by Roan Parrish
Clearly I had underestimated either Will’s level of irritation at having done anything that could be construed as romantic or Will’s level of nervousness about asking me to live with him, though, because he was not amused by my teasing at all.
“Oh my god,” he said, throwing up his arms and breaking my hold on him in the process. “Haven’t we been through this?! What do you want me to say to you? That you’re my sun, my moon, my starlit sky, and without you I dwell in darkness?”
That took a moment to register, especially since stars were kind of on topic, but then….
“Are you… are you quoting Willow to me right now?!”
Will rolled his eyes. “I mean!” And he gestured at the star, like he’d bought himself a certain amount of leeway with it. Which is probably exactly what he’d been trying to do. To, as usual, let a gesture stand in for having to say how he felt.
“Will,” I said, trying not to laugh at how upset he was. “Is it really so hard to say those things? I mean, not those things, obviously. But… is it really so hard for you to just tell me why you want me to stay with you?”
Will purposely ignored the last part of my comment. “You actually want someone to say shit to you just because it sounds like a line from some romance?”
“No! I think we’ve established that I don’t need you to be… is it Val Kilmer? Jesus, you know that movie’s from before I was even born, right? Anyway, I just… come on. Can’t you just tell me how you feel?”
Again, Will gestured wildly between himself and me and the paper I held clutched in my hand. He was angry for real now. I could tell the difference.
But this time I wasn’t backing down. It was too important. I wasn’t going to let there be one more thing between us that lingered unsaid, guessed at, talked around. So I just stood there and waited. Will glared at me, clearly expecting that I would fill the silence like I usually did, but I raised my eyebrows at him. Will’s elegant nostrils flared, and he narrowed his eyes at me.
“You know how I feel. I don’t believe for one second that you don’t!”
Now I was getting pissed too. Pissed that he would deny me a simple explanation, pissed that he thought I was still enough of a pushover to let him get away with it, and pissed that he’d clearly planned the planetarium trip as an emotional shortcut—using the romantic gestures I’d once wanted to soften me up so I wouldn’t force him to express the feelings behind them.
“Then why can’t you just say it, Will? Just tell me why, and don’t you dare say money!”
“Christ! Do you want me to arrange a fucking flash mob for you too?” Will spat. “Or—oh!—get us on the kiss cam at Madison Square Garden! How about that?”
His face was flushed as he leaned toward me, hands on his hips, and yelled.
“Exactly how much audience participation would you like there to be when I tell you that I fucking want you with me, huh? Tell me! Give me a number of exactly how many fucking people you need to witness me tell you that I want you to come live with me this summer! That I’ll miss the shit out of you if I don’t get to see you because you’re too busy working two jobs! That I want to come home from work in the evenings and get to fucking hang out with you and watch those—god damn—those stupid fucking DVD extras? Just a ballpark fucking figure of how many goddamn people you need to hear me tell you that I fucking love you, Leo!”
Will fell silent, fists clenched, as people around us stared. After a moment, he narrowed his eyes in mortification and looked up slowly, cheeks burning, at the crowd that had gathered around us. One man walking a dog started to clap. He was quickly joined by a lady jogging, and soon everyone who had overheard was clapping and whistling.
“Oh my fucking god,” Will whispered.
My heart was pounding, and my skin felt like it couldn’t contain me. My breath came fast and my head felt light, like at the very end of a long yoga class when every worry I’d carried in with me had been purged in sweat.
I looked at Will, his cheeks flushed, his hair mussed, and his expression mortified. And none of it mattered. Because there, in the twist of his mouth and the corners of his eyes, I saw it. The truth. That I was his sun and his moon and his damn starlit sky. That, without me, maybe he did dwell in a little bit more darkness than with me. He might never say it. But, goddamn, his version of it was way, way better.
Then I looked around us and started giggling.
“Um, maybe like… I’d say about fifteen would probably do it. No, definitely more like twenty.” I gave a little nod and grin at the people who had gathered around us.
One guy had a phone out and was filming us—from behind Will, thankfully, because the last thing I needed right now was for Will to go ballistic and get arrested for assaulting some tourist.
“Oh my god, just kill me please,” Will said, the applause making it hard for me to hear him.
I closed the distance between us in one step, the Vans he got me for my birthday touching the toes of his designer sneakers, our shadows overlapping on the ground as I reached for him, creating a shadow deeper than either of them on their own.
“Sometimes I want to,” I said. “And then you buy me stars and declare your love for me in public and ask me to move in with you, because you’re so romantic.”
I could see the glare start to form in Will’s eyes, the edge of the snarl on his lips as he prepared to fight. So before he could, I pulled him to me, held him at the waist, and dipped him backward so he had to grab my shoulders to keep from falling.
And then—like an iconic photograph, a movie musical, the swooniest of swoony romance novel covers—I kissed the hell out of Will Highland in front of a crowd, on a spring afternoon in Central Park, as the city came alive around us.
THE END
Next, delve into the spinoff series, Small Change!
