the couch, thinking how he only created things he’d seen in reality. “So those flowers just exist in your head? You didn’t see them anywhere?”
“You know me too well,” he said with a slight laugh. “I actually saw that bouquet yesterday.”
I looked at him, waiting for him to continue, having picked up a thing or two about listening from him.
He sighed. “I gave them to my dad’s caretaker.”
I kept waiting.
He sighed again. “Because I have to let her go, and I feel really guilty about it.”
“Why do you have to let her go?” I asked, wondering if he was going to call Rule 1, remembering the last time he’d called it was after I’d mentioned his dad when we’d been buzzed on his kitchen floor.
He groaned and rolled on his back. “Because my dad needs, how do the doctors put it … ‘a higher level of care,’ I think are the exact words. So that means moving him out of his house in a few weeks and into Sun Meadows. Do you want some snacks? I think I’m sober and starving.”
He got out of bed, putting on his linen khakis, and walked to his kitchen. I followed him, slipping on his olive button-up, and watched as he opened cabinets and his fridge, looking for food.
“Here, I got these for you,” he said, passing me a bag of snack-sized milk chocolate candies.
“Thanks,” I said quietly, looking down at them in my hand. “Dean, you know you can talk to me about this, about your dad.”
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