In the two weeks since I’d vaguely told Krista about Dean, I’d been staying over at his place on Fridays and Saturdays. I knew she wanted to ask more questions, but she was still processing it while balancing wedding planning, looking for a condo for her and Kyle to move into after the wedding, and preparing to close out the quarter at work. She was probably running the few details I’d shared over and over again in her head, trying to make sense of them before coming back to me with more questions.
In the meantime, I’d learned Dean was not a morning person.
When I didn’t move back to bed, he sat up, running his hands through his messy hair. “It’s not 10 yet. It’s not even 9:30, I bet.”
“It’s 9:13. You are aware that you can’t leave your place at 10 to get to another place by 10, right,” I said with a laugh, walking into his bathroom to swipe on the mascara I kept balanced on his sink for weekends, right next to my travel toothbrush.
His response was another groan, lying back down.
The day after I’d told Krista about him, Dean and I had met up briefly for lunch as he was on his way to buy art supplies and I was going to meet my mom for my bridesmaid dress fitting. He’d casually asked if there was a new amendment to Rule 5 in the works.
“I should know of any pending developments to our contract, right?” he’d asked with a teasing smirk. “I mean, if you’re going to stay over more, I need to know so I can at least have the proper amount of coffee for two people. You know, to be a good barista.”
I’d laughed, responding by asking if he would text me.
He’d looked at me, confused. “What? When?” he’d asked, reaching for a fry on my plate.
“Like, now,” I’d said with a laugh, trying a bite of his turmeric roasted carrot chickpea salad.
As he pulled out his phone, I’d sat my phone between us, the screen facing him. He’d given me a weird look and texted me, my screen lighting up. His name popped up, a coffee cup and paintbrush emoji next to it.
He’d looked at it and then back at me. “Wait, I’m not Brad in your contacts anymore?”
I’d shook my head, smiling.
“Wow,” he’d said with a grin. “So does that mean … wait, you tell me, what does that mean, specifically?”
“It means that I don’t have to lie to Krista anymore. So, if you’re down and around, I could stay over a few times if it makes sense, like, logistically or logica—”
He’d interrupted by kissing me.
Now, he tried to do the same, distracting me with kisses once I sat next to him on the bed. I pulled away, laughing.
“I know your morning routine, and there is no way we’re going to get there by 10 if you don’t get up now and skip the Chemex.”
“But isn’t time just a construct?” he said, laughing at the look I gave him as I moved to the kitchen.
“I guess I’ll just make some coffee then,” I said over my shoulder. “Do I pour the water in and then the coffee grounds? Or wait, I just dump the whole beans directly in the Chemex, right?”
“You’re the worst, and I know what you’re doing,” Dean said, laughing and getting out of bed. “I’m up now, don’t touch my coffee.”
I laughed, moving to sit on the couch as he got ready.
His routine made no sense to me and, nine months ago, I would have left the minute I saw it. But now I’d grown to appreciate how his outfits would come together between him making coffee and pausing on the couch to draw in his sketchpad, usually a tattoo or a landscape idea. Sometimes, he would just stand there and do the whole coffee process from start to finish instead of moving, no rhyme or reason to the change in routine. I even found comfort in the randomness, using the time to ask him about his upcoming week and how things were going with his dad.
He told me the update simply, as if we were discussing something as basic as the weather. But in reality — between packing up his dad’s house, working with an online auction company, dealing with a real estate agent, and finalizing details with Sun Meadows — it couldn’t have been further from simple. I couldn’t believe at one point in my life I’d thought Dean was irresponsible.
“Can I ask you something?” I asked as he handed me a cup of coffee before walking back to his closet.
“Sure,” he said, slipping on several leather and corded bracelets.
“Before, when your dad wasn’t … were you two close?”
He glanced at me and then back at the moon and star studs he was holding, reaching up to put them in his ears. “Yeah, actually, we were. I mean, we still are, but it’s different now, obviously.”
“Is he like you?”