You know Ginger Holtzman as Daniel’s best friend from In the Middle of Somewhere. But Ginger has her own story, and a romance with new cafe owner Christopher is just part of it …
READ SMALL CHANGE NOW!
Or keep reading for an excerpt.
Excerpt from Small Change
“Go the fuck away,” I mumbled at the beam of sunlight boring into my eye socket, and buried my face deeper in my pillow. The minute I let out a sigh of comfort, though, my alarm clock went off. I reached over the side of the bed to smother it but I was too slow. The damn thing barked its robot-dog-creature bark and rolled under the bed. Convinced I could still snag it, I slithered to the side of the bed and reached as far as I could.
My fingertips had just brushed its evil head when it robot-barked again and rolled out the other side toward the kitchen.
And I fell off the bed and landed on the floor in a tumble of blankets, hair, elbows, and swearing. I stared up at my ceiling, which I’d painted to look like a skeleton hand had broken through and was plunging into the apartment, unable to muster the energy to move.
Fuck the morning for having sunlight. Fuck the floor for being hard. Fuck Daniel for finding that damn alarm clock at a street sale last summer and knowing I’d think it was funny.
I rummaged around the blankets and found that my phone had fallen with me, so I dashed off a quick text to Daniel: Fuck you forever for this TERRIBLE alarm clock. May your every night be plagued with dreams of tart cherry jam and your descendants for twenty generations never find a moment of peace again. Love you. Jewish curses 4ever. Xoxo.
More immediately, fuck my own clumsiness. Last night I’d shattered my coffeepot on the floor, which meant that the closest thing I had to caffeine within fifty feet was my coffee ice cream. Which. Hmm, what were the caffeine levels in coffee ice cream…?
I had to spend this morning painting; I was way behind where I wanted to be, and the show at Malik’s gallery in January was getting too close for comfort. Hence why I had set my damn alarm for eight a.m. on a Saturday when I hadn’t finished in the shop until one. Hence why I had dropped my coffeepot while blundering around last night. Hence why I currently
had no caffeine and was actually going to have to leave the house.
“God, get it together, Holtzman,” I muttered.
I dragged myself up off the floor and pulled on the black jeans and bleach-spattered hoodie I’d dropped there last night. I didn’t have time for the catching up that would be involved in running into people I knew (a real danger when you’d lived and worked in the same place for years), so rather than go to Chapterhouse, my favorite coffee shop, I walked down 4th to Bainbridge where a new coffee and sandwich shop had opened over the summer. It was close to the shop and I made it my job to know the other local business owners. You never knew when you could help each other out.
But though I’d noted when it first opened, it had been so brand-new and chaotic that I hadn’t gone in. Then Daniel had left and I’d thrown myself into things at the shop and gotten so busy I’d forgotten about it.
Now, though, the promise of coffee and a bagel in a place where I didn’t know every barista and customer sounded like heaven.
I was already on to thinking about my painting when I walked into Melt. The sign outside was ugly. Bad font and too modern for the vibe of the place, which looked like a twist on a classic deli inside: black and white checkerboard tile, black vinyl chairs and white café tables, and stools lining a chest-high counter that ran to the left of the cash register. The hulking espresso machine was shiny and high-tech, and the display case housed bagels and other pastries. There was a blackboard that listed the different sandwiches, but the writing was crabbed, and since it was too early for sandwiches anyway, I didn’t bother trying to read it.
I ordered a bagel and a large coffee with a quad shot from the geeky, bespectacled kid behind the counter who seemed shockingly awake for this time of morning. He raised an eyebrow at my order then grinned at me. He had a contagious smile—lazy and borderline silly.
“I don’t need a bag.” I accepted my bagel and folded a dollar into his tip jar. I turned away to doctor my coffee, taking a big, excited bite of the everything bagel, the world’s greatest combination of flavors—garlic, then onion, then salt, then cream cheese—exploding on my tongue.
As the white cream unfurled into the dark coffee, my mind was back on the painting I was about to work on. I saw the way I’d razor the edge of my medium dry brush so I could stipple white into the black paint I’d lain down for the hair. As I took another bite of bagel and stirred my coffee at the same time, I almost knocked the cup over, and I made a grab for it with both hands.
In a cosmic joke repetition of this morning’s alarm clock mishap, as I reached out to save my coffee I dropped my bagel on the café floor.
“No!” I cursed a blue streak at myself, at my coffee, and gravity, and crouched down trying to decide if the patient could be saved. But no, its seeds were scattering the floor like the saddest glitter, and blobs of cream cheese had splatted around it.
Mid-swears, bells tinkled and I found myself squinting up at an indistinct figure in the doorway, carrying a cardboard box on his shoulder and backlit by the sun.
“Uh, everything okay here?” the guy said.
I said nothing, too busy mentally calculating whether I was willing to drop more cash on another bagel and immediately deciding it was necessary not only to my sanity but to my ability to even get up off the floor.
“What’d you do?” The guy asked, this time looking toward the kid.