He laughed, adjusting the thin silver hoops in his eyebrow and cartilage. “Definitely not. It’s crazy how different I am from him since he was the only person who raised me. But I guess that’s kind of on him. He encouraged me to be…” he paused, trying to think of the right word. I thought he’d say “different” or “out of the box” but instead, he said, “…me. He just wanted me to be whatever I wanted to be, you know?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know. I’d thought maybe he’d say that his dad had been hard on him, that Dean had to convince him, trick him, fight him to be this way, but that eventually after all the strife, they were still close, that everything ended up okay.
Instead, I felt my heart sinking, thinking of my own dad.
He’d always been encouraging of me to be me, as long as it was a version he and Mom recognized, the one they’d planned, curated, already decided on. I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to explain Dean to them, thinking how hard it’d been to share even the simplest details to Krista.
“What’s wrong?” Dean asked, picking up my arm to look at my watch. “We still have plenty of time.”
“Nothing, sorry,” I said, smiling at him in his vintage patterned button-up, collarbone and first chest tattoos always visible, cuffed tattered gray jeans, his brown boots, bracelets, earrings, and his newest tattoo — two tiny upwards carrot symbols — just behind his left ear.
He pulled me up, wrapping his arms around my waist.
“Well, let’s go, princess, we don’t want to be late, do we?” he teased, kissing my wrist just below my watch.
Once we were seated on time — a fact Dean found more satisfying than I did — we fell into easy conversation. I told him about an audit I’d been working on, and he talked about his gallery show in November, both of us barely noticing our plates had been cleared, just the French press coffee between us. Once the coffee was gone, and we’d split the check, we finally stood, navigating through the crowd waiting for a table at the door.
“Skylar!” a bright voice called out.
I turned, seeing Emma, a friend from work, with a guy I didn’t recognize, waving at us.
“Who is that?” Dean asked.
“I intern with her. We sit next to each other.”
We’d bonded over our shared country club memberships and the realization that we’d attended many of the same galas with our moms.
“Oh,” he said, taking in her pearls and sweater set, the guy in a matching polo and pressed khakis. “I can just meet you at the car,” he said, lightly touching the small of my back. “I don’t think we can sell that you’re my tutor in the summer.”
I grabbed his hand, pulling him back. “No, I want you to stay.”
He looked at me, surprised, but before he could respond, Emma and the guy had walked up to us.
“Hi! How are you?” she said, smiling cheerfully at me and then Dean. “This is my boyfriend, Cody,” she said, pointing to the guy.
“It’s great to meet you, Cody,” I said, pausing for 1.2 seconds before nodding toward Dean with a smile. “This is Dean.”
“It’s so nice to meet you,” Emma said, her smile not faltering.
“Cool tats, dude,” Cody said. “How long did it take to finish the sleeve?”
Emma rolled her eyes, and I braced myself for an underhanded, judgmental comment. After all, she was part of my
world, another version of Krista, Lindy, and even me on my worst days.
“Cody is convinced he wants a tattoo,” she said with a laugh. “I keep telling him that he’s too scared of needles, but he thinks he can handle it.”
I laughed. “Well, Dean might be an expert if you need advice.”
Dean glanced at me and half-smiled, his dimple making him even cuter. He and Cody fell into a small conversation about tattoos as Emma faced me.
“Is that your boyfriend?” she whispered. “The guy you’re always texting during lunch?”
I laughed. “He’s not my boyfriend. But yeah, we do text a lot.”
She smiled, looking at Dean carefully. She didn’t seem shocked. She didn’t seem to want to question me, to say I was making a mistake, to ask what was I thinking, to say I was irrational by being with him.
“I’m guessing he’s not an accountant.”
“Not even close. He’s, uh, an artist, actually,” I said, finding myself smiling as I said it out loud.
Emma looked at me as if she was seeing me for the first time, like her first impression of me might have been inaccurate, but maybe that was okay.