“Nothing!” he said. “She—er…”
“Ugh, it’s not his fault.” I dragged myself up. “I dropped my damn…” I gestured unnecessarily at the dead bagel, grabbed a bunch of napkins, and started wiping at the cream cheese on the floor, giving the bagel a regretful pat before I dropped it in the trash. Then I carefully put a to-go lid on my coffee so it couldn’t suffer the same fate.
By this time, the guy had put down the box and gone behind the counter. Without the sun blinding me I recognized him. I’d seen him around the neighborhood a few times and noticed him setting things up when Melt had first opened.
He was tall, with the thick build of someone naturally powerful, rather than the kind of sculpted muscles of someone who worked out in a gym. About my age, I thought: early- to mid-thirties. His thick red hair was cut close on the sides and long on top, combed back from a square hairline. He had a strong jaw and a smirky mouth, and his stubble was nearly blond. It was his eyes that I couldn’t look away from though. They were almost the same color as his hair—a warm goldish-orange—and shot through with flecks of blue.
My first impression was that his face was arresting, interesting the way sometimes in a gallery there’s one painting that pulls you in and won’t let you walk past. Each line eases into the next, each color shades into the one beside it in just the way your eye desires. Once you start to see the details you can’t look away.
But the more I looked, the more interesting converted to handsome as hell.
He sliced a bagel in one clean stroke and spread it with cream cheese, looking at me with mild amusement. “Dramatic start to the day,” he commented, eyes sliding to the spot where I’d been crouched when he came in.
“Not even my first encounter with a floor this morning, unfortunately.” I leaned an elbow on the counter, drawn toward him.
“One of those, huh?” He spoke with the ease of a food service professional accustomed to such exchanges, and the utter empathy of someone who actually meant it.
He wrapped the bagel in white paper with a few quick folds and twists, and put it in a bag. Then he added three more bagels and a plastic tub of cream cheese. When he held the bag out to me over the counter it was accompanied by an easy smile that crinkled laugh lines at the corners of those extraordinary eyes and displayed charmingly sharp incisors that overhung his bottom lip a little, like a kid wearing dress-up fangs. He had dimples underneath his stubble and I couldn’t believe that I’d ever walked past this shop when it first opened with little more than an, “Oh, he’s kinda cute,” to spare for him. No, this guy was smoking hot.
“Just in case the vagaries of your day find you needing another one,” he said.
And then he winked at me. Not the friendly wink of a barista. A filthy, promise-laden wink that shifted his grin from charming to sexy as hell. I was kind of impressed he’d managed to pull it off and I just looked at him for a minute, a smile threatening.
I fumbled in my pocket for my wallet, cradling the warm bag to me like a football, but he waved me off. Instead, he held out a hand across the counter and I shook it. His was warm and a little rough, and the contact made me want to squeeze and not let go. We stared at each other for a moment before I mentally shook myself. But he still held on to my hand.
“I’m Ginger,” I said, gesturing toward myself with the bag I was clutching.
“That’s usually my line.” He pointed sheepishly to his red hair with the hand that wasn’t holding mine. “I’m Christopher Lucen.”
The door tinkled and a group of loud-talking South Philly ladies spilled in.
Finally, he let go of my hand. Reluctantly, as if he might have held it indefinitely without an interruption.
“Hey, thanks,” I said, holding up the bag in a salute and picking up my coffee. The ordinariness of the cup was disappointing after the feel of his hand against mine. His smile was far more engaging than it should be and I was suddenly a little regretful that I had to get out of there.
He nodded, his eyes crinkling warmly as he said, “Good luck staying on your feet.”
READ SMALL CHANGE NOW
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for reading the Middle of Somewhere Box Set! I hope you enjoyed it. If you did, consider spreading the word! You can help others find this book by writing reviews, telling your friends, and talking about it on social media. Reviews and shares really help authors keep writing, and we appreciate them so much! The power is in your hands. Thank you!
xo, Roan Parrish
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Also by Roan Parrish
The Middle of Somewhere Series
In the Middle of Somewhere
Out of Nowhere
Where We Left Off
The Small Change Series:
Small Change
Invitation to the Blues
The Riven Series
Riven
Rend
Raze
The Better Than People Series:
Better Than People (coming August 25)
Standalones
The Remaking of Corbin Wale
Natural Enemies
Heart of the Steal
Thrall
Read in Audiobook
The Middle of Somewhere Series
In the Middle of Somewhere
Out of Nowhere
Where We Left Off
The Small Change Series:
Small Change
Invitation to the Blues
The Riven Series
Riven
Rend
Raze
Standalones
The Remaking of Corbin Wale
Heart of the Steal
Better Than People
About Roan Parrish
Roan Parrish lives in Philadelphia where she is gradually attempting to write love stories in every genre.
When not writing, she can usually be found cutting her friends’ hair, meandering through whatever city she’s in while listening to torch songs and melodic death metal, or cooking overly elaborate meals. She loves bonfires, winter beaches, minor chord harmonies, and self-tattooing. One time she may or may not have baked a six-layer chocolate cake and then thrown it out the window in a fit of pique.