“Are you sure he’s not your boyfriend? Because boyfriends are usually the only guys who can be convinced to go to brunch,” she said with a laugh.
Before I could respond, Cody’s name was called for their table.
“It was great to meet you,” she said to Dean as they walked away.
I hadn’t planned for that at all — to run into them, to introduce Dean, to break Rule 7 — but as we walked outside, the sun bright and warm, I realized I hadn’t felt that familiar sense of panic I usually experienced when things went unplanned. Instead, I felt good. And it had gone so well.
“That dude is definitely going to pass out if he ever gets a tattoo,” Dean said with a laugh, interlocking his fingers with mine as we walked down the sidewalk. “But he seemed cool.”
I stopped walking, turning to smile at him. “Hey, I, uh, can’t think of an amendment for why I did that.”
He shrugged. “I don’t care about amendments, Skye.”
I smiled, lifting up to kiss him in the sunlight on the sidewalk. After a few seconds, we pulled away, not really needing to say anything in this moment, just walking hand-in-hand back to his car.
★☽★★☽
“Hi,” I said, my breath catching in my throat as I opened the door. He was wearing his wheat-colored boots, olive skinny jeans splattered with colorful paint specks, and a black and purple tie-dyed t-shirt cuffed at the sleeves. The outfit — combined with several gunmetal and jade rings, various beaded necklaces, and every piercing filled with thin black hoops — made him look like he absolutely didn’t belong here, in my perfect, boring new apartment.
I smiled, opening the door wider. “Come in.”
Dean held up a bottle of wine, the same kind we’d gotten buzzed off of in his kitchen months ago. “I brought a housewarming gift.”
“This isn’t a housewarming,” I said with a laugh as I hugged him.
“Oh, right, this is research, sorry, I forgot,” he said, nuzzling my neck and then kissing me on the lips. He pulled away, glancing around. “So, can I have a tour first? Specifically, where’s the bedroom?”
I laughed and took the wine, rolling my eyes.
We were standing in the living room of my one-bedroom apartment, a symbol of how planning-obsessed my family was. Krista and Kyle had synced their wedding to when their leases were up, so after the honeymoon, they would move into a condo, and I’d move in here, an apartment in the same complex I lived in now. My dad, wanting to ensure I wouldn’t be distracted by moving decisions during midterms, allowed me to go ahead and sign a lease even though the wedding was a little over a month away.
Until then, the empty place had become an extension of Krista’s wedding planning, filled with several still-wrapped registry gifts, tons of bridal magazines, wedding favors, gifts bag items for out-of-towners, and her wedding dress, blocking the doorway to my future bedroom.
“Sorry about the mess,” I said, gesturing to the chaos on the floor. “Before this officially becomes my apartment, it’s kind of Wedding Headquarters.”
“Yeah, I can see that,” he said with a laugh as I took his hand to show him the kitchen.
Everything looked almost exactly like my current apartment, just smaller with no hallway leading to separate bedrooms. The only major difference was it would be just mine, meaning Dean could come over as much as he wanted. Even if that meant to help stuff gift bags for out-of-towners when they arrived at the hotel. It wasn’t exactly bachelorette party research, but I figured he didn’t care, and I could let it slide.
“So I don’t really have anything in here yet,” I said, sitting the wine on the counter. “Not even a wine opener.”
He shrugged. “It’s cool. We can just plan to open it when you’re officially moved in,” he said, putting his arm around me as I showed him the gift bags and the items to go inside — a canvas tote bag with the wedding date printed on it, a packet of the wedding schedule and a list of things to do in the area, a miniature candle and matches, a mini bottle of champagne, a bar of local chocolate, and a golf ball with KT monogrammed on it.
In just a few minutes, we’d found an easy rhythm, sitting on the floor where my couch would eventually go.
“So why are you doing this and not your sister and her fiancé?”
“Well, Friday is date night, so they’re probably ordering appetizers right now,” I said with a laugh. “Plus, as her maid of honor, this is stuff I should handle, you know? The non-fun part of wedding planning.”
Dean kind of laughed. “Right. Speaking of appetizers, would you want to get dinner after this?”
I looked up from my bag and smiled. “Yeah, that’d be fun.”
“And why don’t we make this more fun, too,” he said with a grin. “I have an idea I think a girl like you would love.”
I laughed, agreeing without even needing to hear it first. We finished the bags quicker than I’d planned, losing track of time as we talked. Then, per Dean’s suggestion, we made a little game out of the task, lining up half of the bags on one side of the room and half on the other, saving the golf balls for last to see who could toss the most inside from their side of the room.
“What does the winner get?” I asked before we started.
He paused, thinking about this from his side. “Loser buys dinner?”
I shook my head. “We already take turns doing that.”
“How about if I win, you show me your bedroom, and if you win, you show me your bedroom?”
I laughed, almost dropping my golf balls. “You’re ridiculous. I don’t even have a bed in there yet.”
“Oh, like having access to a bed has ever stopped us before,” he said with an eye roll.
I laughed. “Fair point. How about this, if you win, you can draw a fake tattoo on my wrist, and I’ll leave it on during our next outing. And if you lose, you have to wear a sports coat to the next one.”
He laughed, loving this idea. “Deal, princess.”
After several minutes of game play, we met in the middle of the room, stepping over boxes and wayward golf balls, breathless from laughter.
“Nooo, you beat me,” I pouted, lightly shoving him as he grabbed me and picked me up, making me laugh harder.
“I’m so glad because I don’t even have a sports coat,” he said, laughing as he sat me down to pick up golf balls that had rolled into the kitchen from how many times I’d missed. “So can I draw whatever I want?”
I groaned, placing the golf balls he handed me in the bags.
He knelt down to help, grinning at me. “Maybe I’ll draw a massive exploded pumpkin. Yeah, like, bright orange, too.”
I laughed, pushing him again as he pushed me forward, both of us falling to the floor, him on top of me.
“Or maybe I’ll write ‘coffee shop slut’ in a gothic font,” he said, kissing my neck. “Or draw your
date notebook, but in flames.”
“I hate you,” I groaned, shaking my head and laughing.
“Would you like me more if I owned a sports coat?” he asked, lifting up on his elbows to look at me, his eyes still sparkling, but something was different about his question, less of a joke in his voice. “Because I’d like you with or without tattoos, as long as it’s you.”
I smiled. “Can I show you something? It’s in my bedroom.”
He laughed, moving off of me and holding out his hand. I took his hand as I said, “I wasn’t being exactly accurate when I said I didn’t have anything in here yet. I have one thing.”
He looked at me, curious, and stepped into the bedroom after I moved Krista’s wedding dress. The room was empty, the moonlight spilling in on the white carpet and the only thing inside. Leaning against the wall was the flower painting Dean had created more than a month ago. He’d been serious when he’d said he wanted to keep painting it after we’d left Boozy Brushes, not letting me see it for several weeks until he felt like it was done.
He laughed when he saw it. “You kept that? I thought you were just being flirty when you said you wanted it.”
I rolled my eyes. “Of course I kept it. It’s amazing. I feel happy when I look at it. And now I get to say I have a Dean Cross original.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder, smiling. “You have the Dean Cross original, you don’t need a painting.”
I was grateful he’d turned back to look at his artwork so he wouldn’t see how hard that statement made me blush.
“So, um, I was thinking you could help me hang it in here once I officially move in. Whenever we open that bottle of wine.”
“Yeah, totally,” he said, nodding, still looking at the painting. “You know, this was the first one I’ve done in years where it was just because. No commission, no gallery deadline, just … painting.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I asked, noticing his tone had shifted again just slightly, just enough where he didn’t sound as carefree as before.
He glanced at me and sighed. “I don’t think so. I don’t know.” He shook his head. “I kind of miss painting for fun, feeling like I can take my time, able to make every detail just right, really getting into it.”
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